Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko believes that 2015 was a special year for Russian sport: "It was fairly positive, because we did a lot of work for the development of sport, for strengthening the role of sport in the development of our country, social and economic development, improving the quality of life of our citizens. I can certainly say that 2015 became really crucial for some strategic stages of development. It means that we have completed a certain stage of development of sport, which began in 2006."
According to Mutko, in the 1990s sport suffered heavy losses in terms of both infrastructure development and management structure. "Until 1990 the Soviet Union had a clear, understandable system of sports development. It worked like clockwork. There were 15 republics, where the entire hierarchy system was built. There were dozens of sports associations such as 'CSKA', 'Dynamo', 'Labor Reserves', and many more. Every association and every factory and plant had their own structure, clubs. This whole system has been replaced during these years, or destroyed, and in return, in fact, nothing was offered. In general, naturally, coaches aged, the reserves training system was destroyed."
"And, in 2006, the task of returning sport to its previous positions was formulated. Sport faced the task of becoming a priority in the social and economic development of the country. The federal program was adopted. In 2008 the Ministry of Sport was created. It was an indicator of the fact that the federal executive authority was created, the task of which was to develop the state policy and to implement it."
"In 2009 we adopted a strategy of development of physical culture and sports, focused on the development of mass sports."
"An ambitious task was given to mass sport: by 2020, the proportion of people involved in sport on a regular basis should reach 40%. Among young people and students it is 80%, among people with health restrictions, people with disabilities, it is 20%. It's a serious, ambitious goal. In elite sports, we were given the task of restoring traditions and becoming a leader of world sport again, to gain a foothold here and, in general, always to fight for the first to third places in the world rankings of elite sports," Mutko said.
In addition, according to him, in the system of training of reserves, the task was set to carry out a complete modernization of the system of training of reserves by 2020: "Make it like a united mechanism for the preparation and reproduction of talented athletes for national teams. A separate task was set for the development of the material and technical base. We must increase it from 2006 to the present day and to 2020. To the present day by one and a half times, and by 2020 the capacity of the sports facilities should be doubled. And, of course, a separate task has been formulated on the issues of conducting major sporting events. The task of attracting almost the entire line of sporting events to the territory of Russia was set in 2009. From the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, the Deaf Olympics, major world championships. An extremely simple task has been given to these projects. Through these projects we have to raise interest in sport, to use these projects for the promotion of healthy lifestyles, the involvement of young people in sport, and, of course, through these projects we must give a boost to the development of not only sporting infrastructure," he stated.
