Three pillars of the Russian team

Our team is counting on gold in figure skating, cross-country skiing and biathlon

Only three of our national federations - figure skating, biathlon and cross-country skiing - included winning gold medals in their medal plans for the performance in Turin. That is why it is with these sports, which, together with hockey, that provided Russia with all 13 prizes at the previous 2002 Games in Salt Lake City, that we will begin our forecast for the Olympics below. At the Games in Turin, Russian athletes simply have to stop the unpleasant trend - with each Olympics, our team worsens its performance in terms of the number of gold medals, the total number of medals and the final place in the unofficial team competition. We believe that Russia will win from five to seven top awards in Italy, and in terms of gold it will become fourth, behind Germany, Norway and the USA. Any other worse result will be a failure and a statement of the fact that the huge amounts of money that have recently been invested in elite sports have not produced the expected effect.

Impact sports

FIGURE SKATING (4 sets of awards)

Russian figure skaters at the Turin Olympics could actually count on all four top medals. However, as the experience of previous Games shows, representatives of one country are unlikely to achieve this. Although the Olympics is the main start of the four-year period for athletes, this event is not only a sporting event, but also a political one, and in this sense, the “home field factor” often plays a key role. As it happened, for example, with the American Sarah Hughes. The dark horse of the Games in Salt Lake City, unexpectedly for everyone, and first of all for herself, became an Olympic champion in the company of the strongest figure skaters on the planet.

If we talk about forecasts for these Games, Russian figure skaters can actually win at least two, maximum three gold medals. First of all, in both types of single skating - women's and men's, as well as in pairs skating. Evgeni Plushenko is currently objectively the strongest in the world. The student of Alexei Mishin approached this season fully armed. I prepared several diverse programs, from which I chose the most successful ones. In addition, at the beginning of the summer, Plushenko underwent two operations to remove inguinal hernias, and now his athletic form is virtually impeccable.

Judging by the results of the season, the main favorite in women's skating is Irina Slutskaya. Her position is complicated by the fact that the Italian Caroline Costner, the main hope of the Italians, is also entered in the tournament. And considering that the President of the International Skating Union, Ottavio Cinquanta, is Italian, we can assume that this athlete will be pulled to the podium with all their might. In addition, we should not discount strong American women Sasha Cohen and Michelle Kwan. Both missed this season, did not compete at the Grand Prix stages, and deliberately prepared for the Games. By the way, Kwan trained with Tatyana Tarasova in the summer, and this coach knows how to make champions.

The leaders of pair skating this season are Russians Tatyana Totmyanina and Maxim Marinin. However, their main rivals Xu Shen and Hongbo Zhao also did not appear in public, citing their partner's injury. Therefore, you can expect surprises from the Chinese.

“Gold” in ice dancing can become a real sensation. True, at the last European Championship, Tatyana Navka, performing in tandem with Roman Kostomarov, seriously injured her hand - she cut her hand with a skate blade. But this is not the only thing that complicates the situation. Ice dancing is the most subjective form of figure skating, and here a lot depends on the preferences and sympathies of the referee.

BIATHLON (10 sets of awards)

If it weren’t for Olga Pyleva’s “gold” in the sprint, the results of our shooting skiers in Salt Lake City could be called a failure - only two “bronzes” in eight disciplines. Then all plans were built around Pavel Rostovtsev, but for him the 2002 Games became dark days - he was crushed by enormous responsibility. This time the situation in our team is much better: there is no clear leader, but there is a whole group of riders capable of fighting for prizes. Sergei Rozhkov, Nikolai Kruglov, Maxim Chudov, Sergei Chepikov, Albina Akhatova, Svetlana Ishmuratova, Olga Zaitseva, the same Pyleva - each of these athletes is capable of winning. But competition from Norwegians, Germans and French is also very high.

It is unlikely that the world biathlon community will allow the legendary Norwegian Ole Einar Bjoerndalen to win all the gold in individual races and lead his team to victory in the relay, as at the previous Games. Frenchman Raphael Poiret is full of ambitions, after the departure of a number of veterans, representatives of the second wave of the German team - Mikael Greis, Alexander Wolf - are performing well, and the highly experienced Sven Fischer and Ricco Gross, for whom this Olympics will probably be the last, will want to slam the door.

In the women's category, having recovered from last season's troubles associated with a child's illness, Norway's Liv-Gret Poiret is again strong; in Sweden, the brilliant Magdalena Forsberg was replaced by former skier Anna-Karin Olofsson; almost all Germans are among the winners - the leader of the overall World Cup standings Kati Wilhelm, Ursula Diesl, Andrea Henkel, Martina Glagov and others.

