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After Kacper Stokowski won his race and shared his excitement in the interviews that followed, the NC State swimmer from Poland got extremely serious.
Stokowski was asked about the war between Russia and Ukraine and Poland’s ever-growing role of helping refugees from Ukraine get to safety.
“We are united with Ukraine,” Kacper Stokowski said. “I think we have more than a million refugees right now. We give them a lot of help.”
Stokowski said it was difficult to know what was happening on the other side of the world near his home, but was proud that Poland was doing what it could to help.
“It was a pretty tough time reading the news every day, but I was able to stay motivated,” he said.
One of the biggest issues in any conflict is how it affects the people from all sides.
“It was very hard for me to see Russian swimmers and Ukrainian swimmers divided right now, but I don’t want to comment on it anymore,” Kacper Stokowski said.
There have been swimmers on both sides of the conflict making news.
Olympic gold medalist Evgeny Rylov appeared at a rally supporting the Russian invasion of Ukraine last week.
Ukrainian-born Turkish swimmer Viktoria Gunes posted a photo on her Instagram story of her standing on the Russian flag. Several Russian swimmers took issue with that and responded on social media.
Meanwhile, swimmers from all over the world are competing at the NCAA Championships and the conflict takes a strain on a lot of competitors, especially after FINA’s decision to ban Russian and Belarusian swimmers from this year’s world championships as a war sanction.
Stanford swimmer Andrei Minakov won the 100 butterfly on Friday. He is Russian and politely chose not to speak about the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
“We’d like to focus on questions about the race today and the event,” a Stanford official told media.
But Minakov did comment when asked about his swimming plans changing this year without the world championships.
“I’m privileged to swim here at NCAAs. That’s a great racing opportunity,” he said. “Life is changing every day, so I haven’t thought about it yet.”
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