Svetlana Khorkina was a dominant, world-class artistic gymanst in her time, winning Olympic gold medals in 1996 and 2000 on the uneven bars and racking up nine gold and 20 total medals at the Gymnastics World Championships in a nine-year span.
Khorkina also has a surprising claim about the postponement of the 2020 Summer Games.
In an interview with the Russian outlet Sport Express, Khorkina implied the International Olympic Committee got what was coming to them after her native Russia was hit with a four-year ban from global sports for widespread doping.
“I think this all happened because they shouldn’t have offended Russia, including our athletes,” Khorkina said, as translated by The Sun. “There is a reason why there is a line in our national anthem that says our land is protected by the Lord.”
The World Anti-Doping Agency, not the IOC, in December 2019 banned Russia from formal participation in any world sporting event, including the 2020 Olympics and the 2022 World Cup. Russian athletes could still participate, but not under their country’s flag. It was a severe follow-up punishment after a similar measure was enacted for the 2018 Winter Olympics, where the medal tables officially listed “Olympic Athletes from Russia.”
It’s not that Khorkina ignored the coronavirus pandemic as the reason the Tokyo Olympics were postponed to 2021. But she blasted the way it was handled, saying, “It was unnecessary to start this political show when such a deadly virus is being spread all over the world.”
“I think this was God’s punishment,” she added.
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