The January starts showed: the majority of Russians demonstrate a high percentage of hits on the shooting range, but they fire slower than their opponents and lose to them on the track. Apparently, individual races can be the most successful for us. Still, here the cost of a miss is higher than in other personal disciplines: instead of a penalty loop (25-30 seconds), a penalty minute is awarded. In the sprint and pursuit race among Russian women, Olga Zaitseva seems to be the favorite; among men, the main bet is still placed on the relay. In three World Cup races, our biathletes came second and once again fifth, while the Germans, on the contrary, won three times. Our girls excelled in Ruhpolding, with two victories against Norway and one against France. The German women's team, despite its star status, has yet to finish first this season. Any result other than Olympic gold will not be forgiven in her homeland.

The Russian Biathlon Union expects to get two “golds” in Turin, optimists believe in three, skeptics believe that we will have to limit ourselves to one. In any case, one thing is already clear: in terms of television broadcast ratings in Russia, only men’s ice hockey can compete with biathlon.

SKI RACING (12 sets of awards)

The loud doping revelations of Larisa Lazutina and Olga Danilova deprived us in Salt Lake City of two gold medals we won and another victory in the relay race, where the Russian team was simply not allowed. In the remainder, we had Yulia Chepalova’s win in the sprint and Mikhail Ivanov’s first place in the 50-kilometer marathon, which came after the disqualification of the Spaniard of German origin Johan Mylegg.

Chepalova and now our main hope. Her chances of success in the duathlon are great - a 7.5 + 7.5 km race in the classic and free style with a change of skis and poles at the pit stop. Natural endurance allows us to expect a good result from Chepalova in the “thirty”; together with her teammates, she will definitely be in the running to be among the medalists in the relay. The main competitors are Norwegian Marit Bjorgen, Czech Katerina Neumannova, Canadian Becky Scott, Finnish Virpi Kuitunen, Ukrainian Valentina Shevchenko, and a group of German skiers. The titled Gabriela Paruzzi and Sabina Valbusa will be especially dangerous on their home tracks. It seemed that at the World Cup starts these two Italians did not give their best, saving their trump cards for the main competitions of the four years.

Russia's last major success in men's cross-country skiing was Vasily Rochev's victory in the sprint at the 2005 World Championships. Then he covered the distance in the classical style; in the Olympic program, the individual sprint will be held in skating. Everyone hopes for Vasily in the 15 km “classic” race. By the way, he already won in the 2005/06 season in this discipline at the World Cup in Otepää (Estonia). The Germans, especially Tobias Angerer, looked very powerful on the eve of the Olympics. The hosts' medal plans are connected with Pietro Piller-Kottler and Giorgio Di Centa, the French rely on Vincent Vittoz, the Czechs on Lukasz Bauer, in the Swedish and Norwegian teams, each of the participants can make their country happy with an Olympic award.

In our opinion, if Russia takes two gold medals in cross-country skiing, it will be simply a miracle, a stunning result. Although many are mentally prepared for the fact that the first step of the podium will not be won by any of our compatriots in Italy - there are too many internal problems in the team, it is disunited, the riders are trained in different groups, with different coaches.

Real medals

HOCKEY (2 sets of awards)

The Russian men's team has not won official international tournaments since 1993, which is why it is not considered one of the favorites for the Olympics. A bronze medal is planned for the current team, which corresponds to the result at the 2005 World Championships. The highest quotations belong to the most evenly selected team of Canada, the Americans with their 44-year-old captain Chris Chelis and the Czechs with their unsurpassed scorer Jaromir Jagr. Finland and Sweden will traditionally join the fight for medals, despite the latter losing the injured Markus Näslund. The Slovaks managed to be world champions, but have not yet been medalists at the Olympics, which gives the team additional incentive. By the way, this is the only team of non-CIS countries where players from the Russian Super League - Martin Strbak and Richard Kapusch - were included in the squad.

Much will depend on the composition of the quarterfinal pairs. It is advisable for Russia to take first place in Group B and advance to Germany or Switzerland, otherwise the match with the Canadians, Czechs or Finns could be the last for head coach Vladimir Krikunov’s charges. The Russians have perhaps the strongest attack, but an unstable defense and a lack of complete clarity on the last line of defense. Krikunov’s Olympic calmness and his independence from NHL stars are encouraging: he can subject any player, even a multimillionaire, to serious criticism for failure to comply with coaching instructions. The main thing is that the mentor is not prevented from sticking to his line in everything that directly concerns the game itself and determining combinations in the links.

