Anastasia PaninaReporter SportAll materialsOn Thursday, International Olympic Day, the official account of the International Skating Union (ISU) published a post with photos of the Olympic champions of the 2022 Games. These are the French Gabriela Papadakis and Guillaume Sizeron, the American Nathan Chen and the Chinese Sui Wenjing with Han Cong. There was no place in the festive post only for the champion in women's single skating — Russian Anna Shcherbakova. She was replaced by a bronze medalist from Japan, Kaori Sakamoto. Not only Russian, but also the world community became excited and rebelled after this post. Because it even smells bad, not to mention how it looks. Suppose now the ISU has a cold attitude towards Russian athletes, and this is a fact. But rewriting history, even if its very fresh pages, is some kind of sabotage in relation to ourselves. Humiliation of ourselves. And as is often the case, the effect was the opposite. If the ISU tried to make everyone forget about Shcherbakova, and her victory depreciated, they only achieved that they began to talk about her even more. Until recently, Anna herself remained silent and only today answered ISU and all those who care about short, but capacious a post on Instagram stories (Meta activity (social networks Facebook and Instagram) is banned in Russia as extremist). «I am 18 years old, and I gave 15 of them to figure skating. I believe that everyone is equal in sports. After a recent ISU post, I received a lot good messages from people from around the world. Thank you! This means that sport still unites, «Anna wrote. Anna is right — sport unites. Figure skating in particular is brought together by the contributions of coaches and athletes from around the world. It, in particular, does not exist in isolation from the Soviet and Russian school of figure skating. So, if the Olympic champion Shcherbakov is “cancelled” for the flag, the Olympic champion Nathan Chen will also have to be “cancelled”. During his career, he worked with several Russian coaches at once, including the brilliant Rafael Harutyunyan, who led Chen to the Beijing gold. We'll have to «cancel» the Chinese duet Sui Wenjing/Han Cong, because the Chinese school of pair skating has flourished, relying on the experience of the Russian school, noticing and using all the best that was in it.
