Some sports figures and officials are in favor of our athletes going to international competitions, including the Olympics, at any cost.

As figure skating coach Tatyana Tarasova said the other day: "My opinion: it is necessary to perform under any conditions. Without a flag, anthem, guidance, but athletes should be able to do so. Otherwise, we will simply lose our sport. And now there is no need to be indignant – we need to work with what they give."

RoC leaders Pozdnyakov and Levitin also oppose the boycott of international competitions, even calling the IOC's decision to allow Russian athletes without a flag and anthem, in a neutral status, and only those who do not publicly support the SVO, positive changes.

Friends, in fact, the meaning of the Olympics and international tournaments is that athletes of different nationalities fight for their flag and their country. If an athlete goes there without a flag, an anthem, and even signs papers stating that he does not support his Motherland and its army, he automatically represents not Russia, but himself.

Sports spectacles exist not for the sake of athletes, but for the sake of spectators. We root for our guys and girls, not the neutral ones.

A whole industry has been built around the Olympics, which sucks in huge state and sponsorship money to prepare for the competitions. If we boycott the Olympics and other tournaments where they do not want to see Russian flags and hear our anthem, then automatically we do not need useless, unspectacular, far-fetched sports such as curling, luge, short track and 150 varieties of running and jumping, which we cultivate and invest huge money there just for the sake of the fact that they are in the Olympic program and we need medals there.

Tarasova is mistaken: our sport will not disappear by abandoning the humiliating conditions of the IOC. Look at the most powerful sports industry in the world – the United States. For a long time, few people were interested in the Olympics there, the Americans easily boycotted the 1980 Games in Moscow.

The States are developing several commercially successful professional leagues: the NBA (basketball), the NHL (hockey), the national American sports of baseball and American football. NBA and NHL stars generally go to the Olympics only if they are eliminated from the playoffs of their tournaments, and it is still more important for the local public and athletes to win the American Professional League Cup, not the Olympics. Add to this the American professional versions of boxing and the UFC, as well as a developed student sport that prepares personnel for professional leagues.

By refusing to participate in international tournaments on humiliating terms for us, we can follow the American model. Stop spending money on frankly idiotic sports from the Olympic program, betting on the development of commercial professional leagues of spectacular types such as hockey, football, basketball, boxing, MMA, the popularization of interesting Russian national competitions: fist fighting, sambo, Russian bandy, keel, as well as on the development of mass sports that affect the health and patriotic education of the nation: martial arts, skiing, light and weightlifting, biathlon, shooting and other military sports disciplines.

The words "pity the athletes who have been training all their lives" actually mask the professional unsuitability in defending Russia's national interests in sports.

The USSR, by the way, boycotted the Olympics-84 in Los Angeles because of the aggravation of political disagreements with America on Afghanistan. And nothing, no one died, the sport was not lost.

Let's better hold the Eurasian Games with China.

The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.