In women's hockey, eight world championships in a row ended the same way - they were won by Canadians ahead of the Americans. Last year this tradition was broken - the Stars and Stripes took the title from the Maple Leafs. There is no doubt that these teams will meet in the final in Turin. The Russians took the last, eighth place in the top division at the world championship. A fact that requires no comment.

SKATES (12 sets of awards)

Svetlana Zhurova was going to leave big sport after Salt Lake City and, quite rightly, did not do so. The athlete, who has shown a number of top-class results in the sprint disciplines of the World Cup this season, is going to Turin for a medal. She will have to compete in the “five hundred” first of all with the Chinese Manli Wang and the owner of the ice oval Chiaro Simionato, in the “thousand” she will have to compete with the famous German Annie Frisinger, the same Italian, the Americans Jennifer Rodriguez and Chris Whitty, and the Dutch Marianne Timmer. Manli Wang and Frisinger are two-time champions of the planet in these disciplines, while Zhurova celebrated her triumph at the recent world championship in sprint all-around.

For men, at the shortest distance, the fight should unfold between our Dmitry Dorofeev and Jeremy Wotherspoon (Canada), Joe Chick (USA), and the Korean Kann Seok Lee. There is also the ambitious Japanese Yoji Kato, who won three World Cup events. In the “thousand” category, the undisputed leader of the season is American Shaunie Davis. Two victories of Dmitry Dorofeev came precisely at those starts in which Davis did not take part. In all the other six stages, the overseas speedster had no equal. It seems that at the World Championships in Heerenveen (Holland) he was simply showing signs of obscurity - eighth place in the sprint all-around total clearly does not correspond to his potential.

At medium and long distances, experts predict triumph for the American Chad Hedrick, and for women, the Canadian Cindy Klassen (3000 and 5000 m), giving the “one and a half” to Frisinger. The Russians, of course, will try not to limit themselves to being on the sidelines, although objectively this is not our species. Theoretically, Alexander Kibalko or Evgeniy Lalenkov could compete for a place in the top six at a distance of 1500 m, no more. Most of the intrigue is hidden in the new type of speed skating program - the team pursuit. All previous starts were of an introductory, trial nature, and they were not held in the Olympic format - there will be knockout races in Turin. Our female trio is stronger than the male trio and can please you with a medal.

BOBSLED (3 sets of awards)

In both the fours and twos, there will be a limited circle of pilots on the approaches to the podium - our Alexander Zubkov, the German Andre Lange, the Swiss Martin Annen, Todd Hayes (USA) and Pierre Luders (Canada). The athlete from Bratsk, although a two-time winner of the World Cup in fours, is considered only one of the favorites, and even then not the most important. Lange, who always perfectly prepares his crew for the main start of the season, has three world championship gold medals in a row. In the doubles, the gloomy Lueders is especially strong, who is accelerated by the dark-skinned former member of the Jamaican national team Letcelles Brown. Since Zubkov has raised the bar very high for his achievements, he will be happy with an award of any value. Our “gold” will be a feat in the struggle of the Russian spirit and hard work with the highest technological equipment of foreign crews.

In women's bobsleigh (two-man crews only), victory will come to Germany, Canada or the USA. To further promote the sport, it would be nice if some of the medals ended up in the collection of the American Jean Prum - she recorded the anthem of the current season, Heat on the Ice, in a music studio, which precedes all television broadcasts from the World Cup stages.

SLEDGE (3 sets of awards)

For 39-year-old German Georg Hackl, nicknamed Swift Sausage, this will be the sixth Olympics. He was never left without medals - three golds (1992, 1994, 1998) and two silvers (1988, 2002). All this time he competed with the Austrian Markus Prock, who had already retired. And the German is still skating, although it is becoming increasingly difficult to win - a whole galaxy of talented lugers has grown up, including the owner of the Olympic track, Armin Zoggeler, who beat Hackl in Salt Lake City. The cunning German does not allow anyone near his sleigh and, again, is not going to leave Turin without a reward. The chances of Hakl, his fellow countryman Möller, our Demchenko, the American Benschoof and the Austrian Kleinheinz are lower than those of Zoggeler. There are a number of technical tricks within the regulations that can provide a slight advantage to the owner of the gutter. This applies to the operating modes of refrigeration units - even the smallest changes will allow Zoggeler to glide faster, and his rivals - a little slower. Demchenko’s situation is almost the same as Zubkov’s: “gold” is a triumph, a place below third is a failure.

