MOSCOW, April 17. /TASS/. Russia’s five-time Olympic champion in synchronized swimming Svetlana Romashina told TASS on Friday she would make a decision only in autumn about her possible participation in the rescheduled Summer Olympics in Japan.

Romashina has been training in pair with Svetlana Kolesnichenko to participate in duo synchronized swimming competitions at the 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo. However, since the 2020 Olympic Games in Japan have been postponed until next year, Romashina believes she may wrap up her sports career before the beginning of the rescheduled Olympic tournament in Tokyo.

"I carry on with my trainings," Romashina told TASS. "Moreover, we are all waiting for a decision from CAS [the Court of Arbitration for Sport]. I will make a decision only after the court’s verdict and perhaps this decision will be in autumn."

Hearings on a dispute between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the Russian Anti-Doping Agency in the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) are scheduled for mid-July.

The 30-year-old Russian star in the sport of synchronized swimming is the 21-time world champion, five-time Olympic champion and the 10-time European champion and she was never defeated in all sports tournaments, in which she participated.

After the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Brazil Romashina took a break in her sports career and gave birth to a daughter. She returned to sports in 2018 to win more gold medals.

The 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo were scheduled to be held between July 24 and August 9, and the 2020 Summer Paralympic Games were planned to be organized between August 25 and September 6. The IOC (International Olympic Committee) and the IPC (the International Paralympic Committee) announced their decision on March 24 to postpone for one year the tournaments in Japan due to the continuous COVID-19 spread.

Yoshiro Mori, the head of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics Organizing Committee, announced on March 30 that the Summer Olympic Games in Japan next year will start on July 23 and the Summer Paralympic Games will begin on August 24.

WADA-RUSADA dispute

On December 9, 2019, the WADA Executive Committee (ExCo) approved the recommendations of its Compliance Review Committee (CRC) to revoke the compliance status of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) and to strip Russia of the right to participate in major international sports tournaments, including the Olympics, Paralympics and world championships, for a period of four years.

The WADA ExCo also ruled that Russia must not host, or bid for or be granted the right to host any major international sports tournament in this four-year period. Russian state officials, as well as the staff of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) and the Russian Paralympic Committee (RPC), were banned from attending all major international sports tournaments for this four-year period.

The RUSADA Supervisory Board recommended on December 19 the agency’s Founders Council to disagree with WADA’s sanctions against Russian sports and to take this case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Switzerland’s Lausanne. On December 27, RUSADA sent an official notification of its disagreement to WADA and the global anti-doping body has turned this case over to the Swiss-based court.

A number of Russian sports federations as well as the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) and the Russian Paralympic Committee (ROC), sent their official notifications to CAS expressing their intention to participate as a third party in the WADA-RUSADA dispute.

COVID-19

In late December 2019, Chinese officials notified the World Health Organization (WHO) about the outbreak of a previously unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, in central China. Since then, cases of the novel coronavirus — named COVID-19 by the WHO — have been reported in every corner of the globe, including Russia.

On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. According to the latest statistics, over 2,190,000 people have been infected worldwide and more than 147,500 deaths have been reported. In addition, so far, over 557,600 individuals have recovered from the illness across the globe.

To date, a total of 32,008 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Russia, with 2,590 patients having recovered from the virus. Russia’s latest data indicates 273 fatalities nationwide. Earlier, the Russian government set up an Internet hotline to keep the public updated on the coronavirus situation.