The Road to Nagano

Russian sport has changed dramatically since Soviet times, when the authorities poured money into Olympic training programs and elite sports were ultra-politicized. Now, sports management has been decentralized into regional committees, supported mainly by local budgets, and major stars

are continuously being attracted abroad, weakening traditional Russian sports programs like ice hockey. Yet, despite these problems, Russia is still a force to be reckoned with in most winter sports. In the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer four years ago, Russia won 11 gold medals, the most of any national team. Alexei Dospekhov and Valeriya Mironova assess Russia’s chances of repeating this success in Nagano.

On February 7, in Nagano, Japan, the biggest sporting event of 1998 – the Winter Olympic Games – will begin. Viewers worldwide will be glued to their TV sets, as 2,593 participants from 67 countries – including newcomers Uruguay, Macedonia, Azerbaidzhan and Kenya – compete for 70 sets of medals in 15 different programs. Three new events (curling, women’s hockey and snowboarding) will be introduced.

According to preliminary figures, 306 athletes were to represent Russia’s official delegation. However, some were eliminated in the qualifying tournaments. And, after Russia decided not to participate in the women’s hockey and curling events and cut down some other teams, only 126-128 Russian athletes ended up on the final roster for Japan, compared to 207 from the United States.

But if the number of Russian athletes is down, the award money they will receive for capturing a medal is up: a Russian Olympic gold medalist will receive $50,000, a silver medalist – $20,000 and a bronze medalist – $10,000. By international standards, these figures are quite high (the Germans value a gold medals at $17,000, a silver at $11,300 and a bronze at $8,500). By comparison, in Lillehammer four years ago, Russian medalists received only $15,000, $7,000 and $3,000, respectively.

In the opinion of Victor Mamatov, Olympic Biathlon gold medalist in 1968 and 1972, the Russian team could win 11 gold medals in Nagano (3-4 in skiing, 2-3 each in the biathlon and figure skating, one in speed skating, and one or two more in other sports, perhaps in hockey and alpine skiing). Given that many former Soviet stars, namely in skiing and the biathlon, are now competing for Russia’s near abroad rivals, this may seem like a tall order. Or is it?

Nordic Skiing: Super-Hard Track

In spite of the fact that, at press time, the composition of the Russian Olympic Nordic (cross-country) ski team had yet to be finalized, Nordic Ski Federation President Anatoly Akentyev named most of the probable participants. For the women’s team, these will be Yelena Vyalbe, Larisa Lazutina, Nina Gavrylyuk, Olga Danilova, Natalya Masalkina and Yuliya Chepalova. And for the men, Alexei Prokurorov, Sergei Chepikov, Vladimir Legotin, Maxim Pichugin, Gennady Shlyundikov and Sergei Chernykh will participate. Between them, the men’s and women’s teams have their sights on winning a minimum of three gold medals.

Akentyev himself believes that 14-time champion and five-time World Cup recipient Yelena Vyalbe, who has two Olympic gold medals in relay racing under her belt, should finally win a gold in the individual race in Nagano. He also predicts victories in the individual and relay for four-time world champion Larisa Lazutina and 1997 world relay champion Olga Danilova. Furthermore, he considers that the Russian men have a good chance in the relay event, as does 1988 Olympic champion and 1997 world champion Alexei Prokurorov in the 30 and 50 km races.

The leader of the Russian women’s ski team, Yelena Vyalbe, 29, who was voted Russia’s best sportswoman of 1997 and currently holds the overall world record for number of World Cup victories, said that “only a kamikaze can win in Nagano,” as the ski track there is extremely difficult. Her main competitors are considered to be skiers from Russia, Italy, Scandinavia and the Czech Republic.

“The thing is that, a year ago, I was the only Russian to have broken in this ski track during the pre-Olympic week,” Vyalbe said. “If we arrive in Nagano a week before the start, we can solve the problem of temporary adaptation and acclimatization before the Olympics, but then it is beyond our power to control the weather. The Olympic track in itself is super-difficult. And if there is a thaw, the ice will turn into a skating rink. It will be incredibly difficult to win under such conditions. And anyone who is able to win twice should immediately be named a hero.” Vyalbe (who is divorced from former skier Urmas Vyalbe and has a 9-year-old son living in Estonia) says that Nagano will be her last Olympic appearance, and, after hanging up her skis, she plans to become a commentator. A gold in Nagano would make for a nice conclusion to her impressive career.

