Not all the gold ...

Not counted. We were very correctly taught that socialism is an account. This was at a time when the national team, going to the Olympics, loudly voiced certain obligations. To occupy such and such a team place, to win so many gold-silver-bronze medals. And as a rule, the performance at the Games as a whole relatively accurately confirmed these pre -trialists. Today, the impression is that our national team is just going to work out as it turns out. We would somehow slip this vancuver-we will plan medals before Sochi
Russia had no such frail positions in front of any Olympics. Even at the preventive executive committee of the Olympic Committee of a separate conversation with senior officials, representatives of only four federations earned: ski races, biathlon, figure skating and hockey. These are the disciplines where we can really expect gold. The rest are in eleven species! -At best, they go for some crazy bronze, but basically who is going to get into the six, who threatens to enter the top ten ... It’s not very, true, it is clear what is the point of striving for these positions behind the pedestal, if the test is still carried out exclusively on medals. You can become the record holders of games in, say, fourth places, but in the eyes of the winners this will be no more than the reason for condolences.
At the last two winter games, Russia was the fourth. And this was presented to us as the temporary difficulties of the transition period: the pupils of the Sports School of the country of the USSR had already left, while the Russian was only born, in agony and lack of money. By the personification of this folding, in general, a reasonable scheme, the current State Duma deputy Svetlana Zhurova may well serve. In 2006, at 34, she became a two-time Olympic champion in high-speed skating, and her first success was dated to 1994. Between them - okay, timelessness, but where is the then promised breakthrough?! Four years ago, at the opening parade in Turin, the flag of Russia carried another elderly skater, Dmitry Dorofeev. And the country's prestige, in principle, did not drop it, took silver. But today he, by virtue of his age, is already in the coaches, and if his pupils together bring at least one medal of any dignity from Vancouver, this will be happiness.
In childhood, Zhurov and Dorofeev had the opportunity to train on a high-mountain miracle cap of Medeo, which then naturally retreated to Kazakhstan. And then the time has come when there was simply no artificial ice in Russia for the preparation of serious professionals - but what to say, if we have had the country's championship for almost ten years was held no closer than Berlin! But under the Minister of Fetisov (who took office shortly after the 20th Olympiad-2002), who moved to his chair just from the ice, such construction unfolded that the city of Kolomna now easily accepts the world championships. Only now, on the results of the host athletes, this paradoxically affected the other side: not only the stars did not begin to grow, even the “iron” creditors stopped appearing-those who, if they do not reach the medals, then at least not disgraced, reporting in places in the first ten.

Or take the skiing so beloved by our elite. Remember that the country brought a tennis boom to the country, which arose in the wake of this game of the first president of Russia. Five years, no more, it was required to carry out the transition of the quantity into quality, and when at the last summer Olympiad in Beijing our girls occupied the entire podium, it did not look like something supernatural. The Tarpishchev brigade a priori rode for medals - and brought them all. Sent in Beijing a team tournament - and they would have won it without question. And in the skiing, so many combinations in Vancouver will be played out - and everywhere Russians are obvious statists! The champions of Krasnaya Polyana does not roll. Although the tracks at the beginning of the 21st century were built as if no less than the courts at the end of the XX, not everyone was allowed to ride there ...
So the skine is hardly trusted to carry the Russian banner at the opening parade (although Vitaly Mutko offered on the wires of the Olympic team to the banners of Leonid Tyagachev-apparently, that at least some business in Vancouver will be found in Vancouver), they will most likely choose one of the hockey players. They won the world championships twice in a row, they and the flag in their hands. Of course, Evgeny Plushenko, who returned to the big sport, was clearly no less than Olympic gold, but he would already start in the early days. And more applicants, alas, are not visible. In skiing with biathlon, everything is quite shaky, of course, there are favorites of games, but for a start, they need to go through doping tests (hockey players with skaters have not yet come across them).
But the flag carrier proposed by Mutko is, as always, cheerful and cheerful. He says that we are going to fight for getting into the three, and the main competitors are positioning those who were ahead of us last time: Germany, States and Austria. The rest, it turns out, puts below. And in vain, Canadians are so precisely ahead of us, they have already gained medals more than Russians twice, and at the home Olympiad, which they began to prepare intensely with the very announcement of Vancouver by its capital seven years ago (we still celebrate the victory of Sochi), hoped to pour out if not for the first place with the Germans, then at least the Americans are pushing-and then they are already for themselves. There is also (at least) Norway, where Olear Einar Bjornalen can easily take more gold than the entire Russian delegation (in Turin the great biathlonist completely “overwhelmed the operation” without winning a single individual race, and this immediately rejected his country far beyond the borders of the usual three).
But for a place from the sixth of the current team of Russia, it is already possible to beat it. And this, believe me, is far from the most pessimistic alignment.