Shooting for Gold

In the morning of August 24, less than one week before the Olympic Games were set to end, the Russian National Team, despite winning six golds, was in 11th place in the overall medal count, trailing not only the US, China and Australia, but also Romania and Ukraine. Talk raged about a Russian Olympic fiasco. But then there was a breakthrough. In the last two days, Russia won 10 gold medals in wrestling, boxing, track and field and artistic gymnastics. As a result, the team ended up third in the overall medal count. Now that the dust has settled on the Athens games, Mikhail Ivanov suggests it is time to examine the lessons Russia must heed, if it is to remain in the ranks of the world’s sports elite – without having to count on miracles, that is.

The sports elite comes
from the masses

“It’s all too logical,” the brethren of Russian journalists joked in Athens. “They shoot editors, governors and legislators en masse in Mother Russia now, so now we have our first gold medal – in shooting [won by Alexei Alipov].” Indeed, Russia’s marksmen were the country’s only victors during the first, dark days in Athens. The journalists’ humor may be black, but, as they say, in every joke there is an element of truth. And it is hard to argue with the simple axiom: results in elite sports depend on the development of the sport among the masses. When was Russian soccer at its peak? In the 1950s and 1960s, when Russian boys were kicking around balls after school as devotedly as kids in Brooklyn today play basketball. When did Russian hockey dominate? In the 1970s and 1980s, when skating rinks were being built in every Russian dvor and pucks were regularly breaking first floor windows in apartment houses. Now, hockey rinks are vacant and it is only empty plastic bottles of Klinskoye beer that bounce off neighborhood windows. Meanwhile, it is mainly hounds and not youth that are “doing their thing” on soccer pitches. So, can the journalists really be blamed for their macabre humor?

Do not make medal
plans in spring

Olympic medals, like the chickens in the Russian proverb, should be counted in the fall, after the Olympics are done; not before they have begun. And yet, as early as the spring of 2004, Leonid Tyagachev, president of the Russian Olympic Committee, made this Khrushchevian boast: “We’re vying for first place in the overall medal count and can overtake the Americans.” Such pompous statements rebound negatively on our athletes, particularly the “sure thing” veterans. (Remember how three-time Olympic champion wrestler Alexander Karelin felt the pressure in Sydney in 2000 – finally losing to Rulon Gardner – because his gold was “penciled in”?)

Busting all expectations, swimmer Alexander Popov did not even make it to the finals in his favorite race, the 100m; in the 50m, he did not even broach the semifinals. Alas, Popov, for all his charisma (he also carried the Russian flag at the opening ceremony), can no longer compete on a par with the young Michael Phelps & Co. But let none be the first to cast a stone in his direction – over the last 12 years, Popov did more for Russian swimming than anyone could have guessed possible. But in Athens, as Olympic champion and renowned sports commentator Yelena Vaitsekhovskaya put it, “we saw not only the end of the era of Alexander Popov; it was the end of the whole era of Russian swimming.” Not surprisingly, during the final swimming events, when all eyes were turned on Russia’s only remaining medal hopeful, Stanislava Komarova, she burned out before the start, the tension evident in her features. But she did hang tough. While she did not bring home the much-coveted gold in the 200m backstroke, she did gain the silver. It was Russia’s only medal in swimming.

Leave the veterans alone

In gymnastics (Russia took the bronze in women’s team competition, a silver in individual all-around, and the men’s team took sixth place), another formerly rich mine for gold, we need to retire the reigning gerontocracy. Alexei Nemov is still sexy and macho, and Svetlana Khorkina is still appealing on the cover of FHM magazine. But both Alexei and Svetlana were participating in their third Olympics! Such endurance gives no credit to the Russian puppeteers of gymnastics, who squeeze everything they can from our ageing stars, who continue to reign simply because there are no heirs to the throne. Q.E.D., we still rely on the thirty-something diver Dmitry Sautin (bronze medal), the gray-haired trampoline gymnast Alexander Moskalenko (silver) and cyclist Vyacheslav Yekimov, who at 38 (!) won a silver.

Get those coaches back

Where does Russia still have a “lock” on gold medals? Well, we already joked about shooting (three golds). But there is hope only where we either preserved the old Soviet school and coaches – boxing  (three golds), wrestling (five golds) – or where we created a new Russian school (thus, five medals in women’s track and field – see box at right; synchronized swimming (two golds), rhythmic gymnastics (two golds, with Alina Kabayeva finally clinching an individual gold). But in gymnastics the domestic school is in a shambles. Most all ex-Soviet coaches work abroad. Half of the US team in gymnastics was brought up by former Soviet coaches. The team gymnastics victor – Japan – was trained, among others, by Montreal Olympic champion Nikolai Andrianov. How do we get these coaches back? Let the State and Russia’s nouveaux riches figure it out – Roman Abramovich found enough money to buy the Chelsea soccer club. Ultimately, we could ask the Belarusans for advice – their gymnastics program somehow survives (only I am not suggesting this is a reason to reunite with President Alexander Lukashenko.

