Fast ice

Since Russia took only fifth place in the team medal standings at the Winter Games in Salt Lake City 2002, the new White Olympics in Turin was expected with understandable anxiety. But reality exceeded all expectations. Our Olympic team not only regained its lost positions in cross-country skiing and speed skating, but also won medals in disciplines that were previously considered not ours - bobsleigh and sleigh.

Our representatives of ice sports brought a lot of joyful moments to fans of Russian sports. The fast walkers won awards of various denominations. Veteran Svetlana Zhurova, whom few considered among the favorites, became the winner in the 500-meter race, Dmitry Dorofeev won silver in the same program event, Ekaterina Abramova, Varvara Barysheva, Galina Likhacheva, Ekaterina Lobysheva and Svetlana Vysokova rose to third place on the podium honors following the results of races in the new Olympic discipline - team pursuit.

Luge athlete Albert Demchenko and four-man bobsleigh pilot Alexander Zubkov completed the previous season as World Cup winners, starting a breakthrough in these sports, where we had not won a single award at the previous Russian Olympics. In Turin, Demchenko and Zubkov and their comrades achieved silver, and now sleigh and bobsleigh will appear in Russia’s medal plans at the White Olympics for many years to come.

The skiers did not disappoint either. The doping scandals in Salt Lake City set us back in this sport for several years, and the forecasts for the performance in Turin were very cautious. At the very beginning of the Games in Italy, pessimists were pacified by Evgeny Dementyev, who was the first to cross the finish line in the 15+15 km race in the classic and free style. At the end of the Olympics, he consolidated his success with “silver” in the 50-kilometer marathon, and before that there was a brilliant victory for the women’s relay quartet consisting of: Natalia Baranova-Masalkina, Larisa Kurkina, Yulia Chepalova, Evgenia Medvedeva-Arbuzova.

As a result, compared to Salt Lake City at the Turin Games, the Russian team won three more gold medals, and if we count the total number of awards, the increase was nine medals.

Ilya TRISVIATSKY, Andrey VDOVIN