PARIS. "It was all meant seriously," Vadym Guttsait tells me shortly before the opening ceremony tonight. "We really thought about boycotting. But now we're happy to be here. We can deal with the situation that some Russians are here, we're just focussing on the Games."
You could see Guttsait wrestling with himself and biting his tongue in the hour before, when he, the Olympic champion and Ukrainian NOC President, and five athletes were answering questions at length in the Main Press Centre. There would have been many moments to criticise the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and its all-powerful president Thomas Bach. But Guttsait resisted the temptation. He was clear on the matter - and yet, let's put it this way: with the necessary diplomatic humility. So he even praised Bach for his (now truly modest) support.
And when the colleague from the Süddeutsche Zeitung asked how the Ukrainians felt when they saw that Bach also had his picture taken in the Olympic Village with a Russian swimmer and the GIVE PEACE A CHANCE message, Guttsait remained as calm as can be.
He briefly recapitulated that Bach's recommendations had changed slightly since the start of the war.
Jens Weinreich
Then Guttsait, Olympic fencing champion like the IOC president, answered the question of whether these Olympic Games could be a festival of peace, as the IOC is promoting it:
"For us, there is no festival of peace."
Every Ukrainian feels that way. What do you think our children think when they are bombed? In another answer, Guttsait became clearer:
"In war, Russia must not participate. Ukrainians are being killed every day. As long as there is war, Russia must not be part of Olympic sport."
IOC fans, morons and IOC members (many of whom read here) will say at this point: Russia is not taking part at all.
Well …
Alongside Guttsait, who won the 1992 Barcelona Olympics as part of the CIS sabre team with the current Russian NOC president Stanislav Posdnyakov (what an incredible twist of fate), there were two other Ukrainian Olympic champions (fencer Olha Kharlan and rower Anastasia Kozhenkova), the two flag bearers at tonight's ceremony on the Seine, tennis player Elina Svitolina and swimmer Mykhailo Romanchuk, as well as diver Oleksii Sereda, who became European champion at the age of 13 and is still in his teens.
It was a depressing hour. Towards the end, when photos were being taken, a smile flitted across the athletes' faces. They are professionals and human enough. But I didn't see Guttsait smiling at any time. The two and a half years of war have left deep furrows in his face and certainly not only there.
