Three and half years until the Olympics in Sochi, the mood of officials is gradually becoming “perturbed”.
It is a concern not only shared by those who are responsible for sporting results, but also the organizers of the Century project. It is clear that if we view it from the sport and organizational aspect, and not ideology, initially Sochi as national project is seen to have had more weaknesses than strengths. The Olympics in Vancouver only underlined these systematic problems and made us wonder if the game was worth the candle. In any case, it is too late to give up, but weshould highlight the “risk zones” clearly. Without getting through them we will have no luck. First of all we need to understand the core of the question of the level of fitness of our potential Olympic contenders.
We should be realistic - Sochi-2014 is unlikely to repeat the traditional “host’s success” like the ones in Beijing and Vancouver. Initial potential is much more modest, but it still exists for sure. It is easy to predict that these Olympic Games will be considered a great victory if everything goes well in three key directions – hockey, biathlon and figure skating. And skiing if we have real luck.
This is not a minimum programme but understanding that we are not able to change fundamentally principles of personnel training for Alpine skiing and short track, because changes require minimal human capital.
And there is none at the moment. So the emphasis will be put on “Russian” parts of the programme, in which sports officials will be expected “to get our way”. The last personnel changes are aimed at this, because the first Russian-style step towards success is “an execution of errant boyars” and then to take your coat off. The way to get out of crisis seems to be simple and understandable – to add money, adopt technologies, remove internal discord. This shortened revolution is a success compared to Vancouver’s “miracles”. The other thing that is intriguing in figure skating seems to be the inevitable element of the sports backroom. Even in Soviet times, an era of our total dominance, it was the same. In these times, a Plyuschenko figure is hardly likely to be a platform for consolidation. Coaches are not a good model of tolerance and mutual support either. In this way, internal discord will be a constant concomitant for last three years before the main event of the cycle. Hockey players will be specially burdened. You can lose everything, but a victory in this could be atonement. The danger is that at the beginning of the Games we will have only two trumps – Malkin and Ovechkin. The last results of our youth team proved there would be no reinforcement. The big question is if two heroes are enough for a Russian victory. Well, the iron chances are there where big capital rules with an iron hand. Mr. Prokhorov’s charges are a big chance for Russia. But even to make this chance real we need to create good financial and technical conditions.
Next time we will talk about what is being done about this.
Alexei Vlasov, Exclusievly for VK
