New brooms sweep clean

The regular May fuss in the Russian national biathlon team is finally over. The wind of changes, which has been blowing all the previous week, has scattered the participants of the story in their places and the fog of uncertainty is finally gone. It’s time to raise our heads, take a look around, sum up the impressions, and count the survivors.

Let’s go in that order. New coaches have been appointed – all of them except Nikolay Zagursky, who was never formally listed as a coach and now is. Some of the newcomers have walked ceremoniously through the open door; others have been dragged through the window. That gave us quite a motley crew – but while it was also true last year, now the desire to build something coherent, conceptual, and logical can be easily found in the selection of this year’s seven coaches.

The men that now find themselves at the team’s steering wheel are some undoubtedly respected and authoritative leaders. Valery Polkhovsky, Wolfgang Pichler, and Andrey Gerbulov may be controversial candidates from some points of view, but you would not find anyone perfect for these positions. At the same time a very promising band of young people has appeared in the coaching staff: not very experienced Andrey Padin and absolutely inexperienced Pavel Rostovtsev have been presented with their chances (though one would love to believe Rostovtsev wasn’t chosen only for his knowledge of German). The still not mentioned Nikolay Lopukhov, though only recently coming to biathlon from cross-country skiing, has been laboring at the second team and certainly has enough skill.

Had this invasion begun a week or two weeks earlier, there would be time for some lengthy reflections and projections on the future of Russian biathlon. But there is no time left: it’s already May and just around time to start training. So, the staff got down to their jobs outright – and did it with an astonishing thoroughness, especially rare in such fussy circumstances.

The training plan until next autumn looks original and fresh despite the fact that the training camps’ locations are quite usual and familiar to the team (the jokes about ski trainings in Cyprus have been around for the past five years). Women’s and men’s teams will not meet during their training sessions right until September, which is really nice. That means Pichler and Gerbulov, the men’s team head coach, have developed their personal plans independently and will bring their teams wherever they want, without throwing them all into the same place just for the sake of making travelling easier.

By the way, the women’s team will reside in Ruhpolding for nearly half of the summer. No need to mention that it was Pichler’s idea, as this place is quite convenient for him. The German also plans to communicate with his charges via Skype, because according to his plan the women will spend more time at home. Unfortunately, this increases the risk of falling out of the training plan (like it happened the previous autumn), especially knowing our girls’ personalities.

Another detail is the accession of foreign servicemen into the staff. It’s almost certain that Pichler has had his hand in it, but the issue of bringing them in was brewing long ago. Rather than admiring heroic efforts of our leaders, we’d better add some professionals, no matter what their nationality is, who will bring something new and will at least take some burden off the rest of the team.

But the most interesting things came out when the newly arrived coaching staff started making decisions on the sportsmen’s future. Pichler and Polkhovsky have both touched the issue of team selection and its objectivity. The slogan was traditional: national team is only for the strongest. And one has to admit that this time the words, repeated habitually year in year out, do match the deeds.

Some heads did actually roll – not randomly, but rather quite reasonably, with clear explanations given about the executed and the forgiven. Maxim Tchoudov has walked his way downwards from being a top biathlete to a laughing stock in just two seasons and was dropped out even from the second team. That kind of solution required strong will and, most important, was not designed to impress the public. Unlike the last year’s staff, the current one has shown it would not hesitate to shoot it straight from the shoulder.

Yekaterina Iourieva was treated in a more delicate way. Though Pichler’s appointment does not bode well for her, the new chief spoke about Yekaterina carefully, without any aggression. If she deserves, she will be invited, but now there is no ground for that – such were his words. While it all seems so simple and obvious, last winter some extremely questionable persons took start for Russia in the World Cup. Sergey Kuschenko, executive director of the Russian Biathlon Union, was courteous enough to support Iourieva even so. A small thing, but an indicative one.

Other ‘victims’ are no surprises: Vilukhina is still not good enough, Bulygina seems to be not good enough already.

Eventually, the first team squads have become quite unbiased – especially the men’s one. In the women’s team the situation is a little more complicated, with Yana Romanova being the most controversial choice. She is in the top ten, but it doesn’t mean being in the lineup.

Anyway, the most important name among the girls is still Olga Zaitseva. She will stay, as, seemingly, the adequacy and the reputation of the newly appointed people have certainly played a role. She will stay in the team, not aside from it – which means now everyone, including Zaitseva herself, should calm down. What’s up next? We’ll see – the fog has cleared, after all.

by Vyacheslav Sambur