Russian figure skaters Davis and Smolkin will compete for Georgia

The Russian Figure Skating Federation has allowed Diana Davis and Gleb Smolkin, who performed in sports dances on ice, to apply for the Georgian national team.

The International Federation (ISU) must make the final decision on the admission of Russian figure skaters in the new status to the competition. It is noted that this could happen as early as next week.

According to the rules of the ISU, in order to change sports citizenship, Russian figure skaters must live in a new country for a year, and they must not compete for Russia. Davis and Smolkin represented Russia at the Winter Olympics in Beijing in February 2022, where they took 14th place. Since then, she has not played for the national team.

Diana Davis is the daughter of Russian figure skating coach Etera Tutberidze, who trained Olympic champions Yulia Lipnitskaya, Alina Zagytova, Anna Shcherbakova and Kamila Valieva. Over the past eight years, all the winners of the Russian championships in women’s single skating were students of the Tutberidze coaching staff.

• After the start of Russia’s full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, the International Olympic Committee and many sports associations imposed sanctions on Russia and Belarus. Athletes from these countries are allowed to compete only under a neutral flag, and some are not allowed at all. Due to this, in order to have the opportunity to perform at major international tournaments, dozens of Russian athletes changed their citizenship. Among them are the three-time European swimming champion Anastasia Kyrpichnikova, the world chess champion Alexandra Kosteniuk, the winner of major international competitive cyclist Pavel Sivakov.