Vasily Izmailov: phenomenal

Vasily Izmailov The closing ceremony of the XXXI Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. Photo: Fernando Fraze/Agência Brasil

On the night of August 22 (August 21, local time) in the capital of Brazil Rio de Janeiro, the XXVI summer Olympic Games ended. At this Olympiad, the Russian team performed significantly better than expected.

In total, the national team of our country won 56 awards - 19 gold medals, 18 silver and 19 bronze - and took fourth place in an unofficial team medal standings. Meanwhile, most sports analysts believed that Russia would be able to achieve no more than 15 gold medals and were not sure that it would be included in the five best in the overall standings.

Russian gymnasts with gold medals. Rio de Janeiro, August 21, 2016. Photo: A. Golovanov and S. Kivrin / Information Service OKR

For the Russian national team, the Olympiad was especially tense in connection with the doping scandal preceding it, because of which a number of Russian athletes and, in particular, almost all athletes, were deprived of the opportunity to participate in the games. Nevertheless, Russia showed an objectively good result, winning awards even in those sports where they were not expected.

According to the analyst of Polit.ru Vasily Izmailov, the Olympiad in Rio was phenomenal, as she showed several amazing circumstances regarding both sports and other fields of life.

Brazil, August 20. The final match for the Uandball between the women's teams of Russia and France. Photo:

“As for the results of the past Olympics, this is a very interesting phenomenon that has several aspects worthy of discussing them.

The first aspect is mental. I am not ready to talk about whether the Russian national team is doping or not. Inwardly, I join the version that, probably, uses - just as if not all, then almost all teams. But that is not the point. The fact is how wrong and clumsy organized a campaign against the participation of our athletes in the Olympics.

This is a very important lesson: that there are no opponents from the “that side” of sane opponents; that the crisis of humanitarian education, about which we love to talk about in relation to Russia, affected, at least, the managerial elites of Great Britain and the USA; And the fact that the dialogue with those countries and regimes that express dissatisfaction with our country must be carried out very carefully, because the era of the 1960s, 1970s, the 1980s, when (do not take a war in Vietnam), the same Americans, by and large, did not allow serious “punctures”, it is a thing of a past. We are dealing with our elites completely adequate other managerial elites, and this is sad.

The second story is associated with the propaganda effect, and here I would say that for the first time after a long time an unprecedented propaganda effect has been achieved. It is connected not only with the understandable consolidation of the nation on the fact that “ours is offended”, and it is associated with real results. Since the Russian national team, of course, in the conditions in which she was in, could not afford to use some doping amplifier, the result she showed is phenomenal for me. After all, it was assumed that our sport is fundamentally unclean, that our sport is politically competitive and it is “organically unable to achieve honest results. What we saw completely refutes this picture.

Meeting of the Russian judo team at Sheremetyevo Airport. In the center: Hassan Khalmurzaev. Photo by Andrei Lyubimov / AGN "Moscow"

I do not take the international fencing Federation (it is clear that it exists with the money of Alisher Usmanov, and there is a slightly different story), but, for example, what happened in sports gymnastics is an absolute breakthrough equal to which there were no years, probably. Because the last great gymnast of the post -Soviet space, may Svetlana Khorkina not be offended by Vitaly Shcherbo, Belorus, and this is 1996. So, since 1992, at least we had nothing of the kind, and this is phenomenal. And so on, and so on, and so on.

In a sense, it is difficult for me to say which Olympics in its propaganda effect could be contrasted with the current Brazilian.

The anniversary coin of the Bank of Russia is the 100th anniversary of Russian football

Perhaps only Melbourne-1956, when the USSR national team received the first command place for the first time. Well, and, perhaps, Munich, where in 1972 there was the first truly doping, “steroid” Olympiad: everyone was on equal terms, and no one said that someone was playing dishonestly because everyone played dishonestly. And in these conditions, the USSR national team confidently took the first team place, winning where it never won before or after (let us recall equestrian sport and Elena Petushkova).

And the last story, which, probably, should have been said about, is a story related to our sports training system. Closely related to what I already spoke about, she strangely showed her effectiveness. And this is amazing: from the point of view of management, the Ministry of Sports that we have, and from the point of view of our initial understanding of the situation in our sport, and from the point of view, let's say, what happens in the country as a whole.

Probably, our assessments of the situation in sports management and, possibly, in public administration, are partially shifted in the negative side. Which, probably, is determined by some media, mental and domestic circumstances.

I love to remember the poet Evgeny Baratynsky, who by the end of his life for the first time was in Italy. I'm afraid to blame whether he traveled around Europe, but in Italy he was for sure. And then, returning from Italy, he wrote to his relatives and acquaintances that he realized how we underestimate the positive aspects that our kind father has.

Unfortunately, Baratynsky did not sail to Russia, having died on a ship from some illness, and could not realize what he wrote about, but in itself what he wrote about is a very significant property of Russian nature. Probably, we are not even underestimating, but we don’t really understand what is good with us. And, as the Olympiad showed in Rio de Janeiro, we are much better with us where we are used to thinking that we are not as good with us-or at least most of the journalistic community, those people who write about it, ”said Vasily Izmailov.

See also: Video of the day. Goodbye, Rio! Ilya Karpyuk in the morning. On August 22, the Olympic Games Russia ended in Brazil won gold in the struggle and silver in boxing on the OI gymnasts from the Russian Federation took gold of the Olympiad in team competitions Gleb Korepanov The fifteenth day of the Olympiad. Main