Russian tennis players Rublev, Kasatkina, Kalinskaya decline invitations to compete at Paris Olympics - IOC

MOSCOW. July 1 (Interfax) - Russian tennis players Andrei Rublev, Darya Kasatkina and Anna Kalinskaya have declined the invitations to play at the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris, the updated list of individual neutral athletes authorized to compete at the 2024 Olympics shows.

The list of eligible and invited athletes published on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) website on Monday shows that tennis players Daniil Medvedev, Mirra Andreyeva and Pavel Kotov have already accepted the invitations to the Paris Olympics. Anastasia Potapova has also received the invitation but is yet to give her reply to the IOC.

Tennis players Karen Kachanov and Lyudmila Samsonova earlier declined to play at the Paris Olympics, and Kotov and Kalinskaya were invited to compete in their place. Yekaterina Alexandrova and Roman Safiullin accepted their Olympic invitations on June 28.

On June 27, the IOC invited eight Russian tennis players - Daniil Medvedev, Andrei Rublev, Karen Kachanov, Roman Safiullin, Darya Kasatkina, Lyudmila Samsonova, Yekaterina Alexandrova, and Mirra Andreyeva - to play at the Olympic Games, to be hosted by Paris on July 26-August 11, as neutral athletes.

In December 2023, the IOC permitted Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete at the 2024 Olympics as neutral athletes. Defining special eligibility criteria for Russian and Belarusian athletes ahead of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, the IOC said that athletes with a Russian or Belarusian passports could only compete as individual neutral athletes, with no teams from the two countries being allowed to participate.