Those times, when grand plans for medal-fighting concurrently with five-year industrial plan were worked out in the depths of Politburo, are in the past now. I’m quite serious, saying that. Those plans concerned mainly gold. Silver and bronze surely refer to metals somehow, but let tinsmiths and sculptors deal with them. Our party wanted gold - as more as possible; in any case, more than that of Germany and the USA, not even speaking about Luxemburg and Argentina. As far as I remember, our sportsmen’s task was to take no less than 15 gold medals. And the failure was interpreted as the support of the world imperialism and discredit of the main guiding political tack.

Imperial manners (even if they still draw their existence) are deeply buried nowadays. Having spared incredible efforts, we managed to get only 5 gold medals at Salt-Lake-City Olympiad, without considering doping and other scandals. That’s why this time I heard plenty of best wishes, but there followed no directions concerning getting “as more as that” medals. There came few very tactful prognoses, not very optimistic indeed.

And it’s clear, why. Combined team of Russia is to take part in all 15 types of Olympic program. But, for example, Russian hokey team was perfect even 4 years ago, though, as a result it could get only bronze. Besides, there are more than 20 bulls in the team, meanwhile only one medal is given. Rather unfair, isn’t it? We come to the evident waste of time.

Today biathlon and figure-skating are the only kinds of sport, filling up the piggy-bank. We still manage to bag medals here. As basically figure-skaters prove to get gold, they will surely be brought to their graves if they win nothing. Meanwhile there are some chances in biathlon, but we can easily fail to gain anything, as here there are far more obstacles on the way to the medal. I suppose you understand yourself: the bullets are bad, the sun is blinding, or the skies were left somewhere.

And I wonder whether there is any reason to await anything from biathlonists, ski-jumpers and even honorable bobsleigh-athletes, if all gutters in our country are used for industrial wastes and the hugest ski-jump, situated on Vorobievy hills, is completely miserable? Results will be the same if we make night-shift of subway charwomen play curling. I’m not speaking about such funny disciplines as snowboard, freestyle or mountain-skiing. Surely our president has tried to develop all of them, and it will be silly to complain for the lack of mountains, but the absolute majority of new-made skiers prefers mulled wine-paradise of some vulgar Courshavel; meanwhile real snowboard fans consider ordinary mogul or half-pipe to be made for cowards, and prefer to break their heads somewhere on Elbruz.

On the other hand, there is always some place for the feat in our lives. For example, Baron Munchausen used to spend two hours a day (from 9 to 11 a.m.) for that. And succeeded, by the way. Besides, Olympiad is not the World Cup and is worth going all out. It concerns even those who have never appeared in any rate (and are unlikely to succeed further). There are and there’ll surely be enough examples of that.

In general, all this disgrace is worth watching. Besides, it was a good way to spend holidays, and so I did, especially taking into account that these were two first Olympic days.

At one stroke and without any compunction I cast aside women-mogul and men-half pipe. As I’ve already mentioned, all these childish hummocks and an idiotic pipe-stump in snowboard will attract our guys only when the space between the hummocks is mined and the pipe is filled with rusty bolts.

I wouldn’t have paid any attention at the men-downhill, if one very interesting thing hadn’t happened. Favorites had a real bummer. Alpine aborigines, be it Austria or Switzerland, have always been considered to be the leaders. The Austrians, very smart guys, were the best in this type of sport program. Yesterday it happened according to the knurled scheme: two Austrian sportsmen did their best without lingering and relaxed, having quickly bought some fizz on the security of the nearly won contemptible metal. But suddenly one Swiss sportsman came down and spoiled everything for them, diluting the sweet couple. Generally, Austrians were not very sorry and kept waiting for the final result, being ready to receive gold and bronze without wounding the mountain neighbor’s feelings. The only thing was to wait till all the comers (since they were not ashamed to be put on the list) go downhill. When the final starting-numbers next to the 30-th were appearing one after another and the broadcast-director became rather tired of transmitting, one more kamikaze started off. Something French, nearly Napoleonic, could be hardly noticed in him. Nothing was said about the person, who had taught that guy to ski in such a way. Perhaps the commentators didn’t know themselves. But the fact remains: he outstripped the leader for more than 0.07 sec and clearly proved that champagne is made only for the Frenchmen. As it isn’t clear whether we would ever hear anything about him again, try to remember his name: Antoine Deneriaz.

Perhaps average distances have once been subject to Russian male and female skaters, but my memory is too short to keep in mind anything of this kind. Now everything here is painted into orange colors of tulips country representatives, sometimes mixed with Americans. But while Americans do it for fun, Dutchmen are born with skates. It’s not Russian matter, besides there isn’t enough money for good skates in our country. Though sometimes we take place in the thirty of strongest.

