Russian biathletes found the main one

The Russian national biathlon team will have a head coach who will oversee the work of both the men’s and women’s teams. This position went to an experienced sports functionary Pavel Rostovtsev. Mr. Rostovtsev, who in the previous decade worked for some time in the Russian Biathlon Union (RBU), is well known to the president of the structure, Viktor Maigurov: both were leaders of the domestic biathlon at the turn of the past and present centuries.

The Russian Biathlon Union announced the appointment of Pavel Rostovtsev as the head coach of the country’s national team, which has become one of the most popular sports in it. The candidacy of Mr. Rostovtsev must be approved by the Ministry of Sports of the Russian Federation.

Pavel Rostovtsev took a position that had long remained vacant. The SBR in its practice often preferred to do without the formal head of the national team’s coaching staff, preferring a scheme in which there are only heads of the women’s and men’s teams. In the current season, which started in the fall of 2022, they are Yuri Kaminsky and Mikhail Shashilov.

Explaining the meaning of the format adjustment, RBU President Viktor Maigurov said championat.comthat the appointment of 51-year-old Pavel Rostovtsev is “long overdue”, and “great authority among both specialists and fans” along with “rich sports, coaching and administrative experience” will help him in his new post.

The thesis about the rich and varied experience of Mr. Rostovtsev looks really indisputable. He is one of the brightest figures in the domestic biathlon. For several seasons at the turn of the last and present centuries, Pavel Rostovtsev was the leader of the Russian national team, having won three world championship golds in its composition. At the same time, for a long time he performed in it with Viktor Maigurov, another Russian biathlon celebrity. And Mr. Rostovtsev won his first gold at the world championships – in 2000 in Lahti, having run the decisive, fourth, stage of the relay race, which was opened by Mr. Maigurov for the Russian team.

After the end of his sports career, Pavel Rostovtsev worked for many years as a functionary in various positions related to sports. For example, he was the head of the Agency for Physical Education, Sports and Tourism of the Administration of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, the Minister for Physical Education, Sports and Youth Policy of the Irkutsk Region, led the preparations for the Universiade, held in Krasnoyarsk in 2019.

In the biography of Pavel Rostovtsev there is also a period of work in biathlon. From 2011 to 2014, he served as the head coach of the Russian women’s shooting team, that is, he was one of the key assistants to the German specialist Wolfgang Pichler invited to return her suddenly lost leadership positions.

However, no return of positions took place. On the contrary, in the first half of the previous decade, the Russian women’s team experienced a sharp decline, and prizes at top tournaments and even the regular stages of the World Cup became a rarity for its representatives.

The most important competition in this segment for the Russian team was the home Olympics in Sochi in 2014. She did not fall out of the general trend. The women’s team had two hits in the top three. But the relay silver was later taken away from her in the wake of investigations based on the outbreak of the doping crisis. So, of the two Sochi medals, only the silver, obtained in the sprint by Olga Vilukhina, “survived”.

It will not be possible, however, soon to check how successful the decision to entrust the entire Russian biathlon team to Pavel Rostovtsev was. At the moment, it, in fact, does not exist, since the International Biathlon Union, like the vast majority of sports federations, after the start of a special military operation in Ukraine, removed Russian biathletes from participating in international competitions. There are no signs that the sanctions may be lifted in the near future.

Alexey Dospekhov