Russian Olympic Medalist Ivan Girev Explains Decision to Apply for Neutral Status

Last week, the World Aquatics Integrity Unit released a list of eight approved neutral swimmers for the 2024 World Championships next month in Doha, Qatar. Only one Russian swimmer, Ivan Girev, has been approved so far.

Girev said his decision to apply for neutral status was entirely up to him, and that he has been celebrated — not shunned — for being approved as a neutral athlete in his circles.

“My personal ambitions influenced my decision (to apply for neutral status),” Girev told SwimSwam. “In summer 2023, I showed my best results, having COVID-19 shortly before the beginning. Then, unfortunately, our team was suspended from the Olympic Games in Paris.

“The Olympics aren’t just regular competitions,” added Girev, who won an Olympic silver medal swimming on Russia’s 4×200 freestyle relay in Tokyo. “It’s the worldwide event, which is remarkable to participate in. All athletes want to take part in it.

“This story is exactly about world swimming and my place in it. But I want to be with my team in Paris and embody the experience I’ve got in the past few years with them.”

Notably, neutral athletes will not have to sign a declaration condemning last year’s invasion of Ukraine. Instead, like all other athletes, they must reaffirm their commitment to respect the Olympic charter, including “the peace mission of the Olympic Movement.” In September, two-time Olympic champion swimmer Evgeny Rylov told Russian media that he’d refuse to sign a political declaration in exchange for a return to international competition.

Meanwhile, Russian Diving Federation chief Stanislav Druzhinen has joined the chorus of voices calling into question whether Russian athletes will compete at the Paris Olympics this summer as “neutrals.”

Druzhinen said the current International Olympic Committee (IOC) rules will have the effect of isolating Russian athletes and making them feel like “outcasts.”

“We do not fully know the conditions of admission, because athletes have to go there individually,” Druzhinen said. “Will they need to sign any papers, how to send doctors, masseurs with them?”

“The question is how they will be treated there: Will they feel like outcasts, sitting apart from everyone and not communicating with anyone? In my understanding, they will. International competitions have turned into politics, unfriendly countries are trying to prove something, infringing on the rights of our athletes, who just want to perform on equal terms with others.”

Druzhinen also took issue with the eligibility criteria laid out by the IOC and international diving federation, claiming that “99%” of elite Russian divers are members of Dynamo and CSKA sport clubs that are currently banned for being affiliated with “security agencies.”

“The athletes who took first place at the Russian Championship last year were selected for the World Aquatics Championships,” Druzhinen said. “At the same time, the eligibility criteria proposed by the International Olympic Committee and the International Federation say that only athletes who are not members of the Dynamo and CSKA societies and other organizations affiliated with security agencies can go to the competition.”

Russian divers captured one medal, a bronze, at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. They did not make the podium at the Rio 2016 Olympics.

“We have 99% of the athletes who could go to the World Championships in a neutral status who are members of those societies,” Druzhinen said. “And it makes no sense to send there people who took fifth or sixth place, because in this way we would violate the sports principle, and such a decision will not be understand by the guys who [should be] selected by right.”

The sentiments echo the opinion of Russian president Vladimir Putin, who said last month that the IOC’s conditions must be “thoroughly” analyzed before he could commit to sending neutral athletes to the Paris Olympics this summer.

As of last month, the IOC had approved just eight Russians and three Belarusians as neutral athletes for the Paris 2024 Olympics. They will not be allowed to compete under their national flag, hear their national anthem on the podium, or give interviews during Olympic media sessions as part of the IOC’s conditions.

Last October, the IOC suspended the Russian Olympic Committee indefinitely for recognizing sports organizations in four regions illegally annexed from Ukraine.