On Sunday we could also watch men short-track. If you don’t know what it is, I’ll explain: it’s the same skating, but on the hockey filed. Only those, who didn’t get enough to eat or were fed only with rice, manage to turn in this tough space. It goes without saying why Korea and China go ahead of all in this discipline. We could have tried to ask our hockey players to play short-track, but they would have surely used body-checks. And it’s clear we don’t need one more Olympic scandal with our participation.

As you understand, nearly all parts of the Olympic program, i.e. about 12 from 15 were not supposed to be successful for Russian sportsmen. I was almost sure of that.

In two days there happened only one biathlon race and preliminary figure-skating rounds. Thank God, I was wrong predicting no medals.

Though I have to admit that individual 15 km. man-sprint disappointed me completely. Only 0.8 sec. separated Sergey Chepikov from the bronze medal. It all happened because of the careless shooting. Once more I greatly wished to send our sportsmen to the Sherwood Forest for a couple of weeks to master shooting. It’ll be fair to say that nearly everyone missed the target, but only few managed to compensate it with good speed, with which our sportsman had certain problems. But I don’t dare to blame 39-year old Sergey.

No one expected any wonders from Russian biathlonists. But comparing this Olympiad with that, which happened four years ago, when because of low results, Russian biathlon team was irrationally returned home from half the distance, this time we had grounds to be glad. Sergey Maslennikov was the fifth in ski-jumping, and, according to general team results, took the honorable tenth place. Perhaps it’s not a feat for the Russian biathlonist, but there’s surely something heroic in it.

90-meter ski-jump competitions were even more surprising. That was the reason of commentator’s Guberniev furious shoutings, when he was asking to toss him up to the ski-jumps. I’ll tell you what happened. It’s not a surprise that Russian have been trained to ski-jump a bit. Dmitry Vasiliev, the leader of our team, manages to succeed from time to time. I mean getting into the top-twenty. The best result is the place in the top-ten. That’s why we were all greatly surprised getting to know that Dmitriy Vasiliev was the absolute leader after the first attempt on K-95. It all reminded me of Antoine Deneriaz.
Vasiliev’s first jump was really phenomenal and the furthest one. God knows how we prayed for the medal. But the Fortune turned Her back to Vasiliev, as by that time Russian select team had already overfullfilled wonder-making plan, when in the morning all Turin was staring at the skiers. Unfortunately, Vasiliev was only the tenth.

And now it’s high time to speak about the wonders.
To be more concrete: it’s no wonder that Albert Demchenko got silver in luge. It’s simply the result of very hard and laborious work. Though, if you train starting in Dmitrovsky gymnasium, and all the Moscow region hee-haws at you, each event of this kind seems to be more ravings of a madman. But Demchenko is surely not a madman. He exactly knows what he does. Albert has nearly won gold even in spite of the unhappy sortition and the sympathy of the audience towards the Italian luger Zoggeler and the fact that fridge settings were made optimal only for him), - his silver medal is a worth of gold exploit.

Strange as it may seem, but the first medal for Russia was won by skiers. They also got the first gold for our country. It was a real miracle.

Duathlon was in full swing. For those who don’t know: duathlon is half by half jumbled running and cycling leg with a pit-stop in the middle, when the skies and, perhaps, the sticks are changed. Frankly speaking, I didn’t pay attention as it’s not the main point.

The girls started 15-km race. Then the men with a 30-km one followed. The world champion Julia Chepalova was our greatest hope, as she’s an acting world champion in this discipline. But something went wrong for her from the very beginning. The mood was spoilt, but after the pit-stop (can you feel, how wonderfully it sounds) two Russian girls were noticed in the top-ten. I have heard something about Zavialova before, but I heard about Medvedeva for the first time. And I swear I’ll remember this name for ever. This miniature girl managed not only to keep her position after the leaders, but put her husband (who also combines coaching her) in the most required place on the route. As in a bow-wow style he shouted that they didn’t need the fourth place, she didn’t delay with taking the third. Unfortunately, Medvedeva had no opportunity of outstripping Estonian Smigun and Neumannova of the Czech Republic. Perhaps, Medvedeva’s husband was too late with inspirations. But I wish every girl had such a husband.

Men duathlon became the climax of all Russian expectations. There was no Chepalova there. But we found out that there is Evgeni Dementiev, a very shy guy, who loves skiing and does it from time to time. Sometimes he takes the skis off. But he never hurries up at pit-stops. In general, he is as cool as a cucumber.
Yesterday he seemed to be completely indifferent towards all that classical and skate riding haste, that after the first 15 km. he was far behind the others. He lagged for 0.5 min. from the leaders and was simply enjoying the race, thinking of something private; though from the very beginning he was warned about the perspective of some exerting on two last ascents. He wasn’t against and, according to his own words, became so carried away with exerting and outstripping that was completely bewildered, seeing no one ahead. And he had to overpass about 20 meters for getting gold. Thus he did. So this is an approximate scheme of winning gold medals.

To summer up: the first two days were rather intriguing and in general rather lucky for Russia. There is a full set of Olympic medals at our disposal.

Hasta la vista. Savar.

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