Anger and Soviet nostalgia are sweeping Russia after its dismal showing at the Vancouver Olympics, triggering a purge of sporting officials in an effort to prevent another humiliation when the nation hosts the Winter games in Sochi in 2014.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev quickly revived Soviet-era methods this week by firing top sporting chiefs and demanding assurances that the debacle will not be repeated on home soil.
In calling for “those responsible” to resign, Medvedev lamented that Russia “has lost the old Soviet school ... and we haven’t created our own school — despite the fact that the amount of money that is invested in sport is unprecedentedly high.”
The cull reached to the top of the sporting worldon Thursday as Russian Olympic Committee chief Leonid Tyagachev handed in his resignation. Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko went on state TV to repent bemoaning Russia’s “backward infrastructure, the loss of the national coaching school and systemic problems in training.”
Vancouver was Russia’s worst Olympic showing ever: The country brought home only 15 medals, three gold, placing it 11th in the medals table. In nine Winter Olympics from 1956 to 1988, the Soviet Union failed to top the medal standings only twice, finishing runner-up on those occasions.
In communist days, Olympic athletes had much to fear from a bad performance. They stood to be sent back into the ranks of the Soviet masses, losing their status as national heroes and their ability to travel abroad, not to mention their generous salaries.
Many Soviet Olympic triumphs were suspected of being tainted by doping, as detection methods were far weaker then and political pressure sometimes prompted sports officials to look the other way.
In Vancouver, Russian athletes were under particular scrutiny for performance enhancing drugs after more than half a dozen biathletes and cross-country skiers were suspended in the past year for using the blood-boosting drug EPO.
Top athletes and wealthy sponsors said that neither money nor another witchhunt would relieve the deeper social and economic problems that caused sporting disaster in Vancouver. They pointed to everything from widespread corruption to the outflow of talent and even the very financial system Russia adopted after the fall of communism.
Examples of Russia’s social ills also abounded in a surge of newspaper and magazine articles demanding to know why the Russian team had fared so poorly. Endemic corruption and the failure to invest in infrastructure were chief among them.
The Trud daily ran an editorial under the banner: “The jumpers don’t have trampolines and the sledders don’t have sleighs,” noting that Russia does not have a professional-grade bobsledding course, while tracks for speed skating only exist in Moscow. Russia also has far fewer hockey rinks than the US and Canada.
“You know we lost our competitive abilities a long time ago,” said Boris Afanasyev, a 41-year-old businessman.
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