As it has already become obvious, the winter Olympic Games in Vancouver were rich in the failures. The cohort of the non-achievers is headed by United States, Russia, Austria and Germany. Many sportsmen have been the forth ones, and that is even worse as to be among the last ones. The Russian team, disappointed the fandom, was awaited to be more successful. There are many ideas and explanations of that, from the self-condemnations like we-are-the-worst to condemnations of everybody except us. The professionals offer opinions like these:

Opinions: Irina Rodnina Three-time Olympic champion and legend of the figure skating Irina Rodnina has criticized both the sports officials and the sportsmen, discussing the failure of the Russians in skating. She supposes the sport bureaucrats have responsibility for that, because they are irresponsible in the training of the athletes. She also said that the Olympic Committee headed by Leonid Tyagachev has not even established the medal plane for Russia, because they knew that the team was expected to fail and did not want to risk. And they haven’t done anything to make things right. What about Evgeni Plushenko’s showing, it was weak, in her opinion. Rodnina doesn’t deny that he was really fighting, he even could win, but the national federation has not managed to turn the scale. Moreover, she says, that the sportsmen’s motivation is not right. They do not fight for victories, but work for money, and it affects their results.

Opinions: Vyacheslav Bykov, the head coach of the Russian select hockey team.

First of all, he suggested putting all the hockey team to death. This black joke and the phrase “if you were sleeping and haven’t seen the match you are lucky” he said in the interview ran like lighting. The information agency of RIA “Novosti” called the play Russia-Canada won by Canada 7 goals to 3 “a nightmare in Vancouver”. Anyway, it was a real deprivation for the boasted Russian hockey team and by the way, for its coach, too. While Bykov was criticizing the sportsmen, Alexander Evstrakhin, the member of the Russian Hockey Federation supposed that the team was not guilty in the failure, but the coach was. “The players are not guilty. It was really possible to win having these team personnel. But even the orchestra of the Mariinsky theatre needs a director”.

All in all, they both agree in one point: the lack of the will-to-win. Oh, there is one more point. Everybody knows, that somebody is guilty and even ready to point who it was. But nobody said: mea culpa, instead of saying "I'm a bad". And it is a real problem. Rodnina says that we have already failed the coming Olympic Games Sochi-2014. She even has explained why. There are no young sportsmen prepared, there are simply not very much children for that (the consequences of the demographic hole of the early 90-s), etc. But in my honest opinion the main problem is that nobody said: I was working not hard enough. And it is not only the Russian problem. Vancouver-2010 demonstrated it clearly, when the Georgian slider died in the accident, which could be prevented with changing the structure of the trace. It was obvious, when the confusion took place already on the opening ceremony.

If we all are so tired and do not want to be responsible for the consequences, should we carry out Olympic Games, or would not it be more appropriate to have a rest?

Yulia Buzykina

Sources:
    www.inosmi.ru

    www.echo.msk.ru

    www.inosmi.ru

    www.gzt.ru