Expect politics to be at sharp end of Games
Fencer shining a light on Ukraine invasion
KONSTANTIN Lokhanov was one of the 335 athletes who represented the Russian Olympic Committee — as distinct from the Russian nation, which was suspended for statesponsored doping — at the Tokyo Games. However, it’s not an experience he looks back on with any fondness.
Lokhanov has referred to the Olympic village as ‘an island of broken dreams’ and said that he was so devastated by his performance at the Games that he ‘lay in bed for about a month eating fast food deliveries’ when he returned to Moscow.
As a two-time world junior fencing champion, he expected a medal. However, a hip injury meant he could only finish 24th. That his wife, Sofia, returned from Tokyo with two golds — one for individual sabre and one for the team event — seemed scant consolation.
None of this came up when Lokhanov was interviewed by Erin Burnett on CNN last week. As one of the few Russian athletes to speak out against the war in Ukraine, he popped up on our
“Lokhanov’s life reads like a Chekhov tale”
screens to talk about the current situation in his homeland. At one point, Burnett asks him directly how far he thinks Vladimir Putin will go.
‘I have no idea, unfortunately. We are always thinking he can’t go much further, but we all saw what happened nine days ago, they murdered (Alexei) Navalny. We always think the next level is impossible, but here we are,’ Lokhanov said from his base in San Diego.
Lokhanov had been in Munich for hip surgery when Russian troops invaded Ukraine. He woke up to the news of the war and made the decision not to return home, eventually relocating to the US. As Burnett told viewers, that decision cost Lokhanov his marriage, his citizenship and country.
His wife, Sofia Pozdnyakova, is the daughter of Soviet fencing legend Stanislav Pozdnyakova, a four-time Olympic gold medalist who also happens to be president of the Russian Olympic Committee. She refused to join her husband and filed for divorce. The elder Pozdnyakov responded to his former son-in-law’s defection with a memorable appearance on Match TV, the Kremlin-run sports network, saying about his daughter: ‘I believe her love for the motherland allowed Sofia not to share the sad fate of frightened lovers of raspberry frappes and yellow scooters,’ and also saying he hoped Lokhanov ‘choked on his American cookies.’
Lokhanov now coaches young fencers in California and hopes to represent the US in Paris — one New York lawyer is lobbying that his American citizenship should be fast-tracked ahead of the Olympics. As he told Burnett, he wants to compete in Paris ‘wrapped in the American flag’.
In this part of the world, fencing is a lesser-known sport, one of those curiosities of the Olympics like synchronised swimming. But it is one of only a handful of sports that has been a feature of every Games, stretching back to Athens in 1896. And it matters in Russia, one of the powerhouses of the sport, fourth in the all-time medal table (granted with a little help from the former Soviet Union) — with only France, Italy and Hungary ahead of them.
In something we are likely to hear more about in the coming months, no Russian fencers, or athletes in other sports, will compete under their own flag in Paris. The Court of Arbitration for Sport recently upheld the IOC’s ban of the Russian Olympic committee in protest at the war in Ukraine. Lokhanov hasn’t been the only fencer to defect since the war with Sergey and Violetta Bida building a new life for themselves, having fled Russia last May.
Last December, according to Russian state media, the husband and wife were put on a wanted list by Russia’s interior ministry, and they face 10 years in prison should they ever return.
If the two-year war in Ukraine has been largely forgotten in the past few months because of the utter horror of the tragedy unfolding in Gaza, it might come back to prominence in the coming months as the Olympics approaches. And not just for the double standard that seems to exist for Israel, who will be sending athletes to the Games without any repercussions for their government’s actions.
The likes of Lokhanov and the Bidas may serve as a reminder of what Russia is doing. At last year’s World Championship in Milan, Ukrainian star fencer Olga Kharlan refused to shake hands with her Russian competitor Anna Smirnova after beating her. Kharlan was black-carded and disqualified. But after mounting pressure, the International Fencing
Federation reversed its decision and allowed Kharlan to return to the tournament.
Political intrigue is nothing new when it comes to one of the most established of all Olympic sports. Jerzy Pawlowski is regarded as the greatest fencer of all-time, an extraordinary talent who was said to have eight different ways of advancing on his opponent. A flashy, charismatic showman, he won numerous Olympic and world titles. And he did it all while he was spying for the West during the Cold War.
While competing for Poland in an international tournament in Italy in 1974, Pawlowski vanished. It turned out that he had been identified as a NATO spy. Over 100 Polish fencers were also interrogated as the most accomplished swordsman in the world was sentenced to 25 years. He was released in 1985 and spent the final two decades of his life working as a faith healer in Warsaw. It takes all sorts.
If Lokhanov’s life — with the defection and his wife’s refusal and the powerful father-in-law — reads like a Chekhov short story, Pawlowski seemed more pulled from the pages of Ian Fleming. But it underlines that international intrigue has always formed a part of the Olympics.
In the coming months, we could be hearing a bit more about Lokhanov and the Bidas and it might just mean one of the lesserspotted sports in the Olympics becomes more prominent in Paris.