Alexei Prokurorov also declared that the Nagano Olympics will be his last. The 33-year-old Prokurorov was the 1988 Olympic champion and 1997 world champion in the 30 km race. He still considers the 30 and 50 km distances to be his priorities, although he hopes to prove himself in the relay as well.

“These days,” Prokurorov said, “I often recall Vyacheslav Vedenin’s feat during the 1972 Olympics in Sapporo. Vedenin embarked on the fourth stage a little over a minute behind the Norwegian leader, but in the bamboo thickets, when no one saw him, he shortened a huge gap to a minimum and exploded into victory at the very finish line in the ski stadium. Projecting this moment onto the present day, I somehow imagine that now, too, the Russians should have good luck in the relay race in this same Japan.”

“I don’t think I will leave skiing after the Olympics,” he continued, “although I will be 34 on March 25 and I am still unmarried. On March 1 of next year, I want to try to ski 90 km in the Vasaloppet marathon for the first time in my life. By the way, I will make a decision about what to do next after the Olympics in any case – either to continue my career as a classic racer, or to gradually move over to the marathon. And there’s another option – to become a coach.”

Biathlon: Gunning for Victory

Alexander Tikhonov, president of the Russian Biathlon Union and a four-time Olympic champion in his own right, maintains that there was not a single gap in the pre-Olympic preparation of the Russian biathlon team. The team members did absolutely everything they had intended to and are now counting on winning a minimum of two Olympic gold medals. Particular attention was paid to the shooting. The backbone of the team was determined from the results of control tests and consists of 9 men and women, who are still participating in the World Cup. The women are Olga Melnik, Olga Romasko, Anna Volkova, Galina Kukleva, Nadezhda Talanova and Albina Akhatova, as well as ex-skiers Natalya Martynova, Svetlana Ishmuratova and Natalya Sokolova. The men’s team includes Vladimir Drachev, Sergei Tarasov, Viktor Maigurov, Alexei Kobelev, Sergei Rozhkov, Pavel Muslimov, Pavel Rostovtsev, Andrei Padim and Pavel Vavilov.

Three-time Olympic champion Anfisa Reztsova, 32, who after the birth of her second daughter last spring, not only began training again but also became the 1997 summer champion in the sprint and relay events, did not achieve high results in the snow, and at press time, the question of whether she would be included on the Olympic team was still up in the air.

Sergei Tarasov and Vladimir Drachev said they intend to split all the Olympic gold between them. A 1994 Olympic and 1996 world champion in the 20 km race, Tarasov, 32, said he is convinced that in Nagano he will not repeat the shooting mistakes that he committed during the relay event at the recent world championships in Slovakia. “In that situation, it was not my fault. The coaches, who allowed the situation on the team to get out of control, are fully and completely to blame. The thing is that, when we athletes, even if we are leaders, are given too many rights, the entire psychological climate of the collective is destroyed. The coaches did not want to include me on the relay team. But the evening before the start, my personal coach Alexander Nikiforov talked me out of taking any rash chances, and I was included on the team anyway.

“I believe that a team must have a leader. As in a pack of wolves. We have two – myself and 1996 10 km world champion Drachev (31). I am deeply convinced that it is fully within our power to win all the Olympic gold between us. All the more so because Vladimir has completely rid himself of all the health problems (he had liver problems), which haunted him all last season. We will dedicate all the time remaining before the Olympics to special training, as the biathlon track in Nagano is unusual. It is more similar to alpine skiing, inasmuch as it is full of abrupt turns and dizzying descents. We consider our main Olympic rivals to be biathlonists from Scandinavia, Italy and Germany.”

Speed Skating: Klapping on New Skates

At the Russian Championships, which took place from December 17-19 at Berlin’s indoor ice track (in Russia, there is not a single indoor speed skating rink), the makeup of Russia’s Olympic speed skating team was decided. The Russian team’s best medal hopes are considered to be the sprinters, primarily 1996 World Champion and 1996 500 meter World Cup winner Svetlana Zhurova (25), as well as 1994 Olympic 500 meter champion Alexander Golubev (25) and Sergei Klevchenya (26), the overall 1997 world champion in all-around sprinting.

