No frills, but Russians are back at track worlds
• They won’t hear their anthem if they win. Their national colours — even on nail varnish — are strictly forbidden. Regardless, a group of Russian athletes is back at the track and field world championships.
Almost two years after a blanket suspension for widespread doping, and a year after just one Russian was allowed to compete on the Olympic track in Rio de Janeiro, 19 will compete at the world championships starting Friday.
In London, they’ll officially be “neutral athletes,” not representing any country.
Sergei Shubenkov, who won the 110- metre hurdles at the 2015 world championships but had to sit out the Olympics last year because Russia was banned from international competition, said “I’ve got back almost all the rights I had.”
Decked out in an electric blue Russia tracksuit at his national championships last Friday, he lamented he still can’t “take this beautiful, awesome uniform to the worlds and flaunt it.”
Keen to head off any Russian celebrations, the International Association of Athletics Federations has issued its 19 neutrals with strict codes of conduct.
The Russian flag and national colours are banned, so uniforms in neutral colours must be approved by IAAF officials. Red, white and blue are forbidden, even on hairbands or bandages or accessories.
If the neutrals win, the IAAF’s anthem will play. Under the rules, an athlete who sings the Russian anthem faces a fine, though any legal tussles could prove embarrassing for the IAAF.
The rules “seem tough and a bit ridiculous,” said Shubenkov, who jokingly suggested there might be a loophole for fur hats. “Bringing a bear on a leash, would that count?”
The Russians will be in London when t he I AAF holds a string of ceremonies re- awarding medals from past championships after doping cases.
Some originally belonged to Russians, i ncluding Tatyana Chernova, who beat Britain’s Jessica Ennis- Hill to heptathlon gold at the 2011 championships but was later stripped of that medal and others. The Russians looked like a team as they met Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev last week.
Their world championship preparation is subsidized by the Russian state, while entry papers were submitted by the still- suspended national track federation, whose head coach Yuri Borzakovsky expects between five and seven podium finishes.
Besides Shubenkov, another medal contender is reigning world high jump champion Maria Lasitskene, who won every round of the Diamond League this season. She just wants to block out the whole doping controversy. “I don’t want to waste my emotions on that. I need them for the competition,” she said.
More than two years of investigations and bans have made the team stronger, says pole vaulter Anzhelika Sidorova. “Everyone who’s there will support the others,” she said. “We’re all friends like never before.”