Sport is not isolated from external influence. Unfortunately, sometimes third-party factors influence the conduct of competitions and the results of teams – so that even favorites lose to outsiders and are eliminated from tournaments. A similar thing happened with the Russian women’s volleyball team.

The entire team was suspiciously poisoned before an important European Championship match.

Turks celebrate

At the 2003 European Championships, the Russian women’s volleyball team was traditionally one of the favorites. At the group stage, our team had to compete against such opponents as Germany, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Türkiye. The latter were the hosts of the tournament and, naturally, had great ambitions.

At first, everything turned out more than pleasantly for the Russian team. In the first two matches, our team easily defeated rivals from Serbia (3:1) and Slovakia (3:0). The next game was supposed to be the game with Turkey, which had also gone undefeated before. It was then that an event occurred that caused a lot of suspicion towards the receiving party.

In the hotel where the Russian national team and several other teams lived, a mass poisoning suddenly occurred. Seven volleyball players from our team were injured. Symptoms included fever and vomiting. According to head coach Nikolai Karpol, only two athletes from the Russian team were truly healthy for the game against the hosts of the tournament: Elena Tyurina and Olga Chukanova. Everyone else was almost in a faint state.

Nevertheless, the team entered the match. It was hard to play after being poisoned. According to eyewitnesses, the Russian volleyball players looked pale and tired. They could not keep up with the actions of their rivals and made mistakes in the simplest situations. The result was a defeat with a score of 0:3.

Shawarma is suspect

Journalists reported from the European Championship: volleyball players were poisoned by shawarma, which was served at the hotel. After the incident, it was decided to cancel the buffet and give the athletes individual portions. At the same time, the Russian side, of course, expressed complaints to the organizers of the competition: they say that the meeting with Turkey should have been canceled, it’s impossible to play when almost the entire team is suffering from poisoning.

Even more suspicious was the fact that the Turkish team lived separately from the rest of the tournament participants and, accordingly, did not eat the same food. However, it was impossible to prove anything. Nikolai Karpol told the press that there is no point in complaining about fate. Our team subsequently lost to Germany and only managed to take points against the Romanians in the last round of the group stage. But this, alas, no longer helped. The Russians took third place in the group, which only gave them the right to compete for fifth place. This is what our girls eventually occupied.

Nikolay Karpol / Photo: © Mark Dadswell / Staff / Getty Images Sport / Gettyimages.ru

Five years later, when everyone had forgotten about that incident, history repeated itself. Speaking at the Grand Prix stage in Turkey, the Russian team again fell ill with severe poisoning. The consequences were so serious that some athletes had to be literally carried by hand onto the plane. The team lay in bed for several days, and some even lost consciousness. Then in Russia, volleyball figures wondered: was it a coincidence or a system? After all, two similar cases in the same country are suggestive.