A year that is not

Putin announced 2024 in Russia the year of sports. And supported the initiative to conduct parades of physical education

For almost two years, Russian athletes have not been able to participate in international competitions. In some disciplines, dozens of athletes change Russian citizenship to another. Achievements are less. In general, sport in Russia is rapidly turning into a simulacrum - or into a copy of what really does not exist. However, the authorities say that right now the sport will receive a new impetus for development. Moreover, the next year in Russia was solemnly declared the year of sports.

The number of sports achievements that the country could be proud of was reduced even to disqualification. Synchronous swimming, rhythmic gymnastics, female figure skating - these are perhaps those species where Russia was considered an unconditional leader. Yes, and there were failures.

The hockey team won the Olympic title for the last time in 1992.

The football team conquered the latest serious titles back in Soviet times, and the successes of the national team and clubs are unsystematic and episodic: the long-standing victories of CSKA and Zenit (in 2005 and 2008) in the UEFA Cup, the semi-final for Euro-2008, the exit to the lost quarterfinals (for the top-collectors it would be a failure) 2018 World Cup. At one time, any club coach dreamed of the highest, for the majority not at all an achievable ideal - about working as a team coach. This was the recognition of already accumulated merits, and trust from sports functionaries of the federal level. Today, this position is simply chuckled. The Russian national football team, which is now working, Valery Karpin himself admits : "I do not hold on to my place."

Coaches no longer have to count on business trips abroad: now it’s hard to imagine that someone will repeat the tour of Leonid Slutsky to England and the Netherlands, where he trained “Hull City” and “Vitess”,

Or the success of Stanislav Cherchesov, who led clubs in Poland and Hungary.

There were bright stars in female figure skating, in sports gymnastics in men, in athletics, in skiing and martial arts. There is still tennis, but there is still more individual. These victories and names drowned in a series of charges of Russian sports: first - in doping, then in unwillingness to distance themselves from supporting military intervention in Ukraine.

After February 2022, Russian sport was “banned”: due to the disqualification of the Russian Olympic Committee (OKR) and Russian sports federations, teams cannot perform at international competitions, and athletes are ready to invite in neutral status-not only without a flag and anthem, which they write about and remind you constantly, without money from the state budget. Those who want to take part in tournaments are subjected to ostracism and accusations of betrayal.

Each sport has its own rules and algorithms for the transition from one sports "citizenship" to another. Sometimes “quarantine” (inability to participate in starts) reaches three years (as in athletics, for example), sometimes it is significantly shorter. But in each of the cases, the sequence of steps is the same: the unofficial search for another country is the official notice of “its” federation - receiving its consent - notification of the “new” and international federations. For most Russians, the situation will stop at the first stages: it is very difficult to get consent.

And now, in order to explain why they did not give consent, the authorities came up with, in fact, a serfdom:

The athlete who wished to change citizenship must compensate the state with all the funds invested in it.

At the same time, in Russia - according to the words of officials - sport is developing an unprecedented pace. Annually, under the auspices of the Federal Ministry of Sports, countless forums are held: “Sports and Russia”, “We are together. Sport ”,“ Russia is a sports power ”. They pass pompous, the charter of the Ministry of Sports is lucky for a whole plane of sports journalists.

But forums are for politicians, but what about athletes? In 2022, they held a Spartakiad. It ended with a scandal : the athletes accused the officials of not seeing the prizes. In 2024, a whole scattering of the competition was promised - “World Friendship Games”, “Games BRICS”, “Games of the Future”.

A few days ago, Vladimir Putin visited the forum in Perm, where he announced 2024 - the year of sports. Formally, this proposal was made by the head of the Boxing Federation of Russia (FBI) Umar Kremlin, which gained increasing political weight, but it is clear that the decision was prepared in advance.

Two other statements also caused a greater resonance: firstly, about the revival of the “Parades of Physical Culture”, and secondly, the indication “to deal with the fighters from hockey”.

