Daniil Medvedev gave his take on the polarizing topic of Russian and Belarusian athletes competing at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
There is some controversy about Russian athletes participating in the Olympics because of the War in Ukraine. There have been many calls from different sides to ban Russian athletes, with even the Parisian mayor speaking about the topic.
Of course, a lot of that is politics because Russian athletes will be able to participate in the Olympics. It’s a huge country with many athletes who generally perform really well and rank highly on the medal scoreboard.
One of the athletes who is supposed to compete in Paris is Daniil Medvedev, one of the top players on the ATP Tour. He was recently asked about the Olympics, and he didn’t go into whether the Russian athletes should be allowed to compete, but he would certainly love the chance to play in Paris.
“I arrived in Tokyo with a relative motivation, as if it were any tournament on the Tour. But in reality I was very impressed by the atmosphere, by the type of life in the Olympic village. And now I can’t wait to repeat that experience.”
“It’s not up to me to say whether or not it’s right for me to participate as a neutral, but I will go to the Games for myself and to give my best. The grass-earth transition will be complicated, but interesting. We will need to take all the time needed to prepare both as best as possible, the key will be the timing.”
There is a pretty good chance that Medvedev will play in Paris because the Olympic Committee didn’t decide to ban Russian and Belarusian athletes but instead allowed them to compete as neutral, which many will be obviously happy about, as they will get a chance to fight for medals.