The first among no one

Russia invented its own international sports tournament and leads in almost all disciplines. Sometimes competing with itself

In Kazan, the Games BRICS are held - the Russian alternative to the Olympics. Athletes from non -existent countries came to the competitions, in some disciplines, Russians compete without rivals at all, and television teams talk about the genetic superiority of athletes from Russia. We talk about the main oddities of this tournament.

Games of your own composition

After the outbreak of full -scale war, almost all the main sports structures - the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and international federations for spreading sports - introduced restrictions on Russia's participation. This is somewhere called the “temporary detachment regime” (as in hockey, where the IIHF returns to the consideration of the issue annually), somewhere-the extension of the sanctions “to a different solution” (as in athletics, where Russia has been under the global bank since 2016 for a completely different reason-due to the permanent doping scandals, the defendants are not only athletes themselves, but also the athletes themselves, but also the athletes themselves, but also functionaries).

For some time, Russian sports officials repeated the same mantra: without Russia it is impossible to imagine world sport; The organizers of the tournaments will be pressed by TV shows who need a high rating; They themselves will return to us to ask for forgiveness. But international competitions are going on as usual, it turned out that sport without Russian athletes did not experience shocks, and somewhere a boom happened-for example, in figure skating, where representatives of many countries realized that now they had a chance to fight for the medals. TV showers also do not put pressure on anyone, and certainly no one calls Russia back.

The hastily organized Spartakiads only partially packed the holes in the Russian sports calendar, and their image was immediately spoiled by scandals with non -payment of the prize prize winners. All last year, it turned into a parade of announcements about the new “international tournaments” - “Games of the Future”, “Games of Friendship”, “Games BRICS” ...

Alternative Olympiad

BRICS games in the International Calendar have existed since 2016 and have been held every year. Most often it was a sporting event on the sidelines of the summit of the BRICS participating countries in any one sport. In 2016, India held a children's football tournament. A year later, China entertained everyone in the Wushu-Taola tournament (UUSHU-Evalities Complex "Battle with Shadow"). In 2018, a female non -ball tournament was held in South Africa. After Covid Pauses, they played online Shahmat and arranged a Break Dance tournament. This is the short story of the BRICS games ends.

Russia, which immediately designated these games as an alternative Olympiad, decided to hold a tournament on a program as close as possible to the Olympic. The program has 27 sports at once: acrobatic rock and roll, badminton, boxing, belts, breaking, rowing on kayaks and canoeing, rowing sport, judo, karate, horse sport, kuresh, light athletics, table tennis, swimming, beach volleyball, beach gandbole, water jumping, sambo, sambo, sambo, sambo, sambo, sambo, sambo, sambo, sambo, sambo, sambo, sambo, sambo, sambo, sambo, sambo Synchronous swimming, skateboarding, wrestling, sports gymnastics, tennis, weightlifting, Wushu, fencing, basketball biases, football biases, chess, rhythmic gymnastics.

Two weeks before the opening of the games, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko said that 97 countries confirmed their participation in them. The number of countries, which ultimately sent their athletes to competitions is not particularly advertised: in the list of teams participating on the official website of the event-90 countries, including unrecognized Abkhazia, South Ossetia and the Republic of Serbian.

In half the teams, there are 0 participants and 0 sports in which they compete.

In some countries, questions have arisen to athletes who are involved in the Games BRICS: for example, the Ministry of Education of Moldova conducts an internal investigation , it requested clarifications with the federations, to which athletes who came to Russia, the associations of martial arts, the judo, the Sambo Federation, and the rhythmic gymnastics Federation. If, as a result of an internal investigation, it is established that the Federation deliberately allowed the delegation of athletes to participate, they risk reducing or suspension of financing.

The International Game Status BRICS is categorically disputed by the IOC: a few years ago, a decision was made by the World Anti -Doping Association (WADA) according to which Russia would regain the right to conduct international tournaments on its territory only after receiving the National Anti -Doping Association (Rusada) of the certificate. Moreover, the Russian side also signed under this decision.

The Ministry of Finance allocated 1.29 billion rubles to the organization of games, the Tatarstan authorities spent another 4 billion rubles for the reconstruction of sports facilities for the tournament. But there was still not enough money.

“Do you understand why we do not show the opening ceremony of the BRICS games?” -speaks with me on the terms of anonymity one of the top managers "Match-TV". - And there is no ceremony there. We decided not to bother. They take out the flags, someone speaks a template speech-as in a school competition. Here is the discovery.

In the course of the tournament, the program is constantly redeemed: sometimes athletes the night before do not know what time they perform and whether they perform tomorrow at all. So, the finals of the BRICS games in synchronous jumps from the tower among men and women decided to unite. The fact is that the female duet eventually declared only one - Anna Konanyina and Julia Timoshinina.

The level of the tournament is at least the fact that the Olympic champion, the gymnast Nikita Nagorny, who, in fact, was tied with sports (now he is more fond of the leadership of the Unarmia), admits that he was preparing for no more than a week, and this was enough to easily win.

Victory over oneself

The organizers planned to rehabilitate themselves at the expense of an invitation to Kazan, the national team of Belarus, but it was not possible to ensure a worthy representation. As a result, in some sports in the program there was only one participant, in some cases - two.

The synchronist Alexander Maltsev is asked about his sensations after the victory in the standings, where he participated alone: ​​what should he compete with himself?

One line in the protocol, one person on the pedestal. No matter how this is the first.

Maltsev says in detail: "The sensations are strange, of course, but I perceive my performances as a social mission - to popularize my sport as much as possible."

His words are creatively processed by the TASS State Agency: "The four-time world champion in synchronized swimming, Russian Alexander Maltsev is not discomfort due to a small number of rivals at the BRICS games."

There are disciplines where two participants compete, that is, the loser is guaranteed to rise to the second step of the pedestal. And to make the protocols look beautiful for history, the organizers add several European countries, whose representatives did not even think to come.

Many wondered how the Georgian flag appeared at the awarding ceremony of samboists along with the flags of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. As the representatives of Georgia stated, "no one went anywhere." But the flag before the tournament was still taken out , and the names and surnames of the two Georgian athletes who are in Georgia were brought into the protocol.

“I don’t understand-the medal test, which for some reason is the official games of the games,” says Evgeny Slyusarenko, editor-in-chief of the Council. - Show that we won the race and Russia - the champion? So this only depreciates victory, any normal person looks at this table and thinks: "What kind of primacy of water pumping?" In our village there was already a similar case-the Olympics-80 in Moscow. After the Americans refused, the medal offset was unscrewed in the secretly. He has never been published even in Soviet sports. Logic - not to level the value of the victories of our Olympians. What is the beauty of the table, where the USSR has 80 gold medals, and the third Bulgarians have 8? It is a pity that now this feeling is not enough.

"Rus" and "shmara"

The full -time commentators who can competently and at the same time politically correctly comment on what is happening in Kazan, is not enough: these days the European football championship is held, so the best forces are abstracts to the main tournament.

But sports newspapers in Russia even publish a television program for a day, making it from two tournaments: the euro and the game of BRICS. It looks like it is something comparable and equal.

Scandals arise here. For commenting on sambo competitions, a freelance employee - Vladimir Ivanitsky was hired. During the performance of the Russian samboist Kirill Knyazkov, he said the following text : “A beautiful athlete, look at which one. The groom is real. 20 years in total. Girls, take note. But only to be a good couple. We do not need all sorts of shmars, we should have good genetics. Here is a representative of the Rus. " As a result, the commentator was still fired.