Team Russia finishes 5th in medal standings 22.01.2012

On the final day of Innsbruck 2012, Russia earned silver at the ice hockey tournament. Finland became the roadblock in Team Russia’s race for success; our national team lost to the Scandinavian team in a shoot-out. It was the second time when Finland defeated Russia at Innsbruck 2012, the first victory had been claimed in the group stage.

All in all, the Youth Olympics proved the tendencies of world sports development that are already established in professional sports. Germany, Italy, Austria, USA, Latvia lead luge; Japan, South Korea, Netherelands are best in speed skating; Austria, Slovenia, Switzerland, France, Sweden, Norway exceed in Alpine skiing; Germany, France, Russia prevail in biathlon. Fortunately, Russia still reigns in such sports as skiing and figure skating.

In fact, the medal standings are almost the same as at the adult Olympics, except for the absence of Norway, USA and Canada in them. Canada that had been the first in the unofficial medal count at Vancouver 2010, finished 11th in Innsbruck (2-1-5). USA is in the 10th place (2-3-3) and Norway neded 9th (2-5-2). There is nothing strange that the unofficial team rankings were topped by Germany, China, Austria and South Korea. With Germany and Austria, it’s simple; at home even the walls help. As for two other Asian nations, their top positions result from a poor performance of other leading winter sport nations. In Asia people grow up faster. If it was not Winter, but Summer Olympics, the outcome would be different. Due to a great number of Caucasian athletes on Team Russia’s roster, the medal standings would be in our favour. What I want to say is that we shouldn’t sprinkle ashes upon our heads. What we need to do is to conduct a regular and systematic work, and it concerns everybody, athletes and people working with them, coaches and sports managers. It must be the work aimed at a further training of most promising athletes of the current national team and recruitment of other worthy athletes in it. We must learn lessons from Innsbruck 2012, but do not fall into fanaticism.

«The title ‘Olympic Games’ imposes a high responsibility,» Lyudmila Turischeva commented the results of the Games to the Ves Sport News Agency. «I think that if the Youth Olympic Games were held in some former USSR nation, it had been approached with a serious attitude and held on a nationwide scale, in compliance with the requirements placed to the real, adult Olympic Games. And in Austria, it’s entirely my personal opinion, there was no such serious approach to what was going on there. It seems to me, that even some IOC representatives had the same casual attitude. Everything was just childish…»

One of the facts speaking in favour of the ‘childish nature’ of Innsbruck 2012 is the incident when an unskilled medical care was given to Roman Terekhin, an athlete from Kazan. «An unqualified doctor was sent to us, which has never happened in my experience of participating in Olympic Games, and her wrong injection led to a hematoma. Such things should not be allowed!» By the way, after that Roman Terekhin competed in the Nordic combined team events, where Russia finished 13th, in the last place. The coaches also complained that two other athletes also showed a poor performance. Anastasia Veschikova failed her jump, Yury Samsonov fell while landing. There were no pretensions to Roman Terekhin, despite the incident with doping control.

Djaudat Abdullin

Special to kazan2013.com