Still Going for Gold

For the first time since 1912, and the third time ever, there will be a Russian national team at the Summer Olympic Games. Shorn of socialist ideology and a win-at-all-costs attitude to their sports, its members have an uphill struggle to maintain the USSR’s supremacy of recent years. Executive Editor Mikhail Ivanov offers an inside look at their mood, and their chances. Photos by Andrei Golovanov.

In the old days, Soviet Olympic sport was singular in its aim. Ever since it began participating in the Games, the USSR had only one goal — to get the largest number of medals at each contest. And most of the time this goal was achieved, as the Soviet leadership spared no funds for the development of elite sports.

Top class performances became a powerful propaganda weapon in the Cold War. Soviet sportsmen even dedicated their medals to special events or anniversaries. Thus the Soviet gold-medallists of the 1972 Munich Olympics were highly praised by the Communist Party’s ideological gurus because they received exactly 50 golds, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the USSR.

To be fair, during the Cold War, sport was politicized on both sides of the Iron Curtain, as demonstrated by Carter’s boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics after Brezhnev sent his ‘limited contingent’ of troops to Afghanistan. The Soviets retaliated just 4 years later, when the then Soviet Olympics Committee chairman Marat Gramov — on the direct orders of the Communist Party Central Committee — told Soviet athletes to tell their interviewers they were scared to go to Los-Angeles because of ‘poor security measures.’

Since he came to power in 1991, Boris Yeltsin (a noted tennis buff and top volleyball player in his youth) sought to reform Russian sports, appointing his tennis partner Shamil Tarpishchev as Minister for Sports and Tourism.

Tarpishchev radically changed the priorities in Russian sport. Clearly, the new leadership no longer needed to demonstrate the advantages of socialism. Accordingly, financial policies regarding Olympic sports were modified.

Under Tarpishchev, a new organizational model for sports and physical education was set up. In the Soviet era, all sports organizations were under the umbrella of Goskomsport (the State Sports Committee) while individual sports federations — be it ice hockey or soccer — could not make any decisions on their own. Even the National Olympics Committee was not autonomous and worked within Goskomsport, in violation of the Olympic Charter.

The state was also the only sponsor of sports. Today, the National Olympic Committee has a fully independent status, and the organizational structure of sports is based on a system of clubs.

“We managed to separate elite sports from mass sports,” said Tarpishchev, “and unlike other former Soviet republics, Russia was able to avoid the disintegration of its elite sports. The recent success of the Russian national team at the Winter Olympics at Lillehammer, where Russia came first with 11 gold medals, is proof enough of this.”

Indeed, the state is far from abandoning Olympic sports, having allocated $125 mn this year for preparations for the Games.

“That’s an impressive figure,” said Tarpishchev, “but it can’t be compared to the $100 bn earmarked annually to sport development in the USA.

“We also managed to start the demonopolization of sports, including its management,” he continued. “In the past, all budgeted money went to Goskomsport and was eaten up almost entirely by elite sports.”

Today two-thirds of sports financing comes from local budgets, while the state supports regional sports committees. Most importantly, the Olympic Committee — just like any other sporting organization — is now allowed to earn money on its own. In pursuit of this, the Committee has signed contracts with major world producers of sports equipment and uniforms, notably Reebok. Nor does Goskomsport interfere. Sports federations have signed similar contracts, as have clubs further down the sports hierarchy.

Moreover, today tournaments can be organized not only by sports committees at various levels, but also by private firms, joint-stock companies and even individuals.

But as with so many other undertakings in today’s Russia, new financial methods have brought new problems. Thus the National Sports Foundation (NFS), an organization set up in 1993 by Yeltsin to sponsor Russian sports and train Olympic hopefuls, has come under fire from the press and Russia’s former first vice-premier Anatoly Chubais. The NFS was exempted from paying customs duties for import/export activities. These exemptions, approved by Yeltsin, are estimated to have cost the federal budget as much as $200 mn a month in lost revenues: the NFS used them to become Russia’s largest importer of hard liquor and cigarettes.

In late May, a few weeks before the Olympics, the Foundation’s president, Boris Fyodorov (not to be confused with the former Finance Minister of the same name), Tarpishchev’s right-hand man, was arrested by the Federal Security Bureau (FSB) on narcotics possession charges, thus encouraging a new wave of speculation about the Foundation’s financial abuses.

