Olympic Dreams

The untold story of the 2000 Sydney Olympics is this: the winner in the overall medals race was not the US, but the USSR. Sure, the USSR no longer exists, but that is just “a technicality.” The lingering shadow of the huge Soviet Athletic Machine was apparent at Sydney. Taken together, the states that once comprised the Soviet Union brought home a total of 163 medals, 48 of them gold (see chart, page 20). And this does not even count former Soviet athletes competing for non-CIS states (including the US) ...

Of course, today, 9 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, little is left of the Soviet Athletic Machine. Heavy state funding is gone and so is the promotion of talent at the grassroots level “regardless of family income.” There are still some leftovers from the infrastructure and the coaching staff, but lots of sportsmen no longer subordinate their individual interests to those of the team. Which is why head coach of the Russian handball team, Vladimir Maximov (who brought the Unified CIS team a gold in Barcelona-92 and now a second gold in Sydney) said he cannot take a vacation. “Because when you come back from vacation, you may find neither the sports sites nor the players,” he quipped.

Nostalgia aside, even given the travails of the past decade, Russia proved its mettle in Sydney, coming in a strong second in the overall medals ranking. Such an outcome was not a foregone conclusion. Early in the games, Russia was in ninth place, and with just three days to go, Russia trailed both the US and China. But a strong final weekend, where Russian won more golds (8) in one day than any other country on any other day at Sydney, pushed Russia into second place.

But medal rankings are just numbers. The true Olympic stories are the human stories of achievement, triumph and even defeat. Here are a few of the stories of Russia’s athletes.

Trampoline gold medalist Alexander Moskalenko quit sports long ago and started pumping gas to feed his family. When he learned that trampoline was made into an Olympic sport,

Moskalenko put himself on a Spartan weight loss program, dropped 24 kilos (52 lbs) and took the gold at the ripe old age of 31.

Handball goalie Andrei Lavrov (38) was entrusted with carrying the Russian flag in the opening ceremonies, and it proved the perfect choice. Like Moskalenko, Lavrov abandoned all other pursuits to practice for the games. The gambit paid off and Lavrov became the first person ever to win three Olympic golds in handball.

Sergei Klyugin beat the heavily-favored Russian Vyacheslav Voronin and the Cuban world record holder Javier Sotomayor to take the gold in the high jump. Klyugin was also quite humble in the aftermath of his success. For him, he said, the main thing in life is bringing up his son. And, he added, he owed his victory to his teammate Slava Voronin, who helped him grow. “Lucky weather ... rain,” was also something he was thankful for.

Renowned sprinter Irina Privalova had already won Olympic silver and bronze at previous games. But at Sydney, Privalova, now in her early 30s, brought home her first gold. Yet the truly remarkable thing is that she won not in races she has long trained for, but in the 400 meter hurdles, an event she had been training for just six months. In fact, the Olympic race was just her sixth official start in this event. “I knew that the main thing for me was to clear the hurdle,” Privalova said. “Even if I were to jump over it like a goat, it’s OK, as long as I know I can run the distance faster than the others.”

In tennis, Russia showed itself as a new power to be reckoned with. While Marat Safin lost in the first round to an old nemesis (see cover story, page 15), Yevgeny Kafelnikov took the gold in men’s singles, and Yelena Dementieva brought home the silver in the women’s singles.

There were, of course, the tragic outcomes as well. For Alexander Karelin, a silver in Greco-Roman wrestling was a shock. After a 14-year winning streak and three straight Olympic golds, he lost to a young American wrestler in a bout even seasoned observers are struggling to explain. Likewise, speed swimmer Alexander Popov, the “Russian Rocket” of the Atlanta games, only brought home the silver in the 100m race. Andrei Chemerkin, once the strongest man on the planet (in weightlifting), left Sydney with no medal at all.

The gracious and sexy Svetlana Khorkina fell victim to the biggest fiasco of the Sydney games: the pommel horse that was set two inches lower than regulation height. As a result, the top-ranked athlete flubbed her vaults and, rattled, later fell from her favorite uneven bars. Both the team and individual golds slipped out of reach.

In fact, very few “iron-clad” medals were converted. Diver Dmitry Sautin brought home one gold, two silvers and one bronze medal. The ever-smiling, handsome gymnast Alexei Nemov also confirmed his credentials, winning a total of six medals, including a gold in the individual all-around competition and two golds in specific exercises. Synchronized swimmer Olga Brusnikina won gold in the tandem and group events. Boxer Oleg Saitov became the first Russian boxer to win two consecutive Olympic golds.

Most other golds, including the women’s high jump (Yelena Yelesina), cycling (Vyacheslav Yekimov), and several golds in fencing, plus the rather successful performance in men’s waterpolo, men’s and women’s volleyball (all silver medals), were all agreeable surprises.

The silver lining in the losses in most “gold-oriented” sports was that now Russia boasts a better medal variety, adding several team victories to more typically vaunted medals in individual sports like tennis or wrestling.

And this, of course, gives hope for the Olympics in Athens. But Russia might do well to heed a few hard-won lessons of Sydney:

• Don’t place too much responsibility on the shoulders of gold hopefuls (e.g. like Popov).
• Don’t distract champions with political games (Karelin).
• Don’t let the young stars bask in the light of victory before the victory is actually in hand. Samsung posters with portraits of Alina Kabaeva were hung all over Moscow long before Sydney. But the star-struck Kabaeva olny captured the bronze medal; and it was her low-profile Russian rival Yulia Barsukova who won the gold. As sports observer Alexei Yefimov justly put it, “practicing to the seventh sweat becomes us better than pre-distribution of medals, contracts with sponsors and parading on glossy magazine covers.”
• Speed up the writing of the lyrics to the Russian National Anthem (see this issue’s Post Script column). A good anthem one can sing while standing on the pedestal is sometimes more important than the issue of prize money for medalists.
• Start reinvesting in grassroots sports programs again. We don’t necessarily need to have a clone of the Soviet Athletic Machine. But handball coach Vladimir Maximov has to go on vacation some day.

— The Editors