St. Croix Falls' Megan Kalmoe wonders why Russian athletes are at these Olympics Games

Jul. 30—Megan Kalmoe might not have won the pairs rowing medal she was looking for this week at the Tokyo Games but she went out with a bang nonetheless.

The four-time Olympian from St. Croix Falls, Wis., and partner Tracy Eisser finished one heat short of the medal round in pairs rowing early Thursday, but Kalmoe lent her voice to growing resentment about Russian athletes competing in the Games despite the fact that Russian was technically banned from the event by an extensive investigation by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

Instead, more than 350 Russian athletes are competing under the flag of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC).

In an email sent to the Pioneer Press early Friday morning CDT time, Kalmoe, 37, said she felt good about her team's performance in the Games. She won a bronze medal as part of the U.S. quadruple sculls team in the 2012 London Games and was looking for another medal this week in Tokyo.

Instead, she and Eisser were eliminated in the last semifinal heat.

"In regards to my own final performance here, I don't have any regrets," she said. "Tracy and I raced in an extremely competitive field and we came up short. I'm proud of the work that we put in together as teammates to improve throughout the regatta. We learned a ton from this experience, and I'm looking forward to what comes next."

Still, Kalmoe wasn't happy when the ROC team of Vasilisa Stepanova and Elena Oriabinskaia won the silver medal, tweeting, "Seeing a crew who shouldn't even be here walk away with a silver is a nasty feeling."

The tweet set off an epic thread, with 1,400 comments as of mid-morning Friday in Minnesota.

"This has been a very strange Games for everyone, but I don't think that should come as a surprise to anyone," Kalmoe told the Pioneer Press. "I also don't think that an American athlete being disappointed in ROC's inclusion in this Games despite their continued abuse of banned substances should come as a surprise, either."

A 2016 investigation had already banned Russia from the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro for running a state-sponsored doping system. In 2019, WADA banned Russia from international competition for four years, and although the Court of Arbitration for Sport cut that to two years on an appeal, the ban still doesn't officially run out until December 2022.

To get around this, Russia created the ROC tent.

U.S. swimmer Ryan Murphy questioned that decision after winning the silver medal behind the ROC's Evgeny Rylov in the 200-meter backstroke on Friday, saying, "It is a huge mental drain on me to go throughout the year that I'm swimming in a race that's probably not clean."

Murphy, who swept the backstroke events at Rio in 2016, finished with the bronze in the 100 backstroke behind Rylov and his ROC teammate Kliment Kolesnikov.

"For context, ROC Rowing had athletes fail drug tests as recently as June of this year," Kalmoe said. "It's been a serious, and consistent, problem with their federation. I do not think it is realistic for anyone to expect the rowing community to be supportive of the decision to allow their team to compete in Tokyo."

Active on social media, Kalmoe has never spared her candor. In the run-up to the 2016 Games, she made headlines with a long blog post telling critics they needed to stop talking about the water quality in Rio titled, "Stop Trying to Ruin the Olympics for Us."

"Obviously," she said Friday, "some people are responding to my tweets."

But Kalmoe is not alone on the topic in Tokyo, and it seems likely to grow as the Games progress through their Aug. 8 final ceremony. Britain's Luke Greenbank, the bronze medalist in the 200 backstroke, echoed Murphy's circumspection.

So far, this has inspired one public reaction from the ROC, which said on its Twitter account early Friday, "English propaganda is oozing verbal sweat onto the Tokyo Games. Through the mouths of athletes offended by defeats. We will not console you. We'll forgive those who are weaker. God is their judge. He is our helper."