Svetlana Zhurova recalls the Championships in Calgary: “We heard about the top record of Canadian Catriona Lee May Doan in the 1,000 m [while we were] in the Calgary airport and ... we didn’t believe it. After all, a year ago she was skating three seconds slower. But the very next day, she, along with an American, showed an altogether incredible time at both sprinting distances. Stunned, we began to analyze the situation. It turned out that almost all the leaders of the Canadian team went over to a young and unknown coach this year. So does this mean he has found some new method? Well, the alternative conclusion lay on the surface. Russian speed skaters don’t skate at all in the summer, getting out on the ice – and foreign ice at that – for the first time only in October.

“Therefore, it seems to me that Russian speed skating is slowly dying. The best athletes who came of age during Soviet times will soon quit. And there is no one after them. But even we are now doing two kinds of sports – half a year of plain skating, and the other half-year rollerblading, bicycling and running. In this situation, the subtle feelings of the ice are lost. So much money is spent on the necessary preparations abroad that it would have been possible to build a rink in Russia long ago with this money.”

Add to this a new technological twist: the sport of speed skating is being revolutionized by a new type of skate [which actually was first developed in the 1890s] with a mobile back, called the klap-skate. It is allowing even modest skaters to break world records. However, according to Zhurova, Russian skaters received their first “klaps” from Japan only in October – a circumstance that has caused them a world of trouble.

“When, two years ago, marathoners first appeared on klaps,” Zhurova said, “all the sprinters decided that they did not suit them. But last year the Dutch firm Viking perfected its model, and now sprinters too have already set records on precisely this type of skate. The previously undistinguished Marianne Timmer (Holland) attained the first success on klaps when she unexpectedly became last year’s 1,000 meter world champion. This year, almost all sprinters are using klaps. Only a few, and I am among them, skated two competitions of the 1997 World Cup on classic skates. I achieved a time equal to my personal best, but came in only sixth in Canada ... I am in full agreement with the opinion of six-time Olympic champion Bonnie Blair: either klaps should have been banned immediately and allowed only at the end of the Olympics, or else two different competitions should be held – on klaps and on classic skates.” Zhurova’s attitude is understandable. After all, klap-skates require a different type of coordination and are surely difficult to get used to after 20 years of training on classic skates.

Zhurova said she believes that the Russian team can win three medals in her sport – a gold, a silver and a bronze. She considers her main competitors to be Canadians Lee May Doan and Susan Aukh, Kyoko Shimazaki (Japan), Xue Ruihong (China), as well as German skaters Franziska Schenk and Sabine Volker. In the men’s category, the Canadians, Dutch, Japanese and Koreans are all considered to have good chances.

The super-modern track at Nagano should be an interesting experience for all the skaters. Apparently, a local Japanese scholar succeeded in growing a new multi-faceted ice crystal which provides for an ultra-fast track. Along with the new skates, this should make for some record-breaking times.

Alpine Skiing: Testing the Nerves

Russia’s main hopes in Alpine skiing are pinned on its women, and especially on 25-year-old Varvara Zelenskaya. Other members of the team include 1994 silver medalist Svetlana Gladysheva and the young Anna Larionova and Svetlana Novikova.

During the 1996-97 season, Varvara Zelenskaya (who hails from remote Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky) took third place in the overall rating of the World Cup in the most prestigious type of alpine skiing, the downhill (where skiers drop 600-1000 m over a 3 km course). During the final competition in the US, she appeared wearing the red number of the Cup leader and almost managed to come in first. But the enormous pressure proved too much for her nerves. Nonetheless, this Russian athlete has managed to break through into an elite event traditionally won by western athletes. To date, Zelenskaya has won four World Cup competitions, but she is far from complacent about bringing home Olympic Gold. “The Olympics,” she said, “is a competition unlike any other, and I will never win it in my life if I first win, for example, four World Cup competitions in a row. My nerves won’t hold up. Realistically, several alpine skiers have a chance at winning the downhill – America’s Picabo Street, Austria’s Renate Goetschl, Switzerland’s Heidi Zurbriggen, Germany’s Katja Seizinger and, of course, myself. You also can’t rule the French and Italians out of consideration.

“The track at Nagano is ideal not only for me. It’s fast and difficult. There are places where, from the steepness, you can set up an approach to a gentler slope. I, for example, can’t constantly stick to the same approach, and I can’t pick up speed on gentle slopes. I have to gather speed the way you’re supposed to and then hold back. In Nagano, I was able to do this like nowhere else.”

Asked whether she is superstitious, Zelenskaya said: “I do have amulets that are dear to my heart. There is also an omen that always hold true. The worse I sleep the night before the start, the better I perform. If my dreams are sweet and strong, my chances for success are nil.”

