No, for what I’ve seen in their posts, they’re fine with it. It’s not like this decision was made by force and without consultations.

Because most of Russian athletes have military ranks, they support war and even when performing under the neutral flag they show their Z marks. It’s not fun for Ukrainians. It’s not fun for other countries who suffered from russian imperialism.

I wrote below. It affects them a lot. Besides, they cannot train abroad forever, this whole situation is very unstable, with short term contracts, no future prospects, when you retire you do the burden for the team in order how to train new generation. All this while facing the smile of russian athletes that don’t have to worry about anything.

That’s what being ignorant is. It’s not about everyone else competing, it’s about country doing war crimes facing consequences

I’ve been translating lots of interviews of Ukrainian athletes. Yes, they are not trained in Ukraine. 1) you think they can be calm like nothing had happened? 2) let’s ignore the long-term consequences like rebuilding facilities which will take time - until the war ends and then until the funds come and restoration completes. So what, train in Europe for how long? 5 years? 10 years? All of those are short term contracts. Very stable environment. This btw also affects Ukrainian athletes as some of them think with despair of new generation of athletes that couldn’t receive the training. That’s directly the words of biathlon athlete. How would you do the training for teens, get a team? It’s not like the regular “go to this street 5 times a week” it’s “get on the bus, drive 24 hours, live there for half a year”. Add to this how many Ukrainian athletes have died in the war and what trauma it gets to the people performing at Olympics. And facing the citizens of a country whose fault it is, who don’t even feel the consequences on them - they can train as usual. And all of these thoughts get into your head while training for something big…

This isn’t about everyone else. It’s about russia, about facing consequences and about trauma. I think - and this is a completely Ukrainian pov - that this “sports transcends politics” situation is heiwa boke or being ignorant. You simply putting more trauma to traumatised people.

Ok imagine there’s a school shooting, and you have to go to other school because yours is damaged, and face the person who killed your classmates and everyone tells you that school must transcend your pain, anger and missing the pre-tragedy times. Besides, the shooter might do or say something provocative again - and you’re supposed to do nothing.

Well, does South Korea has completely destroyed facilities? I’m not implying on the moral aspect, I’m saying about the technical unfairness when you start the war but your athletes are just fine and earning money and fame while people you bomb, Ukrainian athletes have to do lots of extra steps (if one can put it like that), mostly ending in training abroad apart from the family. It is probably hard to imagine from outside but having most of sports facilities shelled and destroyed doesn’t really help enjoying sports or transcending politics. Then, imagine if russian athlete wins and has to stand near Ukrainian one, how the latter would react?

Besides the moral element, can you imagine that an athlete from Ukraine has to compete with russian athletes who can train at home, at non-bombed facilities, with no interruptions because of air siren alarm and no constant fear of their families being killed with a random missile? Does this look like fair conditions?