Yesterday, Illia Kovtun wore a t-shirt with the words “Stop War” on the chest in podium training. He was asked to remove the shirt by the FIG because wearing it would be against the new Code of Conduct that prohibits all kinds of demonstrations at competitions.
The FIG Secretary General Nicolas Buompane said during the press conference:
“Even though we are in agreement somehow with the message “Stop War”, we cannot accept those kind of political messages within our event. So, we went to the gymnast and to the head of the delegation to tell them that indeed we understand how critical it is for them, how sad it is, but it is something we don’t want to see during the World Championships, so, hopefully, that will not happen again”.
On one hand, the FIG has been shown support to Ukrainian gymnasts in multiple ways including paying for their expenses at the World Championships. On the other hand, the federation also refused to ban Russian and Belarusian officials from its events, including the upcoming FIG Congress. Watanabe was not swayed even when several countries decided to boycott the event.
Kovtun’s personal coach Irina Nadiuk told Suspilne that while she understands the FIG’s position regarding the t-shirt she does not see how gymnastics can stay out of politics:
“It was Illia who wanted to wear this t-shirt in training and show this message. We thought there would be no problems because there was no negativity on it, no calls against aggressors or any sort of negativity. It’s made in our [flag’s] colors with the words “Stop War”. We didn’t call anyone names, we just want peace and our independence, so that no one would bother us. Illia wore it to podium training. He has a shoulder injury right now, so we skipped a few events during the second podium training session in order to preserve him.”
“He went out on the competition floor to help me with other gymnasts. And two events later FIG officials approached us, showed a photo of Illia in this t-shirt and calmly, not in a rude way, asked to take it off and not to wear it again. We apologized because we didn’t want anyone from our delegation to have problems. And we moved on. Today the FIG asked our official from the Sports Ministry to come in, they scheduled a meeting with her and asked from her that we won’t wear these t-shirts. They fully support us and understand that this topic is very painful for us. But they want to preserve a calm atmosphere around the competition, so that there wouldn’t be any additional problems. That’s why they are asking us to keep our emotions in check. Because Russian media already started writing to them about Illia.”
“I think we didn’t do anything wrong. That’s why I don’t know why they reacted like this. Although I can understand them at some level. That’s why we apologized so that we wouldn’t have any problems with the FIG, we drew our conclusions and aren’t wearing these t-shirts anymore. They informed us there won’t be any sanctions, just this verbal request. So there aren’t any sanctions for Illia or me. But they asked us to restrain our emotions. They understand us and our pain but they’re trying to avoid such proclamations in order to adhere to the line “sports are outside of politics”. But how can it be so when Illia and I cannot go back to Ukraine since February 22nd? How is war not connected to gymnastics? We don’t understand that. We haven’t been home for so long, haven’t seen our loved ones. We keep being hosted by our friends. First, the Italians, and for the last four months – Croatians. We are already embarrassed that another country is taking care of us and feeding us. We’re constantly living out of suitcases like nomads. It has already become very difficult mentally and psychologically.”
Technically, Kovtun’s shirt doesn’t talk about a specific war, but, of course, it is very clear what war he refers to. The incident that already made international news has not yet been mentioned in the Russian media but this is surely only a matter of time, especially since Nadiuk mentioned that Russian media has started contacting the FIG for comments. In the Russian context, this shirt is far from innocent. Russians writing “No to the war” or “Stop the war” have faced arrests. Moreover, even writing asterisks like “*** *****” has been grounds for arrest because those asterisks supposedly stand for “Нет войне” (“No to the war”).
