A friend of the swimmer who disappeared in the Bosphorus told about the inaction of the organizers of the swim

The organizers of the Bosphorus Strait swim, during which Russian Nikolai Svechnikov disappeared, were in no hurry to start searching. His friend Alexander, one of the participants of the Bosphorus Intercontinental competitions in Turkey, told Izvestia about this.

According to Alexander, he suspected something was wrong immediately after the lists of the finishing swimmers were posted — Nikolai, who started one of the first, was not among them. The man tried to initiate a search, but they didn't want to help him.

"Wherever I turned, everyone shrugged their shoulders. I didn't see any rescue or rapid response service, and I didn't hear anything so intelligible. <...> No one counted people: if he came, he didn't come, no one asked anyone any questions why he didn't come," Alexander said.

The man noted that the locals explained the inertia of the police and organizers using Turkish protocols: it may take several days to coordinate the search process at sea.

"The initiative to search for the missing man came from people close to him who sailed with him, who knew him, who were worried about him, and that's it. Basically, if we hadn't applied, no one would have been looking for him. And everything would just get hushed up," the swimmer emphasized.

Alexander arrived in Turkey on the same plane with Nikolai and lived in the same hotel with him. According to him, his friend felt great and was looking forward to the competition.

He added that there was no medical control at the start of the swim: the participants were simply divided by age. In addition, Alexander noticed the rescue boats only at the start and at the finish line — no one accompanied the swimmers in the middle of the route.

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The disappearance of Russian swimmer Svechnikov during a swim through the Bosphorus Strait was reported earlier that day. A 29-year-old professional swimmer from Moscow did not reach the finish line when swimming across the Bosphorus in Istanbul. After swimming 500-600 m, the athlete disappeared from sight. According to one version, the man could have had a leg cramp, after which he was carried away by the current. The General Consulate of the Russian Federation has sent a request to the competent authorities of Turkey regarding the incident.

Earlier that day, in an interview with Izvestia, Honored Master of Sports Alexei Akatiev, former head coach of the Russian national open water swimming team, suggested that the missing Nikolai Svechnikov might have collided with other athletes during the swim and received a blow.

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