Russian and Belarusian athletes are gradually returning to international top sports fields.
Some of the associations of summer sports already opened the door for them to the Paris Olympics, and in December two umbrella organizations have made concessions regarding the ban.
First, the International Swimming Federation admitted 27 Russians to the short track World Championships.
Just before Christmas, the International Skating Federation announced that it would accept a limited number of Russian figure, speed and rink speed skaters for the 2026 Olympic qualifiers, despite the fact that Russia’s soon-to-be three-year war of aggression in Ukraine still continues.
When one umbrella organization after another begins to live with the sports sanctions established due to Russia’s war action, the pressure on other federations increases.
Athletics, one of the biggest showcases, has taken a strict line in isolating Russian athletes from international activities. The reason is not only war.
The Russian Athletics Federation has been closed from the sport since 2016, when researchers and investigative journalists exposed the state-run doping apparatus operating in the country.
After that, only some of the Russians were allowed to compete on international fields until February 2022, when Russia attacked Ukraine. After this, Russian track and field athletes have had to compete within their country’s borders.
During the lockout, the results of Russian track and field stars have collapsed. The matter is clear from the rankings of the top Russian athletes in the world statistics of their sports.
The change hasn’t happened overnight. While in the year before the war, i.e. in 2021, a total of 14 Russians reached the top ten in the world statistics of their sport, the number remained the same in the statistics of 2022.
Instead, in the 2024 statistics, only six Russian track and field athletes will be in the top 10 in their sport.
Two of these six Russians are female walkers.
The size of Finland
The state of Russian athletics can be understood with a thought game concerning the Ultimate Championship competition concept, the latest creation of World Athletics, the International Association of Athletics Federations.
Only the world’s best in each sport will make it to the event, which will be held in Hungary from the end of 2026. Land quotas are not in use.
For example, in field sports, an athlete must be among the top 12 in the ranking of their sport in order to participate in the competition.
As previously reported in Urheilu’s story, Finland would have received four athletes with this year’s results.
The ranking takes into account the results of several competitions that must have a license from the International Association of Athletics Federations. Russian competitions don’t have that.
However, from the world statistics and the results of the Russian athletes during the season, it can be concluded that the Russian team would have been at most the size of Finland, because race walking and women’s tumbling did not make it to the debut competition of the Ultimate Championship.
11 made his record
The Athletics Integrity Unit, the independent anti-doping unit of the International Association of Athletics Federations, focuses its doping testing resources on monitoring the absolute elite of athletics.
AIU tests the most Kenyans, with a total of 120 on the test list. 38 athletes from Russia have made it to the list.
Of these Russians under the strictest doping control, 11 set their record in 2024.
A walker among them Elvira Hasanova was the only Russian to achieve the world’s top result in his main sport at 20 kilometers. Hasanova’s rival Reykhan Kagramanova walked into second place.
Muck thrower Valeri Pronkin was the only Russian man to break into the top three in the world statistics in the 2024 season.
Besides Pronkin, only high jumper Daniil Lysenko the level would certainly have been enough for the top 12 in the ranking. The total points of the five races are calculated for the ranking. With this criterion, the top 12 would also have included a high jumper Marija Kočanova and a pole vaulter Polina Knoroz.
Of the four, Pronkin and Lysenko are medalists in the adult series from before the war.
Based on the results, the situation of other track and field stars who have won prestigious medals for Russia is difficult.
Olympic champion Marija Lasitskene is still among the athletes tested by AIU, even though his performance level has collapsed. Lasitskene, who jumped no less than 206 five years ago, competed 12 times this year, but he crossed the bar at his best in the hall from a height of 193. In the summer, he did even worse: 191.
Lasitskene has made it clear to the Russian media that competing in his home country does not turn him on.
Having already crossed six meters in the men’s pole vault in 2018 Timur Morgunov the season’s best was 572.
Multiple EC medalist in decathlon Ilya Shkurenev hasn’t crossed the 8,000 point mark since 2022, and he didn’t fight once in the summer.
Race walker Vasili Mizinov won the World Cup bronze in 2019, when the Russians participated in the World Cup last time. In the 2024 world statistics, he ranked 49th.
Mikhail Akimenko was silver in the high jump at the 2019 World Championships. In April, the Russian Anti-Doping Commission suspended him for one year due to whereabouts violations.
Belarusian Maksim Nedasekau won the Olympic high jump bronze in Tokyo in 2021 with a record of 237. Since then, he has competed in a few events per season, but his results have hovered around 220.
Some of the stars have completely disappeared from the competition and testing program. For example, the pole vault world champion who is on maternity leave Anželika Sidorova and the multiple medalist of the speed fences By Sergei Shubenkov names are not found on the list of Russians tested by AIU, as in previous years.
In the women’s category, Finland is already alongside
In the light of history, Russia is one of the superpowers of athletics. It is in third place in the medal statistics of the World Cup held since 1983, although it has not taken part as a federation in seven World Cups – the Soviet Union in 1983, 1987 and 1991, the Neutral Athletes’ Team in 2017 and 2019, and the ban in 2022 and 2023.
The role of women in particular was great in increasing the medal count in the last decade. Based on this year’s level, no significant celebrations are known, even if the International Association of Athletics Federations changes its policy regarding the exclusion of Russians from the Games.
When comparing the season’s best of the best Russian and the best Finnish woman in the 2024 world statistics, in the 21 individual sports competing in the Olympics, Russia is better in 11 and Finland in 9 sports. In women’s height, the summer top result of both countries was the same.
In men, Russia is better in each sport 18–3, but as it was already stated earlier, the top result does not go far in the international rankings.
Based on the statistics for the 2024 season, Russia is no longer the leading athletics country in women’s race walking, whose doping history is brutal to read.
The image of the Russian walkers was not brightened by the news published in January 2024, according to which ex-walkers Jelena Lashmanova, Sergei Kirdyapkin and Olga Kaniskina were appointed endurance coaches of the Russian national team. The trio was notorious Viktor Chegin to the coaching group, from which nearly 40 Russian walkers have suffered bans in their careers due to doping.
Unchanged situation
When all Russians and Belarusians were first excluded from the International Association of Athletics Federations prestigious games in Eugene in July 2022, the high-altitude star Lasitskene publicly criticized the president of his umbrella organization Sebastian Coeta and accused this of discrimination.
Coe answered Lasitskene in an interview with Urheilu as follows:
– I would tell him that integrity is very important in sports. We want to make sure that all athletes could participate in the Games. However, it is not possible for Ukrainians. They are moving with a historically small team, because many of the athletes who belong here have to defend their country. Now the team has athletes who take care of their coach and their families.
Two and a half years later, Coe’s words still ring true. They should be remembered when sports circles flirt with the idea of the Russians returning to the Games.