Translated material
Non-final list
The ROC Executive Committee approved the composition of the Russian Olympic team
Yesterday in Moscow, on Luzhnetskaya Embankment, the executive committee of the Russian Olympic Committee met. The main issue of the meeting was the approval of the final composition of the country's Olympic team for the upcoming Olympics in Beijing, which opens on August 8. And although in general the list of the Russian delegation, which included 467 athletes, a total of 847 people, including personal trainers, sparring partners, grooms and sports officials, was nevertheless approved. However, according to ROC Vice-President Vladimir Vasin, the names of the athletes participating in the Games will be made public no earlier than tomorrow, but most likely on Wednesday. The reason for this was problems with several Russian athletes. In particular, at the executive committee there was a specific conversation regarding cyclist Vladimir Gusev and track and field athlete Andrei Silnov.Let us remind you that recently the professional cyclist of Astana Vladimir Gusev was excluded from the Kazakh team based on a medical examination. The athlete’s test results turned out to be higher than the norm established for in-competition checks and do not correspond to the agreement signed by the rider. At the same time, as Astana general manager Johan Bruyneel said, the test results do not indicate that Gusev took any illegal drugs. Consequently, at the moment the problem does not go beyond the scope of intra-team relations and formally nothing can prevent Gusev from speaking in Beijing. True, if no additional information or facts appear in the days remaining before the Olympics.
As for track and field athlete Andrei Silnov, yesterday the issue of his participation in the Olympics was resolved positively. After voting by members of the executive committee, Silnov was included in the Olympic team by a majority vote, which contradicted the sports principle of selection. At the Russian pre-Olympic championship, the high jumper was fourth and, according to the results shown, was beyond the line of participants in the Olympic Games. However, a few days later in London at the IAAF Super Grand Prix, Silnov won with the best result of the season in the world - 2 m 38 cm. The athlete’s coach explained the situation by saying that the athlete is gradually and purposefully gaining optimal shape and therefore follows a strict sports principle selection for the team is not entirely correct. However, according to the Minister of Sports, Tourism and Youth Policy Vitaly Mutko, all teams must adhere to strict selection rules. “It seems that the person showed the best result, and it would be wrong to pass by this. But there should be clearer selection rules. Why have the Americans been in the lead for so many years? It’s because they follow a clearly developed pattern. If an athlete does not show results at the national championship, then, despite all his subsequent achievements, he does not make the team. And we also need to stop at something,” says Vitaly Mutko.
The inclusion of Silnov in the national team entailed another problem: one of the three already declared high jumpers should be excluded from the Olympic list. In a conversation with a Vremya Novostey correspondent, the president of the All-Russian Athletics Federation, Valentin Balakhnichev, said that he considers the consideration of the issue of including Silnov in the country’s Olympic team at the ROC executive committee to be justified. And he presented his arguments: the athlete demonstrated a brilliant result, is in good shape, and at the previous championships Silnov beat one of the main rivals of the Swede Stefan Holm. How will the problem of “expulsion” of any of the already named athletes be resolved, with the exception of the current Russian champion Yaroslav Rybakov, the optimal scheme, according to Balakhnichev, would be to conduct control assessments at the last gathering of Russian athletes in Irkutsk before the Games in Beijing. “If it is impossible to solve this problem with the help of analytics, and we don’t want to use a strong-willed method, then such additional estimates would, in my opinion, be the right option,” Balakhnichev said.
He also added that, perhaps for the first time in recent times, the ROC executive committee demonstrated its capacity and desire to take responsibility for forming the composition of the Olympic team. “All the assembled members of the executive committee did not just formally approve the presented list of athletes, as happened previously, but joined in a rather lengthy discussion discussing a number of problems, including those related to doping. If we speak figuratively, then, perhaps, for the first time we stopped being shy about going to the bathhouse and started talking openly about this topic,” Balakhnichev said. According to him, all athletes traveling to Beijing will undergo multiple doping testing procedures. In particular, two RUSADA organizations and representatives of the anti-doping service of the Games organizing committee will work at the track and field athletes’ gathering in Irkutsk. Our other athletes, who will train separately from the team, will be subjected to the same check, but their addresses have already been reported to the relevant anti-doping services. At the moment, 120 doping tests have been taken from track and field athletes, plus 25 out-of-competition ones. In total, as was stated at the ROC executive committee, the number of doping tests of Russians this year has exceeded a thousand.
Vitaly Mutko also highlighted doping as one of the most pressing topics that were raised at the executive committee. The problem is that several years ago the International Olympic Committee created a bank of doping data on athletes, which could be made public at any time. “Now there have been some changes in the rules, and all doping tests taken from athletes two years ago over the next eight years become the property of the IOC. And in this regard, questions may arise,” he said.
However, be that as it may, Vitaly Mutko hopes for a worthy performance by our team at the upcoming Games, since the state has invested more than 12 billion rubles in the preparation of the Olympic team. According to him, in the coming days the amounts of prize money that will be paid to Russian athletes based on the results of the Games will be made public. “I cannot give exact data, but we have completed all the work on this instruction given by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. I can only say that the prize money will be increased,” the minister said.
At the Games in Beijing, Russian athletes will be represented in 39 sports and will take part in the drawing of 244 sets of awards out of 302. As stated by the head of the ROC Leonid Tyagachev, the Russian team plans to win 80 medals of various denominations in Beijing and will compete for second place in the unofficial team event , displacing Chinese athletes. In order to rise to first place, according to experts, it is necessary to win 35-40 gold medals, and a total of 110-115 awards.