As a former international athlete, seeing your flag raised or hearing your anthem play is a nice bonus. Ultimately you compete for yourself, and win or lose you do it for yourself too. Yes, family, club, coach, friends, pets, nation etc., are important, but so long as you’re treated the same as those you’re up against, you can go and give it your best shot. However, after interviewing Russians since 2019 who saw their flag and anthem banned, I asked myself – what if when I had competed, the Irish flag and anthem was banned?

It’s Groundhog Day and the sports world is marching to the beat of the anti-sport drum yet again. Despite ruling that Russian and Belarusian athletes be treated as equals, a Romanian city hosting a sports event for females decided the best way to empower young women was to humiliate them.

Acting against the spirit of sport and committing a major rule violation, the Romanian city of Cluj-Napoca told the Russian Gymnastics Federation (RGF) that their national flag and anthem would not be allowed at the World Challenge Cup this weekend. The move, made verbally so as to circumvent sanction, according to one Russian official, goes against a ruling last month by the global governing body World Gymnastics (WG).

In an effort to use sports to increase dialogue and normalize international contact, WG are one of 12 Olympic governing bodies who ruled Russia’s and Belarus’ flags and anthems can return to the arena. The move on Friday by the Romanians was greeted by shock and anger within the Russian rhythmic gymnastics community – a move that pushed Russia to take a stand.

The Russian team refused to take part due to a “gross violation of the competition regulations by the........

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