The sports parade of physical cultures on Red Square is, of course, a direct reference to the Stalinist time, says Sports historian Stanislav Gridasov. In the 1930s, Gridasov writes, it was the same: “Before the group of football players is a section of a football field with a gate that several masters train. The column of Plovtsov is headed by a pool, filled with water moving by car with a trailer. The boxers unexpectedly filled the area of ​​the rings nearby, in which 30 pairs of the best fighters with judges and the referee are conducting the fight on the go according to all the rules. The arrangement of rings is extremely simple - these are four pillars with tightly stretched ropes attached to them, which are transferred by four people each. A stormy explosion of applause is caused by a small winter picture - a group of skates, demonstrating on ordinary steel skates on a small rink surrounded by piles of snow, the highest school of figure skating. As always, the column is formed strictly and simply. The main topics of the design: "Living has become better, comrades, life has become more fun, the struggle for personnel, the struggle for high sports results, love for the leader."

In the first decades of its existence, Soviet sport was totally “banned” with international structures: only unofficial teams could come to widely advertised friendly matches - for example, the Turkish team or the Basque team. And the mass viewer was content with Erzatsy: not boxing, but boxing at the parade, not football (the USSR championships began only in the 19th year of Soviet power), but a “site of fields with a gate”, not world records in a swimming pool, but a truck with water ...

At the same forum, Putin demanded to deal with hockey players.

“We need to understand what to do with these business dealers from hockey, who still take children from sports schools and drag abroad.

It is clear that we have a free country, it is clear that each person makes his choice, and we should not interfere with this, but it is also clear that this is a business, ” said Putin.

The Hockey and the Ministry of Sports immediately reported that all the necessary changes to the laws and decisions are already being prepared. “Now we will work on the development of legal acts along with State Duma deputies. Let's see how we can protect the interests of Russian hockey, athletes, coaches and sports schools to limit the departure of talented athletes, ” said Minister of Sports Oleg Matytsin.

However, even the deputies themselves doubt that such laws will really work.

“It will be difficult to prohibit young hockey players abroad. To keep young and talented athletes, it is necessary to create professional growth conditions for them, ”said Svetlana Zhurova, the Olympic champion in speed skating, the first deputy chairman of the State Duma committee on international affairs. -Athletes also say that you want to hold us, but where are we going to play? "

It is clear that

The athlete is not developing at the parades of physical education, without winning in third -rate tournaments, but only if he participates in international competitions.

In some sports, degradation is visible by the naked eye. Figure skating competitions recently collected full areas, where it was difficult to find an extra ticket, and now these are tournaments, where “stars” and first -groups are rolled together.

This is recognized even by journalists working on state media. “Figure skating in Russia quickly quickly passed from sports number two in the country and the peak in the wake of the latest Olympic victories-to passing intra-Russian starts with half-empty stands with an almost complete lack of interest in the results and a significant decrease in auditorial demand in the media field,” writes Vasily Konov, deputy editor-in-chief of Match-TV.

Many decisions in the world of sports are focused only on the position of Vladimir Putin. At the same time, his interest in sports in recent years has noticeably faded. If in 2007 he specially flew to Guatemala, where Russia just received the right to play in Sochi-2014, and actively participated in the applicant company for the 2018 football championship, now his statements on sports are fragmentary and rare. Even at annual press conferences, Putin sport questions were asked until 2019, and then they stopped.

At the same time, Putin’s position is changing from more or less liberal (in September at the Eastern Economic Forum, he quite calmly discussed the right of athletes to speak out of the country's flag) to reactionary and preservative. It is possible that this is due to the fact that the President’s position is actively influenced by a variety of groups.

Theoretically, this would be the Ministry of Sports, but the Minister Matytsin usually only reacts to the instructions launched on top. The Olympic committee also can not be suspected of pulling the blanket over himself: his political weight was much higher under the President of the OKR Alexander Zhukov (from 2010 to 2018), and now you can only remember this.

As a result, now Igor Levitin, the presidential adviser to Putin, turned out to be closest to Putin (since 2022, the president’s assistant, the former Minister of Transport (2004 - 2012), from 2022 to 2022 - the head of the European Tennis Union). His position is absolutely opaque, and he almost does not make statements on a sports topic. But it is he who, as is commonly believed, contributes to the decision -making in the field of sports.