Olympic High Jump Champion Lasitskene Considers Retirement Amid International Competition Ban
Russian Olympic high jump champion Maria Lasitskene said Tuesday that she is considering retirement at age 32 after nearly a decade of her country being barred from international competitions due to state-sponsored doping and the war in Ukraine.
“I don’t know when or if I’ll return at all,” Lasitskene told the state-run RIA Novosti news agency.
“Track and field athletes have been suspended for 10 years, and I personally can no longer find the motivation to compete only in domestic competitions.”
World Athletics banned Russia in 2015 following a World Anti-Doping Agency report that uncovered a “deeply rooted culture of doping.” The organization extended the ban in 2022 to all Russian and Belarusian athletes after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Hundreds of Russian athletes have since reportedly changed their sporting nationality to compete internationally.
Lasitskene won Olympic gold at the Tokyo Games in 2021 as part of the neutral Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) team. She is the first woman to win three consecutive world high jump titles in 2015, 2017 and 2019.
RIA Novosti reported that Lasitskene skipped last winter’s Russian Athletics Championships for the first time in her career and will not compete in the national summer championships, which open Wednesday in the southern resort city of Sochi.
She last competed last August, tying for second place at the National High Jump Championships with a jump of 1.88 meters.
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