Figure Skating: Almost Flawless

The Soviet school of figure skating has always been considered the strongest in the world. Over the past 25 years, every Olympics and World Championships has brought at least two gold medals to Russian skaters. And Nagano is not likely to be an exception.

President of the Russian Figure Skating Federation, Valentin Piseev, said that, under favorable circumstances, the Russians could have counted on winning four gold medals in Nagano – the same number that they won at last year’s European Championships. “But you have to be realistic,” he emphasized. “We of course won’t manage to take home all the gold from Japan.”

Probably the weakest link on the Russian team is women’s figure skating. At the Russian Championships in December, the qualifying event for the Olympics, European champion Irina Slutskaya, who had obviously gained weight and fell after almost every jump, was a great disappointment. And she is probably the only one who could have given the United States’ Tara Lipinsky and Michelle Kwan and China’s Chen Lu a run for their money. According to a decision made by the Federation, Slutskaya, who was not among the three prizewinners in Moscow (namely, the experienced Maria Butyrskaya and the young Yuliya Soldatova and Yelena Sokolova), has been given a chance to reprieve herself at the European Championships in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Men’s figure skating has been dominated in recent years by Canadian Elvis Stojko and American Todd Eldredge. However, both Ilya Kulik and Alexei Yagudin have already beaten them, as has the team’s potential leader Alexei Urmanov, who, alas, could not take part in the Russian Championships due to an injury. If he can recover sufficiently by February, however, it is possible that Urmanov could replace Yagudin on the team. The latter, by the way, is probably the most original figure skater in the world at this time, thanks to his coach Alexei Mishin, who makes each program into a real spectacle.

As for pairs skating, all three Russian couples (who, barring unforeseen occurrences, will be Marina Yeltsova and Andrei Bushkov, Oksana Kazakova and Artur Dmitriev and Yelena Verezhnaya and Anton Sikhuralidze) are capable of winning a medal. And, apart from world champions Mandy Woetzel and Ingo Steuer from Germany, they have no real competition. “We are not afraid of the German pair a bit,” said Kazakova. “I am sure that we are in no way inferior to the German skaters.” Indeed, Russian/Soviet skaters have taken the gold in this event in the last nine Winter Olympic games.

If by any chance the Russians fail to win a gold in the singles or pairs skating, then they should at least succeed in the ice dancing category. For, in recent years, ice dancing has become a symbol of the might of Russian figure skating.

The Olympic favorites will be the phenomenal pair Oksana “Pasha” Grischuk and Yevgeny Platov, who, like Kulik, are coached by Tatyana Tarasova (daughter of legendary ice hockey coach Anatoly Tarasov). These 1994 Olympic champions were the only ones whom the Federation allowed not to participate in the Russian Championships – their abilities apparently needed no additional verification.

Nonetheless, Angelika Krylova and Oleg Ovsyannikov, who won first place in Moscow, said that they intend to put up stiff competition for the Nagano gold. “Everything can be decided by a single mistake,” said Krylova.

The graceful and fragile-looking Angelika, by the way, recently performed in Moscow with a serious injury – a pinched nerve in her leg, skating out the entire, extremely difficult program with a smile on her face. So far, Krylova has yet to win an Olympic medal, but the 24-year-old skater has already received one title, albeit unofficial. The Russian press has dubbed her “the sexiest female athlete.” Krylova does not hide the fact that she may soon attempt a modeling career. “In general, I love everything new in life,” she said. But she staunchly refuses to follow the example of several of her colleagues and pose for Playboy. “In my view, that is just shameful,” Angelika said with a smile.

Hockey: Trying to Revive

For many years, Soviet ice hockey players were not expected to win any Olympic medal except the gold. The Soviet hockey team was victorious at its very first Olympic appearance in Cortina d’Ampezzo in 1956 and never looked back. Of the 14 tournaments that have occurred since then, the Soviet team lost only two. And both times – in 1960 and 1980 – they were beaten by the Americans.

Along with all its other achievements, the Soviet team was essentially the only one that competed on equal footing with the best representatives of the North American hockey school. Suffice it to recall the 1972 Superseries, where the Canadian team, made up of NHL players, won at the very end of the last match. Or the 1979 Challenge Cup, when the Soviet stars won two out of the three meetings, one by the impressive score of 6:0. Or the Canada Cup of 1981, when the USSR team literally blew the hosts of the tournament away 8:1.

