LABIRINTI E CASEMATTE: Мария Олеговна Музычук

“Did you consider not going to the world championship in Sochi?”, Mariya Muzychuk was asked in the course of an interview in the Ukrainian newspaper Zerkalo Nedelyi.
“It was not just the championship in Sochi. To reach it, one had to qualify through a system. Only 64 players in the world reached the event. In history, there is a good example of a boycott of the individual world championship by Georgian players. This was during the Georgia–Russia conflict. Has anyone heard about this boycott? It achieved nothing. But when these Georgian women won the world chess Olympiad, the whole world heard about it.
Boycotts should be made by politicians, not chessplayers. What do you think is better: that I don’t go to the world championship, or that I win it? Sportsmen should get on with their work and not get involved in politics. Sportsmen only cross the line into politics when they play under their country’s flag in team events and represent it before the whole world. Only then”. [Read more].