Due to the war of aggression in Ukraine, the international biathlon union IBU has suspended all athletes from Russia and Belarus. After former world champion Simon Fourcade spoke out against this measure, the Frenchman, like his brother Martin, had to take heavy criticism from the Ukrainian biathlete Dmytro Pidruchnyi.
After his active career, Simon Fourcade is now the coach of the French biathlon juniors. In this capacity, the 37-year-old recently spoke out against the exclusion of Russian and Belarusian athletes.
Speaking to Russian broadcaster Match TV on Friday, Fourcade reiterated his controversial opinion, prompting an immediate reaction from Dmytro Pidruchnyi. In an Instagram post, the 2019 pursuit world champion from Ukraine launched an all-out attack on Simon Fourcade and his brother Martin.
“Martin and Simon, go to hell,” the 30-year-old clarified: “I hope your children will never feel the same pain that the Ukrainian children experienced. Children who left their homes, who heard the sound of explosions who saw their mothers raped and their loved ones killed.
Pidruchnyi enlisted for military service after the Russian invasion and has been helping defend his homeland ever since.
“How can you say that sport is outside of politics?”
“How can you say sport is outside of politics when a lot of athletes with the letter Z on their clothes were at a pro-war event in Moscow?” Pidruchnyi asked the Fourcade brothers.
The Ukrainian alluded to the fact that in mid-March several well-known Russian sports stars attended the speech by Russia’s ruler Vladimir Putin on the occasion of the eighth anniversary of the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium.
Some athletes openly wore the Russian war symbol “Z” on their clothing.
Simon Fourcade against Putin’s “f*cking” government”
Since the beginning of the war, only one Russian athlete has written to him and expressed shame at his country’s behavior, Pidruchnyi revealed: “For me, the silence of the Russian and Belarusian athletes means that they have decided to support the war. “
In his opinion, the Fourcade brothers turned out to be “shitty people,” Pidruchnyi added.
Even before the Ukrainian’s Instagram post, Simon Fourcade had made it clear to “L’Équipe” that he was “against Putin and his “f*cking” government.