Russian athlete denies kiss with relay partner was in protest at anti-gay law

When two Russian athletes locked lips after taking gold at the World Athletics Championships, speculation was rife that the pair were protesting against the country's recently passed anti-gay law.

After narrowly edging out the US team to win the 400m relay at Moscow's Luzhniki stadium on Saturday, Ksenia Ryzhova and Yulia Guschina celebrated their victory with a lingering kiss. They kissed again on the podium as their two teammates looked on.

But in her first comment on the incident, Ryzhova told the Guardian on Monday that the kiss was not a political statement and had nothing to do with the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.

"It was just happiness for our team," which has trained together for many years, Ryzhova said on Monday. She declined to comment on her attitude toward LGBT rights.

"If people want to write all sorts of dirt about us, they should at least know that Yulia and I are both married," she added.

Although the former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev was famous for kissing other leaders on the lips, including men, such platonic kissing is not a common occurrence in modern Russia.

The World Athletics Championships were widely seen as a trial run for next year's Winter Olympics in Sochi, where Russian officials have repeatedly said that authorities will enforce the law against "gay propaganda".

A growing international backlash against the legislation has led to a series of protests and calls for Russia to be stripped of the Sochi games.

The two-time Olympic gold medalist Yelena Isinbayeva defended the legislation after she won the pole vault at the championships, saying two Swedish competitors who painted their fingernails with rainbows in support of LGBT rights were being disrespectful to Russia.

"We consider ourselves like normal, standard people, we just live boys with women, girls with boys … it comes from the history," Isinbayeva said in English on Thursday.

But she backtracked from her comments in a statement on Friday, saying she opposes discrimination against gay people and "may have been misunderstood" due to her imperfect English.

On Tuesday, the US runner Nick Symmonds became the first international athlete to denounce the anti-gay law while in Russia, dedicating his silver medal in the 800m to his gay and lesbian friends back home and calling for LGBT equality.

Russia's sports minister, Vitaly Mutko, said at the weekend that the law does not violate any rights and called worries that it would infringe upon the freedoms of athletes and spectators "overblown," the state R-Sport news agency reported.