Unfortunately, the present generation of Russian players has almost forgotten about such great achievements. For, after the fall of the Soviet Union, and the accompanying mass exodus of Russia’s best players to the NHL, the Russian team has won only one prestigious tournament – the World Championships in 1993.

Most specialists agree that, at the Nagano Olympics, where the NHL’s strongest players will be present, Russia is unlikely to win the gold. And this comes in spite of the fact that Russian Hockey Federation president Alexander Steblin, head coach Vladimir Yurzinov and their assistants have worked enormously hard during the formation of the team. Still, they have not succeeded in gathering a real “dream team.” One reason for this is the conflict that has occurred between Russians playing in the NHL and the leadership of the Federation.

This conflict arose after the World Cup of 1996, in which the Russian team lost to the Americans in the semifinals. At that time, Federation representatives accused Russian hockey players of a lack of patriotism and an unwillingness to defend their country’s honor. The players, in turn, maintained that the bureaucrats were more concerned by how to squeeze more money out of the tournament than by the actual results, and that coach Boris Mikhailov, a former Soviet hockey player, had no idea of how to work with real professionals.

Steblin, who has headed the Federation ever since the still-unsolved contract killing of former president Valentin Sych last spring, is much better acquainted with the NHL players than his predecessor. It was on his initiative that the well-known specialist Vladimir Yurzinov, who has recently been working with the Finnish club TPS, was attracted to work with the Olympic team. His candidacy (In Nagano, he will be assisted by Zinetula Bilyaletdinov, Pyotr Borobev and Vladislav Tretyak), as opposed to Mikhailov’s, suited the majority of the hockey players playing in the NHL.

However, several NHL players apparently still do not believe that any positive changes have taken place in the Federation lately. For this reason, stars like Vyacheslav Kozlov (Detroit Red Wings), Nikolai Khabibulin (Phoenix Coyotes), Vladimir Malakhov (Montreal Canadiennes) and Alexander Mogilny (Vancouver Canucks) refused to participate in the Olympics. The latter openly admitted: “I’ll do better to relax in February with my family than to play hockey. I’m done with playing for the Russian national team.” Yet another potentially key Russian player Sergei Fyodorov (of the Detroit Red Wings – see last month’s issue of Russian Life) failed to sign a contract with his club before December 1 – the final deadline for the names of all NHL players participating in the Games to be announced – and was not included on the application list. A possible last-minute addition to this list is the Dallas Stars’ solid defender Sergei Zubov.

In the end, the Russian team included goalkeepers Mikhail Shtalenkov (Anaheim Mighty Ducks) and Andrei Trefilov (Buffalo Sabers); defenders Darius Kasparaitis (Pittsburgh Penguins), Boris Mironov (Edmonton Oilers), Alexander Karpovtsev (New York Rangers), Igor Kravchuk (St. Louis Blues), Dmitry Mironov (Anaheim Mighty Ducks), Dmitry Yushkevich (Toronto Maple Leaves), Alexei Gusarov (Colorado Avalanche) and Alexei Zhitnik (Buffalo Sabers); forwards Sergei Nemchinov (New York Islanders), Valery Bure (Montreal Canadiennes), Alexei Zhamnov (Chicago Blackhawks), Valery Kamensky (Colorado Avalanche), Alexei Yashin (Ottawa Senators), Alexei Kovalev (New York Rangers), Andrei Kovalenko (Edmonton Oilers), Pavel Bure (Vancouver Canucks), Valery Zelepukin (New Jersey Devils), German Titov (Calgary Flames), Sergei Krivokrasov (Chicago Blackhawks) and Alexei Morozov (Pittsburgh Penguins). Of these, probably only Pavel Bure – one of the league’s best shooters, Alexei Yashin and Valery Kamensky can be considered NHL superstars. Olympic favorites Canada and the United States have many more.

But this circumstance does not seem to bother the players themselves, who, according to Steblin, are “true Russian patriots.” “For me and, I think, for most of my teammates, the Olympics are a special competition incomparable with anything else. When I received an invitation to play for the team, I didn’t hesitate for a second,” said Kamensky, a 1988 Olympic champion, who will most likely become the team’s captain. “In Nagano, we will have one goal – victory. And we will be prepared to give everything for its sake.” RL

Alexei Dospekhov and Valeriya Mironova are sports correspondents for the Russian newspaper Kommersant Daily. Mironova contributed to the article “Still Going for Gold,” about the Summer Olympics in Atlanta (Russian Life, July 1996).