Swimming Canada is the latest national aquatics federation to ramp up pressure on FINA to remove meets from Russia and ban Russian and Belarusian athletes from competition.
The Canadians announced on Tuesday afternoon that they would not send a team to December’s Short Course World Championships that is slotted to be hosted in Kazan, Russia. They join Australia, 9 Nordic nations, Switzerland, and Ukraine as countries that have publicly said they will not attend meets in Russia as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“Swimming Canada, in solidarity with our global partners in sport, denounces Russia’s attack on Ukraine, and will not attend any further events in Russia or Belarus until a peaceful resolution is reached,” the statement said.
The Swimming Canada statement was ambiguous about whether they would attend the meet if it was removed from Russia. SwimSwam has reached out to clarify.
While Australia only sent one athlete to the 2021 World Short Course Championships, Canada finished 2nd in the medals table behind the US. They won 7 gold, 6 silver, and 2 bronze medals for 15 out of the 138 medals awarded at that event.
“Swimming Canada supports sanctions against Russia and Belarus, including barring both countries from competition, and supports President Vladimir Putin being stripped of the FINA Order award.”
While FINA has pulled a diving event, a synchronized swimming event, and the World Junior Swimming Championships from Russia, they have not made a move on the World Short Course Swimming Championships yet.
FINA said on Tuesday that they were stripping Russian President Vladimir Putin of his FINA Order award and would require Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete under a neutral flag at future competitions.
FINA has become an outlier in international sport. The World Short Course Swimming Championships are the biggest sporting event scheduled to be hosted in Russia in 2022 that is still standing, and most other international governing bodies have issued an outright ban on Russian and Belarusian athletes competing internationally.
World Athletics joined the growing movement on Tuesday in a statement barring Russian athletes and coaches from all competition in their events.
“All athletes, support personnel and officials from Russia and Belarus will be excluded from all World Athletics Series events for the foreseeable future, with immediate effect,” World Athletics said. The Russian Federation has been suspended since 2015, and World Athletics said that they would consider suspending the Belarusian Federation at a meeting next week as well.
USA Swimming needs to announce the same now…we’re about a week out from athletes just posting statements individually saying they’re out
FINA is a disgrace. Russia is now attacking center city including a media tower. They forced a Russian station off the air that had been critical of the invasion. This is going to escalate including huge civilian death toll but all FINA cares about is chips
A huge percentage of Canadians have Ukrainian heritage and there’s still a great deal of fondness for the motherland among many of them.
I wouldn’t say “huge”—about 3.8% have Ukrainian heritage and most were born in Canada. But I totally agree with them pulling out.
Alberta alone has over 400,000 Ukrainians. It doesn’t matter where they were born, it’s their heritage.
Let’s them win swimming against themselves yay for Russia
Do the same thing to American athletes due to the American invasion of Iraq.
Thousands of Kurds and Iranians died because of the chemical weapons used by the man whose likeliness is behind the soldiers in the photo above. Genocide.
Thank you swim Canada
It sucks that Russia will get the chance to win a lot of medals (no blame to the athletes…unless they’re doping)
Hope everyone swims fast to put some big asterisks on those world championship medals
FINA is legitimately connected to gang organizations, and they already took bribes on this.
Fina will probably first say they can host it not as Russia, but as the Russian Swimming Federation, then went the pressure mounts they’ll say it’s been moved.
Just curious. Where were all of you loud voices when the USA and Nato were destroying Irak, Siria, Libia, Ugoslavia?
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Two wrongs don’t make a right
Sadly they are not white. #sorry.
Ok but Yugoslavia was to end ethnic genocide so let’s not lump it in with that please and thanks!! (Also pretty sure NATO did the minimum in regards to Syria)))
According to statistics numbers, US-led airstrikes killed a total of 14,036 people, including 3,847 civilians in Syria. This is much more than what Russia has done in Ukraine so far. There is no so called ‘minimum’ in a war.
And how many did the Russian backed Syrian army kill?
Appreciate your question, so have do you feel this situation is similar and different?
similar? Here you go! One independent country invades another independent country in pursuit of its own interests. Only in the case of the usa it is called “spreading the democracy” but when another country does precisely the same it is called “war”. I’m not defending what Russia is doing. But if you want wars to stop every country has to be treated equally. Otherwise, it’s a hypocrisy
Clearly you watch way too much russian state controlled media. Pan Am 103 might be something you should google for starters on Libya. Genocide caused by Hussein is another.
What kind of propaganda are you watching then? Go ask what ordinary Iraqi civilians, including the 100+ thousand killed, think about the invasion. It’s not up to the invaders to define whether a war is just or evil.
Fact check. According to the director of the Iraq Body Count John sloboda American and coalition forces killed 13087 civilians. The rest were killed by militias, terrorists or insurgents.
I read books and study history. I don’t need media to form my own opinion
your logic is that Russia can kill innocent civilians because other countries did it too in the past?
The giant difference is the Ukraine was a peaceful country doing 0 to incite unrest and have troops and tanks attack them. No genocide, human right violations, ethnic cleansing, terrorist training like with all the countries on your “list”
The Iraq war is defined as an invasion and it can’t be anything else. There are always so many excuses to start wars, human rights, mass destruction weapons etc. They are no better than Pootin’s excuses about neo-nazi. More than 100 thousand Iraqi civilians were killed, and you called that a defense of human rights? Ask if Iraqi people agree with it. Pathetic.
You can downvote the comment all you want. I’m not advocating for my country. What is going on in Ukraine is inhuman. All I’m saying is that if you you think this is the first war in the 21st century, then you are delusional. If you want wars to stop you have to apply the same standards to every country. The usa and nato destroyed more countries and killed more people in the 21st century than in the last 50 years before that.
I was like 4 when the US invaded Iraq