Olympic shame of Russia

Three days before the end of the Olympics in London, Russian Olympians won their 12th gold medal and took fourth place in the team medal standings.

Since the British team firmly settled in 3rd place with 25 gold medals, Russian functionaries had no choice but to admit the long-obvious failure of the Russian team. The head of the presidential administration , S. Ivanov, said: “It is unlikely that our team will repeat the Beijing result. And, accordingly, we can safely draw the following conclusion: for the first time in history, we will not take third overall team place.”

In principle, there is nothing surprising in this... The twelve-year era of the reign of the “national leader” is distinguished not only by a 12-fold increase in the number of Russian billionaires, an abundance of man-made accidents, natural disasters and a record rate of decline in the country’s population since the end of the Second World War, but also by an increasingly the obvious transformation of Russia into a second-rate sports power... And the results of the Russian team at the Olympic Games are the best confirmation of this.

Summer Olympics

• in 2000, the Russian team took 2nd place in the team medal standings, winning 32 gold medals; (total number 89);
• at the 2004 Athens Olympics, our team was already third (28 gold, total 92);
• in Beijing - again 3rd place, but with 23 gold medals (total number 73).

Winter Olympics

• in 1998, for the first time since the beginning of participation in the Winter Olympic Games, the national team of our country took only 3rd place (9 gold, total - 18). Before this, the USSR national team (and later the Russian national team) was first 8 times and second 3 times in the team competition;
• in 2002, the Russian team took 5th place (5 gold medals, total - 13);
• at the Turin Olympics in 2006, our team took 4th place (8 gold, total - 22). For some reason, the team's results caused great optimism among officials. State Duma Speaker B. Gryzlov expertly emphasized: “I believe that the performance of the Russian team at the Olympics in Turin can be described as optimistic, despite the fact that our team did not win leading places in the team event. I want to emphasize that we are making progress in many sports. Our athletes supported famous leaders.”
• in Vancouver in 2010, our athletes continued to “support famous leaders,” but the Russian team only took 11th place, receiving only 3 gold medals (15 in total).

And the disastrous performances of the Olympians are not at all an exception for Russian sports of the last decade...

In March 2012, at the World Championships in Ruhpolding, the Russian biathlon team showed the worst result in history, managing to win only 2 bronze medals and taking 7th place in the team event... A year before that, at the championship in Khanty-Mansiysk, our athletes were sixth with three silver medals...

The Russian national team has not reached the finals of the World Cup since 2002. At the 2012 European Championship, the Russian national team, secretly called “the team of candidate Putin’s proxies,” did not make it out of the group...

Such failures of our athletes are typical for almost all sports. Neither foreign coaches, nor oligarchs at the head of federations - nothing helps...

One of the few exceptions is, it would seem, the success of the Russian team at the World Hockey Championships... However, in fairness, it should be noted that the World Hockey Championship is still a second-rate tournament in the hockey hierarchy. The most prestigious is the Stanley Cup, while the World Hockey Championship is for hockey players from unsuccessful NHL teams that failed to make the playoffs (or were eliminated from there at an early stage).

So what is the reason for such a rapid transformation of the once sports power into an outsider in world sports? One can, of course, blame “dishonest judges” , “world conspiracy” and the fifth column within the Fatherland...

But still, the situation in Russian sports is not at all unique...

Russia is increasingly becoming a country that is absolutely uncompetitive with foreign countries... And we are talking about absolutely all sectors of the national economy and areas of public life. The “made in Russia” stamp is increasingly a sign of disgusting quality and a symbol of the loserism of the “lucky” owner of this thing.

• products of the domestic automobile industry;
• products of the domestic textile and footwear industry;
• domestic electronics;
• problematic superjets;
• falling satellites;
• outdated tanks from the 60s...

I'm not even talking about pseudo-nanotechnologies, the GLONASS system, “innovative Skolkovo” and other failed “achievements” of the “national leader” era. (And for that matter, the first satellite of the GLONASS system was launched during the life of L. Brezhnev, and in 1993 the system was put into operation...)

In the last decade, Russia has finally turned into a raw materials colony of Western countries, China and Japan... And budget revenues are generously spent on the construction of ever new oil and gas pipelines, through which crude oil and natural gas are pumped to neighboring states, and unnecessary mega-projects like APEC 2012, Olympics 2014, FIFA World Cup 2018, etc.

And there is a reason for this... The main problem of Russia is the ruling elite, consisting of classmates, colleagues and colleagues at the St. Petersburg mayor's office of V. Putin, who are absolute non-professionals, but have occupied all the highest positions in the state and in the largest state-owned companies...

And this applies to sports no less... Sports clubs, and sometimes entire sports federations, were distributed to acquaintances of the “national leader” or close oligarchs and turned into a kind of hobby for them...

Historical failures of the Russian biathlon team in 2011 and 2012. very upset the President of the Russian Biathlon Union since 2008 M. Prokhorov ...

The Russian Shooting Union has been headed since 2002 by V. Lisin , who in 2012 took second place in the Forbes ranking of the richest businessmen in Russia...

The President of the All-Russian Federation of Rhythmic Gymnastics since 2008 is I. Wiener - wife No. 1 in the Russian Forbes list of A. Usmanov ...

Russian Football Union from 2005 to 2009 was headed by V. Mutko , who in the “dashing 90s” was a colleague of the “national leader” at work in the mayor’s office of “northern Venice,” where he headed the mayor’s committee on social issues until Sobchak’s defeat. Since May 2008 gr. Mutko is the Minister of Sports. You can also evaluate the results of the “brilliant” leadership activity of ex-colleague V. Putin by the results of the Russian team’s performance at the Olympics in Beijing, Vancouver and London...

V. Mutko was replaced as president of the RFU by A. Fursenko , who is one of the co-founders of the Ozero cooperative and resigned after the shameful failure of the Russian team at Euro 2012.

A long-term sponsor of the Zenit football club is Gazprom, whose chairman of the board since 2001 is A. Miller, a former subordinate of the “national leader” in the FAC of the St. Petersburg mayor’s office.

The general sponsor of the football team “Lokomotiv” (Moscow), HC “Lokomotiv” (Yaroslavl) is JSC Russian Railways, whose president since 2005 is, again, one of the co-founders of the Ozero cooperative, V. Yakunin .

In July 2012, the well-known G. Timchenko became chairman of the Continental Hockey League.

The problems of Russian sports have the same roots as the rest of the problems of our country - nepotism and corruption in the highest echelons of government in Russia.

And the sooner we get rid of the current “political” and “economic” elite, the better it will be for us and for our descendants...