In the two-man sleigh, a German-Italian-Austrian showdown is coming, and for the girls it is quite possible that the entire pedestal will be occupied by representatives of Germany. The owners are counting on our former compatriot Anastasia Antonova-Oberstoltz. We will disappoint lovers of exciting spectacles - the large Venezuelan Iginia Boccalandro, who clumsily fell from a sled in Salt Lake City, will not be in Italy. The age is no longer the same.

Hoping for a sensation

FREESTYLE (4 sets of awards) and SNOWBOARD (6 sets of awards)

Those same “countless” Olympic medals can be won by the silver medalist of the 2005 World Championship in parallel giant slalom, snowboarder Svetlana Boldykova, master of acrobatic freestyle jumps, 2003 world champion, five-time winner of the World Cup stages Dmitry Arkhipov and Anna Zukal, who got into the competition six times podium in cup starts. The geography of women's acrobatic freestyle is extremely wide - the 2002 Olympics was won by Australian Alisa Camplin, and the 2005 World Championship was won by Chinese Li Nina. Swedes and Canadians also set the tone in this discipline. In moguls, the number one contender for gold is Norwegian Kari Traa. In men's acrobatics, a group of Canadians and Americans will compete with Czech Ales Valenta, Belarusians Alexei Grishin and Dmitry Dashinsky.

Swiss slalomists and German and Finnish halfpipe masters are very strong in snowboarding. In women's slalom, the cult figures are the French Isabelle Blanc and Julie Pomogalski, and the Swiss Ursula Bruin.

SHORT TRACK (8 sets of awards)

A sport historically dominated by Asians, especially Chinese and Koreans. The American Anton Apolo Ono, the Bulgarian Evgenia Radanova, the Italian veteran Fabio Carte, and a number of Canadians manage to compete with them on equal terms. Our Tatyana Borodulina became the European champion last year, several times was a winner of the stages of the World Cup. Given the fact that in a short track, due to numerous falls, any surprises are possible, Borodulin has a chance to excel in Turin.

Not our patrimony

Sprinkle jumping (3 sets of awards) and ski biases (3 sets of awards)

The best that Russia is counting on is the fall of Dmitry Vasiliev and the six to seventh place in team competitions. The biathlor Sergei Maslennikov jumps well, but he has a weak move at the distance of the ski race. In jumping from the springboard, forecasts are ungrateful. The past Olympics was unexpectedly won by the Swiss Simon Amman, who did not shine either to Salt Lake City or after him, and a year ago, Slovenian Junior Rock Benkovich was excelled at the Middle Slump competitions under the World Cup program. The best results this season with Finn Yanne Ahonen and Czech Yakub Yandy. Their main rivals are Norwegians, Austrians, Swiss Andreas Kuttel, Pole Adam Baby.

Dwarves Ronnie Ackerman (Germany) and Khan Mannin (Finland) recently quarreled at the finish of one of the stages of the World Cup. Ackerman poked a ski stick at the athlete from Suomi, then, however, he apologized. The Olympic duel of the two stars of the sport is heated and expected to be impatiently. Austrians and Norwegians also aimed at victory and prizes.

Ski skiing (10 sets of awards)

All Italy will root for the slalomist Georgio Rockka, the heir to the great Alberto Tomba. The American Bode Miller, who occupies the third place in the overall standings of the World Cup, admitted that he often went to the start of a cruel hangover. Therefore, the success of his speeches often depends on compliance with the regime. In male disciplines, the most powerful team is Austrian, for women, the Swede Anya Person and Croats Yanitsa Kostelich claim the title of the main character of the games.

Skeleton (2 sets of awards)

Last weekend, Alexander Tretyakov became the world champion among juniors, but he can be called our hope only in relation to the 2010 Winter Olympics. Alexander repeatedly set the records of acceleration tracks, but during the distance he makes many mistakes and at the stages of the World Cup is usually classified in the third ten. The male elite includes Jeff Payne (Canada), Gregor Stalei (Switzerland), Eric Bernotas (USA), and representatives of the same countries claim to be awards.

Kerling (2 sets of awards)

Only the women's team acts from Russia. To compete with the grads - Canada, Sweden, Norway - she can’t yet. If our girls in a tournament with the participation of ten teams make a positive balance of victories and defeats, then this result can be regarded as very successful.

Prepared by Olga ERMOLINA and Ilya TRISVIATSKY