The official position of the All-Russian Sports Federation of Sports of the Deaf on the circumstances of the exclusion of a number of persons from the list of candidates for the scholarship of the President of the Russian Federation to the champions of the Deaflympics.

For the purpose of implementing the provisions of the Order of selection of candidates for scholarships of the President of the Russian Federation for sports included in the programmes of the Paralympic Games and Deaflympics (hereinafter -- the Order), approved by the order of the Ministry of Sports of Russia from 16/12/2013 No. 1059, in the All-Russian Sports Federation of Sports of the Deaf (hereinafter - the Federation) was created a working group for verification of persons who have applied for scholarships of the President of the Russian Federation, and the documents submitted by them for compliance with the provisions of the Order (Order of the President of the Federation dated 27/05/2024 No. 42).

The verification was carried out according to the protocols of the Deaflympics (hereinafter referred to as the Games), which are at the disposal of the Federation and the Russian Committee of Deaf Sports (hereinafter referred to as the Committee), as well as according to the official statistics of the International Committee of Deaf Sports (hereinafter referred to as the ICSD), which are provided on the official website of the ICSD (deaflympics.com).

As a result of the inspection (Act on the results of the inspection, information note dated 01/10/2024) it was revealed that the Federation and the Committee did not have at their disposal a number of protocols of the Games, while the data on the presence of medals of certain athletes of the Games corresponded to those posted on the official website of the ICSD. The protocols were officially requested from the ICSD by letter.

There was also a discrepancy between the official ICSD statistics and the data available to the Federation/Committee on the achievements of a number of athletes. This information was also formally requested from the ICSD.

Outgoing request numbers to the ICSD: from ARSFSD No. 249/9 dated 23/09/2024 and No. 332/10 dated 30/10/2024, from RCDS No. 220 dated 10/10/2024.

On December 23, 2024, an official response was sent by the ICSD to the Federation stating that 5 athletes, namely: Alexey Alekseev, Radiy Bezoyan, Evgeny Pavlyuchenko, Anatoly Vysheslavtsev, Valentina Smithyukh (Gamolina) are not champions of the Games, participated in unofficial competitions (note: demonstration or not meeting the minimum criteria for the number of countries/participants) and (or) the final protocols of the respective Games do not contain information about these athletes.

This letter was reviewed at the next meeting of the Federation's Board on 27/01/2025, as a result of which it was decided to exclude the above-mentioned athletes from the list of scholarship candidates. The athletes were officially informed of this (letters from the Federation dated 29/01/2025, ref. No. 00210/И/25, 00211/И/25, 00213/И/25, 00214/И/25, 00215/И/25), and were informed that they were entitled to receive a scholarship from the President of the Russian Federation as winners of the Games who had completed their sports careers.

Information about the exclusion of the above-mentioned athletes from the list of scholarship candidates was brought to the attention of the Russian Ministry of Sports (ref. No. 00217/И/25 dated 29/01/2025).