Olympic Games 2018: Paralympics: Eskau defends participation of Russian athletes

In contrast to its association president Friedhelm Julius Beucher, the multiple Paralympics winner Andrea Eskau (46) has no problems with the admission of Russian athletes to the competitions in Pyeongchang.

“I know a lot of neutral athletes, and they’re my friends. We have many participants (in the Nordic countries, d. Red.), and it’s absolutely okay for me to have them, because they are our competitors at all the other competitions,”said the six-time gold medalist at the Summer and Winter Paralympics in Pyeongchang on Wednesday.

In January, the IPC had decided to launch “demonstrably clean” Russian athletes as “Neutral Paralympic Athletes” in Pyeongchang. Beucher had described this as a “slap in the face of all clean sportsmen and women”.

Eskau said she didn’t know whether the athletes she had competed against were clean or not, but she didn’t know anyone who doped. She also knows, the psychologist adds,”that Julius has a different point of view”.

The 16-time Paralympics winner Gerd Schönfelder was dissatisfied in an interview with the German Sports Aid. The IPC had “unfortunately” followed the decision of the IOC.

“This is very sad, because there are still no signals coming from the Russian side to follow the path of the anti-doping fight consistently”, said Schönfelder.

He also criticized the fact that the IOC had completely resumed Russia only three days after the end of the Winter Olympics:”This is the wrong signal, especially in terms of protecting clean athletes. We won’t win the anti-doping fight like this!”