Russian athletes that have changed nationalities

[SalamAkhi 338]

Italy is not less cynical than any other. Jorginho, Kamil Rychlicki, Andy Diaz Hernandez, Zane Weir, Nick Ponzio, Donte DiVincenzo (no they're not Italian, as much as Fournier-Beaudry is not French). I could probably go on. 

[copravolley 504]

18 minutes ago, SalamAkhi said:

Italy is not less cynical than any other. Jorginho, Kamil Rychlicki, Andy Diaz Hernandez, Zane Weir, Nick Ponzio, Donte DiVincenzo (no they're not Italian, as much as Fournier-Beaudry is not French). I could probably go on. 

In the summer- yes, there were such cases, but I wrote more about winter sports, saying that we have almost no one like that- except maybe for ice hockey, where we won't chance to win anything anyway, and I believe that as the organizing country, we should be motivated to win a lot of medals. Do you remember how many medals Russia won in Sochi in 2014 thanks to naturalizations: Viktor Ahn and Vic Wild. Of all the people you mentioned, only 1 won an Olympic medal in 2024, Andy Diaz (bronze), or maybe Antropova, but that was the all team, and we won 40 of them... Quite a low percentage, right?

Edited Monday at 10:45 PM by copravolley

[hoversaBR 625]

1 hour ago, copravolley said:

Pinheiro has connections to Brazil, becouse his mather is a Brazilian, so there's no problem with that. The problem is more of a moral one, because Norway trained him and thanks to them, he became a great skier. If he lived in Brazil, he wouldn't have had that opportunity. Nevertheless, Norway probably doesn't have much of a problem, as it has many other excellent skiers in various disciplines. In Colturi's case, she had 0 connetions to that country- Alb, so praising it is a bit of a stretch, especially if you then accuse Italy of doing the same to others.

 

Antropova has connetions with Italy in that she trained there, when her was  about 13-14 years old, so we had some influence on her current form. Italy certainly did more for Antropova's career than Albania did for Colturi in the past.

My point is, there are cases like Lucas Braathen or even a more extreme one like Yoandy Leal, but in none of these cases did we offer anything to these athletes, nor did we seek them out in the market when they were up-and-coming young talents, and even if they were motivated by perhaps selfish reasons, so to speak, they always tried and still try to create connections with the Brazilian fans. However, what I see in many countries is as if the national sport is nothing more than a mere club...