Two-time Olympic pole vault champion Yelena Isinbayeva will not pursue her career in sport if she is banned from competing at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, she wrote on her page in the VKontakte (VK) social networking site on Thursday, TASS reports.
"Had the International Olympic Committee (IOC) rejected Russian athletes' participation in the Games, I can see no sense in continuing my training further," Isinbayeva said.
"We were planning to clear the height not lower than 5.1 meters. My coach and I expected that I would win with a world record at the Olympics," Isinbayeva said.
"I’ll open a small secret to you," she wrote. "I’m a candidate for this commission. Its members will be elected by all participants in the Olympic Games. There’re twenty-four of us and only four will be elected."
"A candidate should be physically present at Rio and if we are not let there and I don’t take a flight to Brazil, I just won’t be able to be present there," she wrote. "And I did hope this would be the first step in my career of a sports functionary."
"Yet I don’t feel any support on the part of foreign athletes anyway, because they’re praying for the absence of Russian competitors from the Rio Games," TASS quoted her as saying.
