Kazan To Host Russia’s Multi-Aquatic “Friendship Games” July 21-25

2022 Friendship Games

• July 21-25, 2022 (swimming)
• Kazan, Russia
• Kazan Aquatic Sports Palace
• LCM (50m)
• Meet Central

Russia’s best swimmers will get an opportunity to compete at a large-scale event later this month at the 2022 Friendship Games, a multi-sport aquatics competition that will also feature diving and artistic swimming.

With Russian and Belarusian athletes banned from competing at last month’s World Aquatics Championships in Budapest (and every other FINA event for the remainder of 2022) due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Friendship Games will serve as an alternative to the event.

The Friendship Games were first held in 1984 after the Soviet Union led a 15-country boycott of the Olympic Games in Los Angeles, which came four years after the American-led boycott of the 1980 Games in Moscow.

The event will be open to athletes from other countries, including Belarus, and the All-Russian Swimming Federation has also said it is considering inviting South American and Caribbean nations.

Russia’s top swimmers are all expected to be in attendance, including 2021 Olympic medalists Evgeny Rylov and Kliment Kolesnikov.

The swimming competition will run for five days, from July 21-25, with a prelims/finals format and 50s of stroke and relays both on the slate. You can find the full event schedule here.

Another swimming event in Russia, the Spartakiad, is expected to be held in St. Petersburg in August. The Spartakiad was held to supplement the Olympics four times from 1928 to 1936.

RUSSIAN FEDERATIONS, ROC APPEAL INTERNATIONAL BANS

In other Russian news, 12 National Sports Federations and the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) have filed appeals to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) to have the country’s athletes and national teams reinstated to compete internationally.

An additional nine national federations appealed internally with their respective international federations, but not the CAS.

Russia’s Deputy Sports Minister Andrey Fyodorov announced the appeals at a Federation Council meeting in late June and said he expects to see “developments” in the coming months.

“Currently, a total of 21 Russian sports federations and the ROCs have used the right to appeal against discriminatory decisions made by international sports federations,” Fyodorov said, according to Russia’s official state news agency TASS.

“In particular, the ROC and 12 Russian sports federations lodged protests with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). There have been no CAS verdicts yet. All appeals have been accepted. Preparatory procedures are underway. According to our information, decisions on the appeals filed will be made in the second half of the year. We expect that some developments will begin there in August-September.”