It's only fitting Ukraine gets something that would have belonged to Russia
ANTWERP, Belgium — Sometimes, even if it’s in the smallest of ways, justice is done.
Ukraine’s men qualified for the Paris Olympics on Sunday, getting the last spot in the 12-team field Sunday at the world gymnastics championships. A spot effectively freed up because Russia, the reigning Olympic champion, is banned from these world championships for its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
This does not make up for the barbarism Russia has committed in Ukraine, and no one will pretend it does. Nor does it absolve the spinelessness of the International Olympic Committee and the International Gymnastics Federation for being willing to forgive the unforgivable because they want to curry favor with Vladimir Putin.
If any country is going to benefit from Russia’s exile, however, it is only right it should be Ukraine. The Ukrainians, who were in a Saturday qualifying session and had to sweat out the final eight teams Sunday, wound up edging Brazil by just 0.166 points.
"Breathing our breath out," Oleg Verniaiev, the all-around silver medalist at the Rio Games, said in an Instagram post after qualifying finished. "Thank God we made it."
That they did is a testament to their mental strength even more than their athletic skills.
Though only one member of Ukraine’s team is training outside the country, many other Ukrainian athletes have had to leave because their training facilities have been destroyed by Russian shelling. Or because it’s too dangerous to stay in their cities.
And Lord knows what living under the constant threat of war, or knowing their loved ones are, has done to their emotional states and, in turn, their ability to concentrate on training.
"There were about five or six months that I couldn’t properly train because of the situation," Verniaiev said after podium training last week.
"It’s getting better, we’re getting back on track," he continued. "It used to be that we had three to five incoming threat alerts daily — when rockets fly to Ukraine — and each time we’d have to go down to the basement and wait it out. We would have to stop for one hour, then go back."
Verniaiev was serving a four-year doping ban, for meldonium, when the war broke out in March 2022. Rather than buying lethal military hardware or serving as a propaganda tool, like some Russian men have during their "downtime," Verniaiev helped raise funds for both the Ukrainian military and civilians, mostly in the hard-hit area of Kharkiv.
"Thank you to everyone who defends our land," Verniaiev said in a Sept. 5, 2022, Instagram post showing him with soldiers and some donated armored vests. "This is our duty. Lending a helping hand."
Russia is still likely to have some gymnasts in Paris. The FIG said in July it will allow "individual neutral athletes" from Russia and Belarus back at competitions beginning Jan. 1, 2024.
How the FIG contorts itself in its definition of neutral should be interesting, given most of Russia’s top gymnasts and its federation officials have been enthusiastic supporters of the war. The men’s team that won gold at the Tokyo Games even bought a drone for the war effort.
But not being able to have full teams in Paris will rankle the Russian powers that be.
Gymnastics is arguably Russia’s premier sport at the Summer Games. It typically wins more medals in gymnastics than any other sport, and not by a small margin. Gymnastics was the only sport where Russia won double-digit medals in Tokyo, and its 10 included team golds by both the men and women. Nikita Nagornyy and Angelina Melnikova were each bronze medalists in the all-around.
When you behave monstrously, however, there should be consequences.
The FIG certainly didn’t plan for the men’s results to go the way they did. And if they had, the IOC would have found some way around it, given President Thomas Bach’s blind devotion to Putin.
But for one day, Ukraine took something that would otherwise have belonged to Russia. And it is glorious.
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.
