Gymnastics World Championships Open in Rotterdam as Russian Visa Refusals Cast Shadow
The 2026 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships opened at Rotterdam Ahoy in the Netherlands on October 17, with men's qualifying held over October 17-18. The championships, running through October 25, offer the first team qualification opportunities for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, with three men's and three women's teams able to lock down places.
In qualifying, Russia and Ukraine were drawn in the same subdivision. Ukraine's Nazar Chepurnyi posted 14.4 on parallel bars, the best score of the day at that point, while the US men competed in the final subdivision against Japan, Great Britain and Australia.
The event has been overshadowed by visa refusals. The Russian Gymnastics Federation said three leading gymnasts — reigning world all-around champion Angelina Melnikova, Tokyo 2020 Olympic team gold medallist Viktoria Listunova and European all-around silver medallist Anna Kalmykova — were refused visas by Dutch authorities days before the championships. The notices stated that one or more Schengen countries considered the athletes a threat to international relations. World Gymnastics lifted its restrictions on Russian and Belarusian gymnasts earlier in 2026, but permission to compete did not guarantee entry to the Netherlands. The Russian federation condemned the refusals as discriminatory and said it would appeal to World Gymnastics and the IOC. (GSM, based on USA Today and gymnastics media reports)
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 鹿特丹伊拉斯谟大桥。 Photo by W. Bulach, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
- 2026-10-17Gymnastics World Championships Open in Rotterdam as Russian Visa Refusals Cast ShadowThis story
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