IAAF World Championships got a dose of 'The Red Scare'

Yelena Isinbayeva

“Maybe we are different than European people and people from different lands. We have our law which everyone has to respect. When we go to different countries, we try to follow their rules. We are not trying to set our rules over there.” – That’s what athletics queen Yelena Isinbayeva said at an English-language press conference.

One of the most famous pole vaulters in the world made this statement a few days ago and later was quoted as saying that she was misunderstood as English is not her first language and corrected herself by saying that she is opposed to any discrimination against homosexuals.

But it was maybe a tad too late as it was enough to add fuel to the fire created by the officials at the Moscow World Athletic Championships for warning high jumper Emma Tregaro to change the colour of her fingernails.

“Her nails are now red”. Funny how oxymoronic effects this statement had. On the one hand, it might be a breather and a crude victory for the officials to have maintained the code of conduct and on the other hand, it has clearly showcased how by not trying to be political, this event did take a political turn. I mean, how many people notice the fingernails of a high jumper.

“The Code of Conduct states that the rules do not allow any commercial or political statements during the competition,” said Anders Albertsson, the general secretary of the Swedish athletics federation.

The Russian ‘anti-gay propaganda law’ is a law that bans the propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations to minors. And maybe, the officials are elated that they protected their country’s children by not exposing to the pixels that were Tregaro’s nails.

Instead they should beware that the picture that zoomed in on the high jumper’s red nails might have made a bigger statement against the anti-gay law in Russia. And hence, the outrage that resulted from the statements which Isinbayeva made in English which she could have very well made in Russian.

It’s laughable that the officials think that they might have put out a fire or prevented from a rule being broken or a political statement to be made. What they did out of fear has created a bigger political statement.

They deemed a personal choice by an athlete to be political. What is even more irritating is how Isinbayeva talks about Russians being different from others. It’s not about how misunderstood her statement was but how misunderstood cultural diversity is.

What should also be noticed is that she decided to paint all her fingernails in scarlet, which she says was “for love”. What this reminded me was all the things that I read about the “Red Scare” which during the Cold War was a tactic used by American Joseph McCarthy to drive out Communists from the USA as communism was an ideology followed by the Soviets. Well the USSR dissolved in 1991. I hope this Russian law gets the same fate and dissolves soon too.