Stop using America
as a yardstick

In world politics, Russia has finally tempered its appetite, eschewing the weight gain of an ideological foreign policy for a diet based on realpolitik. So why should we try to emulate America in sports? Shouldn’t it be enough to remain in the top tier of nations without focusing on overtaking America? In doing so, we ignored the Chinese breakthrough. They were winning everywhere – even in track and field. It may be, as head of the Russian Athletics Federation Valentin Balakhnichev put it, they simply have “much more human material.” And we expect to see the Chinese shine in shooting, diving, weightlifting, gymnastics and, of course, table tennis. But rowing? Volleyball? (Our women lost to China in the finals.) And tennis?! Arguably the best female doubles team in the Olympics – the 2004 US Open singles champion Svetlana Kuznetsova and her partner Yelena Likhovtseva – failed to win a medal. The doubles gold ended up going to a Chinese team. It almost makes you forget which country is leading a boom in women’s tennis (Russia having won three of this year’s four Grand Slam titles). All these years we have focused on competing with a team halfway around the world, when it is really our neighbor which we should have been worried about.

Lessons already learned

There are some bright spots in the games. The first is that we won as many silver as gold medals (the overall count was 27 gold,  27 silver and 38 bronze).

We have learned to place and show with grace and to be happy to bring home any Olympic medal. In the Manichean Soviet era, the reigning spirit was: “win gold or else relinquish your Party (or Komsomol) membership.” Thankfully, our athletes (maybe because they are too young to remember those times), have gotten past that mode of thinking.  “I am happy to win my Olympic medal, no matter what metal it is made of, and no one is going to take that joy from me,” said 18-year-old swimmer Stanislava Komarova. And she was right. Humility does not hurt; it strengthens the spirit. And a medal is a medal. After all, in Athens we won a total of 92 medals, versus 88 in Sydney and 63 in Atlanta.

Second, we no longer blame judges for “overtly anti-Russian refereeing.” Well, okay, sure we do, but at least we no longer make a big deal out of it. This time we let the public do it in our stead. When a gymnastics crowd booed the judges for giving low marks to Alexei Nemov, their vociferousness led the judges to rethink things. Nemov, meanwhile, won the award for noble grace  when he stood up and urged the crowd to quiet, so that competition could continue. Not all victories are measured in metal.

There was a similar grace under pressure displayed by our synchronized swimming team. When their music was cut off by “technical difficulties,” the swimmers rested by the side of the pool and then came out to give a performance so impeccable that none dared deny them the gold.

Third, we fess up. When one of our athletes was caught red-handed taking stimulants (gold medalist in the shot put, Irina Korzhanenko), we did not rush to automatically defend the athlete, whining about a conspiracy against Russia (perhaps it helped that this was her second offense). We quietly looked at the facts, and tried to minimize the moral and public relations losses. And so should Irina Korzhanenko (who, at press time, had still not returned her medal).

Fourth, we realize that we cannot win without luck; but there is bad luck as well. It is part of the games. In so many sports where Russia was either in the finals or semifinals, gold hopes were unexpectedly dashed. The brilliant Russian women’s volleyball team succumbed to China in the finals in a breathtaking five-set match. The flying men’s volleyball crew, led by Gennady Shipulin, lost in three straight sets to the Italians in a disastrous semifinal, but sweetened the pill by beating the Americans for the bronze. On the trampoline, where our gymnasts were expected to win hands down, Yelena Karavayeva’s unexpected injury left Russia without a medal. There were many “jinxed” competitions such as this.

So, how does one attract good luck? Perhaps consider the saying – “vezyot silneyshim” – “luck is on the side of the strongest.” And for us, there were some lucky, unexpected, unplanned golds. These were manna from heaven, as a compensation for other failures, and should not be seen to be some confirmation of the “domination of Russian sports school” – thus, the golds in academic rowing, in men’s weightlifting, and the pentathlon.

But what is the main lesson Russia should take away Athens? The frenzied women’s volleyball coach, Nikolai Karpol, said it best: “We need to learn from the Chinese this state attitude towards sports.” Who cares if it’s a socialist or a capitalist state? As Deng Xiaoping once put it, “the color of the cat doesn’t matter, as long as it can catch the mice.”   RL