This led to a potentially crippling scandal. According to the NFS’s founding resolution, the organization was allowed to sign contracts for the exact sum needed to finance specific sports events and tournaments. Yet the NFS procured money which by far exceeded those organizational costs. Thus, the Moscow Prosecutor’s Office discovered that the latest ice hockey tournament, sponsored by Izvestiya newspaper, cost just $7 mn, while the NFS had signed $300 mn in contracts towards it.

This scandal has rocked not only the Russian Olympic movement and sport in general, but also the Russian political hierarchy. Little wonder that Fyodorov’s replacement, Valery Streletsky, is a professional security officer who, prior to this appointment served as department head in the Presidential Security Service. In its latest press-release on the issue, the NFS said Streletsky had been authorized to carry out “a thorough audit of the Foundation’s organizational and financial activities since July 1994.”

While high-ranking sports apparatchiks are settling their scores and the scandal — at time of writing — unfolds, individual athletes continue to train for the Olympics according to plan. Now that athletes are under no pressure to demonstrate the supremacy of socialism, they feel less stress and can even choose what medal to compete for.

Irina Privalova, Russia’s famous sprinter and queen of the 60 m dash, voiced support for this new spirit. “I don’t like it when people try to make you see the Olympics as some kind of decisive battle,” she said. “It’s first and foremost a great festival, a game. We’ll go there not just to win medals at any cost but to show our athletes at their best. And who knows who will be the winners?”

Privalova said she believes it would be easier for her to win the 400 m, but “it’s more prestigious to come 3rd or 4th in the 100 m than win at 400 m, where the competition’s not that strong [last year at the world indoor championships in Barcelona, Privalova won the 400 m]. Also, all finalists at the Olympic 100 m are invited to Grand Prix competitions, which is also important for us for financial reasons.

“If I don’t perform at 100 m,” she continued, “where everybody expects a tough race between Privalova and the Americans, then interest [from the public] will subside and the spectators will lose out, as will the Americans and myself. I can’t let this happen. It’s great to win the Olympics but only if you run with the best sprinters. Whether you like it or not, your adversaries bring out the best in you. That’s why I like running in tough competitions, when the stadium is crowded and the spectators are actively supporting the runners.

“I know I will get quite a decent result but still feel I will probably lose to both Torrens and Devers,” she added.

Privalova is nonchalant about the anticipated weather conditions in Atlanta. “It was hot and humid in Tokyo in 1991 at the World Championships and also in Barcelona in 1992. But basically I can stand the heat. But to be better acclimatized to Atlanta’s heat you probably have to be a native of the city. That’s why I figure American sprinters will have an advantage. Considering that Torrens was born in Atlanta and Gail Devers in Los Angeles, they will be heavily favored.”

Even though the mood in the Russian Olympic team is more relaxed, victories by Russian athletes are naturally still regarded as a source of national pride and patriotism, as the country strives to regain its national identity in all spheres.

The country’s first place showing at the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer was highly praised by Yeltsin personally. The president, and Russians generally, will certainly have nothing against Russia repeating this performance in Atlanta. In a modern upgrade to the socialist honors and perks handed out to top medal winners in the USSR, Russia’s Olympic Committee seeks to abet achievement by setting significant financial awards for medal winners (see box).

With the ‘body drain’ of the best Russian sportsmen and coaches abroad, however, a first place finish in the Olympics will be more than difficult. And, after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, many Olympic stars found themselves citizens of new, independent republics. The famous champion gymnast Vitaly Shcherba now performs for Belarus; Portland NBA player and Seoul gold-medallist Arvidas Sabonis will be on the Lithuanian team; record-breaking pole-vaulter Sergei Bubka will represent Ukraine.

Hundred meter hurdle champion Lyudmila Narozhilenko, meanwhile, married her Swedish manager and will be running for  Sweden.

Even in such traditionally Soviet-dominated sports as gymnastics, the national team no longer appears an odds-on favorite. Dina Kochetkova, 19, head of the Russian women’s gymnastics team, who won the gold medal on the balance beam at the World Championships in Puerto Rico last April, says team coach Arkady Arkayev is only aiming for the team to finish among the first three teams in the sport. A Soviet gymnastics coach would have never intimated, much less uttered such modest goals.

