Weak link

Athens bronze medalists will not travel to Beijing

At the end of last week, two world qualifying tournaments with the participation of Russian men's teams ended. And if no one initially counted on the field hockey team in Chile (everything immediately became clear after two crushing defeats with a score of 0:8), then the fiasco of the water polo players in Romania can be called a serious nuisance. Especially considering that at the previous Olympics in Athens our team won bronze medals. For Russian representatives of team sports, the selection for Beijing is actually coming to an end. There are two tournaments left, at one of which our team’s chances are close to absolute zero. We are talking about the national women's field hockey team, even if it is hosting opponents on its home field in Kazan (April 19-27). But handball players at the end of May - beginning of June at competitions in Croatia have an excellent opportunity to secure a ticket to the Celestial Empire.

In relation to our realities, team sports included in the program of the Summer Olympics can be divided into two groups. The first is the so-called “Big Four”, which includes the most prestigious basketball, volleyball, handball and water polo. The second is field hockey, softball, baseball, and football with its special Olympic status (players no older than 23 years old are allowed to participate), which are less popular and underdeveloped in Russia. Disciplines from the first group constantly bring us medals, are prestigious, Russians here, as a rule, are in leading roles in the world. In other sports, our achievements on the international stage are either extremely modest or non-existent. In football, the main efforts are aimed at ensuring the functioning of the national team, and the “youth team” often exists on a residual basis. In addition, the Olympic tournament itself is of dubious value here.

Returning to the current failure of the water polo players, who lost the chance to travel to Beijing, losing in the key qualifying match to Italy (10:11), we note that in the above four prestigious events, every Olympic cycle in Russian history we always have a weak link. In Soviet times (including the participation of a joint team at the 1992 Games in Barcelona), there was not a single case when basketball, handball, water polo and volleyball teams did not qualify for the Olympics.

The first precedents with a minus sign were created before Atlanta 1996 by the men's basketball team and handball players. “Gullivers”, after winning silver at the 1994 World Championship, failed at the European Championship the following year, finishing only in seventh place. The women's handball team finished sixth at both the continental championship and the World Cup, finding themselves left out of the Olympics, where only eight teams were admitted.

Recently, international federations have begun to move away from limiting Olympic selection exclusively to championships of the planet and continents. Additional qualifying competitions are now being organized. In the current cycle, world qualifying tournaments have already been held or will be played in all sports of the mentioned “Big Four”.

Due to another failure at the World Cup, handball players again did not make it to Sydney 2000; they found themselves excluded from participating in the largest sports forum of the four-year period at the next Games, although they became world champions in 2001. But handball experts call such tournaments at the beginning of the Olympic cycle “pass-through”, since most teams undergo a radical rejuvenation of their roster. In addition to the women's handball team, the basketball players also turned out to be a weak link for Athens (8th place at Euro 2003). The Olympics in Greece was remembered for the massive medal successes of the rest of our players - “silver” for volleyball players, “bronze” for basketball players, water polo players, men’s handball and volleyball teams.

In light of all of the above, the achievement of the Russian Volleyball Federation, which last year celebrated the 75th anniversary of its activity, can be called unique. The sport was first included in the Olympic program in 1964, and since then both our national teams, men's and women's, have always been represented at the Games. Excluding, of course, the 1984 tournament in Los Angeles, which the Soviet Union boycotted.

Ilya TRISVIATSKY