Russia's Olympic Superiority Slips Away

In the New York Times article "Chill Descends Over Russia as Olympic Medals Prove Elusive", published on February 18th, 2010, Michael Schwirtz explains Russia's despair as the country watches the gold medals that were predicted to adorn its athletes, hang around the necks of others. In the first five days Russia accumulated only three medals, as opposed to the nine they amassed at the same time in Torino. One area where they seem to excel? Excuse-making. Russian athletes and coaches have blamed everything from the weather to the facilities to the humidity for their athletic follies. After an accusation of mocking the Aborigines, the Russian ice dancing duo was pressured to alter their performance. Valentin Piseev, president of the Russian Figure Skating Federation, then claimed that "they were the target of an international plot to force them to alter their performance." Russia has utilized the Olympic games one of the last arenas in which they can exert their strength, but ever since the fall of the USSR, Russia's athletics have suffered. After the breakup of the Soviet Union many coaches and athletes moved to other countries, or became citizens of the newly independent satellites, leaving the Russian sports machine in disarray. Russia was able to use Soviet trained athletes throughout the 1990s, allowing it to remain as an Olympic superpower, but those who came of age to enter the Olympics after the Soviet collapse are now being termed "the lost generation". Recently, the government as been pumping money into the rebuilding of the athletic sector, but in true Lenin fashion, it has not paid off soon enough. Now officials are calling for the firing of athletic coordinators and Putin has issued a statement "suggesting that there could be repercussions for athletic officials if Russian athletes continue to fall short in Vancouver." “'Anything under fourth place for our team will certainly be a failure, including for those who oversee athletics in our country,'” said Boris Gryzlov, a United Russia leader who is speaker of Parliament."

The Olympic games serve as on of the largest peaceful forums under which dozens of countries come together to compete in athletic events and spectate, making it a huge foreign affairs issue. A country's public image can vastly change based on its performance, and Russia is seeing the last of its superpower image slip away with each gold medal lost. Russia's economic policy has also been altered recently in order to install a bigger and better athletic program to echo the sports program seen under the Soviet Union. Plus, Putin's statement concerning repercussions largely concerns his governmental dominance and the nationalization of the Russian sports industry. If he has the capability to punish athletic coordinators based on their athletes performance in the Olympic games, it calls into question the legitimacy and transparency of the Russian government, and serves as another example of Russia's excuse-making.

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