Kochetkova said she believes that women from the US, China and Romania will be the main contenders for gymnastics gold in Atlanta. She also complains of biased refereeing, and believes that the judges will probably favor the Romanian Lavinia Milosovici and the American Shannon Miller. Meanwhile, she regrets that far too many coaches have abandoned the team in search of the almighty dollar. Kochetkova’s own former coach, Irina Razumovskaya, left her to go find a job in Japan while former chief coach Alexander Alexandrov left for a job in the US.

Still, Kochetkova sounds as relaxed as Privalova. She reckons that “the one with the strongest nerves will win in Atlanta.” Echoing Privalova’s comment, she said she regards the Olympics “not as an extraordinary event but rather as a normal competition where I can just show the best of myself.”

Yet not all Russian athletes are so nonchalant. Muscle-bound veteran heavyweight wrestler Alexander Karelin seems resolute to win at any cost, having recently won his latest (9th!) gold medal at the World Championships, despite a broken rib. He said the Russian Greco-Roman wrestling team “is very strong... as all the wrestlers already have Olympic experience.”

Karelin said he feels that the popularity of Greco-Roman wrestling has considerably increased. Observers from America regularly attend all major European and Asian competitions and “all figure that Russia’s school of Greco-Roman wrestling is unique.”

“It’s hard to win the Olympics twice,” Karelin continued. “Only one thing is harder — to win for the third time.”

Another way the Russian national team today is different is that most of its members are not shy to say they are professionals, rather than amateurs – the latter, ironically, once both a requirement of the Olympics and the socialist ideology of Soviet sports (What better way to show the supremacy of socialism than to have welders and army lieutenants take a gold?). Most Russian stars now work abroad, having signed lucrative contracts with Western clubs. Unlike their Soviet predecessors, team members just get together for a short period on the eve of the Olympics.

This is the case with the captain of the volleyball team, 28-year-old Dmitry Fomin (who incidentally could be considered Ukrainian, coming from the Crimean town of Sevastopol). Fomin has been selected as the best player in the Italian national volleyball championships. He has also just signed a three-year contract with the champions Sisley from Treviso after spending 4 years in Ravenna. After so many years in Italy, Fomin has easily assimilated Italian culture — he says his favorite meal is lasagne, cooked by his wife.

Still nostalgia does still surface. Fomin and his teammates, veteran players like Ruslan Olikhver, Oleg Shatunov, Pavel Shishkin and Yevgeny Krasilnikov (all of whom went to play abroad long ago) insisted that the famous coach Vyacheslav Platonov be reappointed head of the national volleyball team. In spite of tough competition, these veterans have been selected to play in Atlanta along with young debutants Stanislav Deinekin, Alexei Kazakov, Sergei Tetyukhin and Igor Shulepov. Fomin said he believes that the main competition will come from Italy, Holland, Cuba, Brazil, the US and Yugoslavia.

Russians may also make a good showing in rowing, cycling and maybe even in Yeltsin’s favorite sport tennis, where star Yevgeny Kafelnikov will be performing.

Spectators will also likely eagerly await the duel between Russian and American swimmers. Vladimir Smirnov, coach of the Russian team, seems optimistic, despite the departure from elite sports of Yevgeny Sadovy, instrumental in Russia’s recent relay victories.

“At first glance,” Smirnov said, “it seems like Russia will be hard pressed to emulate the success of the CIS team in Barcelona, where it won six gold medals. But we mustn’t forget that five of the six CIS gold medallists in Barcelona were Russian. So we’re aiming for at least four this time.”

Smirnov pins his hopes on Denis Pankratov, selected as best swimmer of 1995, and Alexander Popov. “All the guys are in great shape,” Smirnov noted. “We’ve analyzed the results of all the national championships in other countries, mostly in the US, our main adversary, and our preliminary results don’t look any worse than theirs.”

Valeriya Mironova, Yelena Vaitsekhovskaya and Oleg Spassky contributed to this article. Valeriya Mironova and Yelena Vaitsekhovskaya are reporters for Russia’s leading sport newspaper Sport Ekspress, and Oleg Spassky is Chief Editor of Tennis + magazine.