Not Paris alone – Newspaper Kommersant No. 237 (7438) of 12/21/2022

The Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) gave a huge credit of confidence to the head of the organization, Stanislav Pozdnyakov, unanimously re-electing him to the presidency. Mr. Pozdnyakov, who headed the ROC four years ago at the height of the doping crisis, will now have to solve problems related to a different kind of crisis that has resulted in the international isolation of domestic sports, implementing one of two scenarios. The first assumes that the Russian team will still be allowed to participate in the next Olympics – in Paris in 2024. The second is that the ROC, in anticipation of admission to the Olympic Games, will have to deal with “formation of a reserve” and “education of youth” for several years.

On Tuesday, within the framework of the Olympic meeting, the elections of key functionaries of the Russian Olympic Committee were held. New leaders were elected to two notable positions. This is due to the fact that the former Olympic champions in synchronized swimming and fencing Anastasia Davydova and Sofia Velikaya decided to part with them. Instead of Ms. Davydova, who, according to a number of sources, left Russia some time ago, Rodion Plitukhin became the Secretary General of the ROC, and instead of Ms. Velikaya, who wanted to “concentrate on her family and career”, the head of the Athletes’ Commission was a famous former athlete, who also has a track record Olympic gold, Yuri Borzakovsky.

But there was no intrigue with who would take the most significant position. The presidential elections in the ROC turned out to be uncontested: apart from the incumbent President Stanislav Pozdnyakov, no one claimed the post.

But in any case, the voting results showed that Mr. Pozdnyakov enjoys great confidence in the Russian sports community – he was elected unanimously.

Stanislav Pozdnyakov, a four-time Olympic champion in fencing, first led the ROC in 2018 and, as it turned out, was forced to constantly work in an acute crisis. At first it was the doping crisis, which has been causing huge damage to the Russian sports industry since the middle of the previous decade. It led to the fact that both at the Pyeongchang Olympics, which took place shortly before the appointment of Mr. Pozdnyakov as president of the ROC, and at the next two – in Tokyo in the summer of 2021 and the winter in Beijing in February 2022 – the Russian team spoke in neutral status due to sanctions from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

Remembering that period, Stanislav Pozdnyakov described it as “difficult” and required a “non-standard approach.” At the same time, in his opinion, the challenges faced by the ROC “did not destroy us, but made us more united”: “By solving all the problems, building a dialogue with all parties, we managed the most important thing – to show worthy results by the Olympic teams and lay the foundation.” By worthy results, Mr. Pozdnyakov meant, first of all, the indicators achieved by the Russian team at the Olympic Games in Tokyo and Beijing. Having counted the number of medals she won at these Olympics, Stanislav Pozdnyakov said that in the team event she took second and third places.

However, the IOC and the vast majority of leading media resources rank countries not by the total number of awards, but primarily by the number of gold awards.

Based on this principle, the results of the Russian team look less attractive: the fifth position in Tokyo (it has never dropped lower at the Summer Olympics) and the ninth in Beijing. But the delegates of the Olympic Assembly, it seems, were quite satisfied with their positive interpretation, especially with references to objective difficulties such as the same sanctions or funding cuts during the coronavirus pandemic, despite which the ROC, as Stanislav Pozdnyakov said, still “remains stable”.

In a crisis, even more unpleasant than doping, he will have to work as president of the ROC during his second term. We are talking about a crisis provoked by sanctions against Russian sports from the vast majority of international sports federations, based on the recommendations of the IOC, which banned the admission of athletes from Russia to major competitions due to a special military operation in Ukraine. In connection with them, domestic sports have been in almost complete isolation for more than six months.

Once again criticizing the “politicization” of the sports sector and the “dismantling of its foundations” that prohibit discrimination for political reasons, Stanislav Pozdnyakov again spoke about the future scenarios being considered by the ROC, related to Russia’s performance at the Olympic Games. There are only two of them. “Priority” assumes that Russian athletes will take part in the next Olympics: Paris will host it in 2024. To do this, however, it will be necessary to comply with what looks like a very complicated condition.

The fact is that a large block of qualifying pre-Olympic competitions in various sports is about to begin. If the Russian representatives let them through, the ROC will not have a chance to field a more or less full-fledged team in Paris.

Stanislav Pozdnyakov said that he had already discussed “the issue of returning our athletes to the selection in Paris” personally with IOC President Thomas Bach. According to him, “there was not even a hint that they don’t want to see us”: “There are countries that are too aggressive, but there were few of them even in October.”

It can be assumed that there are other factors that make Mr. Pozdnyakov believe in a successful solution to the problem. This, for example, sounded at the December Olympic summit and supported unanimously by the proposal of the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA). It boils down to the fact that Russian and Belarusian athletes could compete in Asian competitions and through them qualify for participation in the Paris Olympics. In addition, the President of the US Olympic Committee (USOPC) Suzanne Lyons unexpectedly called for the admission of the Russian team – albeit in a neutral status – to Paris.

But no less realistic, it seems, is still the “alternative” scenario. It, as Stanislav Pozdnyakov explained, “provides for the full participation of Russian athletes in the Olympic Games without restrictions no earlier than 2026.” The ROC, as it turned out, had already prepared for it by developing a “program for the development of Olympic sports aimed at forming a sports reserve and educating young people.” “The goal is to train a new generation of athletes to enter the top three overall standings at the next Summer Games in Los Angeles after Paris,” Mr. Pozdnyakov specified.

Alexey Dospekhov