Russia begins the fight for Olympic medals

The XXX Summer Olympic Games open today in London. For Russian sport, they represent a chance to convince that the trajectory along which it has been moving in recent years has at least ceased to be a trajectory of constant decline.

The London Olympics will take place two and a half years after the Vancouver Olympics, which brought the Russian team only three gold medals and a shameful 11th place in the medal standings. But if we consider the Olympic Games as a thermometer of the general state of the sports sphere, then the Summer Games in this sense are a much more reliable thermometer than the Winter Games. The fact is that the number of rewards at stake is three and a half times wider, and the role of the “random factor”, due to which in winter, if you have lost two or three gold due to circumstances, you can give away several positions at once, is reduced to a minimum.

Throughout the post-Soviet period, the Russian sports thermometer recorded a decline - both in the number of awards and in terms of status in the world sports hierarchy. Not abrupt - like a roller coaster, but too obvious. In 1996 in Atlanta, the Russian team, of course, no longer looked like the heir to the power of the USSR team, but they did not have to worry about taking second place after the Americans in the medal standings. In 2000, in Sydney, she first felt the Chinese breath behind her, beating a competitor who had rushed from behind only at the last moment. In 2004, in Athens, she let him go ahead too. And in 2008 in Beijing, again becoming third, it no longer even indicated competition with either China or America. But it was really leading him for the right to stay in the top three with Great Britain, four gold medals behind, which will certainly try to oust Russia from it at the home Olympics (and the status of its host, according to statistics, increases the country’s medal resources by about a third). And it will displace it if the mercury in the thermometer drops another one or two notches down. Or, rather, in the four years that have passed since the Beijing Olympic Games, it has no longer dropped, simply not yet settling on any specific mark, but jumping around it in anticipation of the London closing.

And it is incredibly difficult to discern where the column should eventually freeze, because the Russian team that went to London looks too, or rather, ambiguous.

On the one hand, it, like Beijing, clearly lacks what the Soviet Union once had, what can be called a base. Russian athletes will not take part at all in two types of programs - football and field hockey, but the number of sports in which (if no miracles happen) they should not be expected to perform feats still amounts to almost a third in total programs: there are rowing, sailing and equestrian sports, and archery. And some of its former trump cards have become weaker compared to the Olympics four years ago: in boxing, for example, Russian athletes in three of the ten weight categories did not earn Olympic licenses at all. And Russia, of course, did not give birth to an athlete of the level of American swimmer Michael Phelps, who climbed to the top step of the podium eight times in Beijing.

On the other hand, this four-year anniversary still gave rise to the feeling that, in general, something in Russian sports was changing for the better. It was given by, say, artistic gymnastics, which did not give Russia a single Olympic champion at two consecutive Olympics, and swimming, which has not had a champion since 1996. In these key events for the Olympic medal count, young people finally appeared who are capable of winning world championships or at least fighting for victory in them - Aliya Mustafina, Victoria Komova, Anastasia Zueva, Yulia Efimova. It was given to athletes, who usually helped out, and at last year’s world championship they collected nine gold medals and, judging by the results of this season, which resurrected, in particular, Elena Isinbayeva, they were eager to raise the “ceiling”. It was given to volleyball players: they constantly stumbled one step away from gold, and then suddenly they won both the World League and the World Cup, turning into favorites of the Olympics. It was presented by fencers, shooters and weightlifters who remained in the shadows in Beijing, but before London at the main competitions they performed extremely brightly.

At the same time, Russia has preserved sports where its dominance is not questioned—rhythmic gymnastics and synchronized swimming. And this is also a plus in these times, since examples when she previously lost it during the Olympic cycle come to mind instantly: take the same trampoline jumps.

It’s impossible to name a bad team that flew to London to lose - in which there are almost fifty current world champions, one for every ten athletes from the delegation. But there is no way to raise the column of this ever-falling thermometer in advance, or at least freeze it at some desired level. Even, it seems, those who are responsible for the outcome of the Olympics. Neither the President of the Russian Olympic Committee Alexander Zhukov, nor the Minister of Sports of the Russian Federation Vitaly Mutko named the medal plan, sacred since Soviet times, only outlining the already obvious range of possibilities of the Russian team: about two and a half dozen first places. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less.

And they can be understood. In reality, these feelings about the fact that the trajectory has taken off are too fragile. Too often in the recent past, the hopes associated with the Russian team turned out to be a failure due to the fact that the Olympic reality - with the Chinese jumping out of ambush and its own leaders suddenly losing their pre-Olympic luster at the most important moment - turned out to be much harsher than that supported the tables of the World and European Championships seemed to promise a breakthrough. The disappointment was too strong for those who, counting potential Russian medals, later discovered that they should have been counted much more carefully.

And in London the difference - between a little more and a little less - will most likely be, given the increased British chances of third place overall, even more noticeable than usual.

It will be the difference between a performance after which one can safely be proud of Russian sport, and one after which one can only try to be proud of its other achievements. For example, the number of millions of rubles spent on the construction of modern sports facilities, and billions spent on preparations for the 2014 Sochi Olympics. But history, including the recent one from Vancouver, screams that, alas, the fans - both ordinary ones and those making decisions about who runs the sport - absolutely do not care.

Alexey Dospehov

The third will not be out of place