Sports: Olympic ups and doping downs
Boris Tasman

Summary

In 2010, Belarusian sports inched away from the cliff it nearly fell into in 2009. At the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Belarusian athletes delivered the greatest performance in the short history of the independent nation: they won three medals, including the first gold one ever. The quantitative indicators at world championships in the Olympic disciplines improved (16 medals against 12), while the “quality” was not that high: only two sportsmen joined the ranks of champions. Among the winter sports, freestyle skiing and biathlon have held much promise so far; among the summer sports, rowing and canoeing proved most successful for Belarus.
Track and field athletics and swimming saw no progress. All most promising rowing crews have fallen apart. The men’s tennis team dropped out of the second division of the Davis Cup. Freestyle wrestlers and judoists made a step back too. Still, the team sports made considerable progress, and the women’s basketball team was among the top four at the past World Championship. The past season was a great success for Belarusian football.
Many medal winners are approaching the age critical for sportsmen: all three Belarusian champions have are thirty or over. Belarusian sports were marred by high-profile doping scandals at the world and European track and field and weightlifting championships once again. The Court of Arbitration for Sport however returned the Beijing medals to hammer throwers Vadim Devyatovsky and Ivan Tsikhan.

Tendencies:

• Progress at the Olympic Winter Games;
• Achievements quality degradation;
• Critical ageing of Belarusian sports stars;
• Rise of Belarusian football;
• Widespread doping use;
• Aggravating criminalization of Belarusian sports.

Vancouver achievements

The 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver were the fifth games in the history of independent Belarus and the most successful regarding the results achieved. Two medals came from Lillehammer in 1994 and two were taken in Nagano in 1998. The Olympics in Salt Lake City in 2002 and Turin in 2006 resulted in one medal each. Vancouver was generous with three medals at once: Alexey Grishin fought his way to Olympic gold in freestyle skiing (men’s aerials), Sergey Novikov and Darya Domracheva took silver and bronze in biathlon respectively.

Belarus at Olympic Winter Games

There are three medal places and a gold medal for the first time. Is this success logical or incidental? Freestylers had not come home without medals since 1998. Although only two of them – Alexey Grishin (bronze and gold medals) and Dmitry Dashchinsky (bronze and silver medals) – turned up at the podium, the Belarusian aerial skiing school should be prized for nurturing their achievements. As a matter of fact, five out of six Belarusian freestylers competing in Vancouver reached the finals. However, Dashchinsky, Timofey Slivets, and Alla Tsuper stayed behind the top eight in qualification, while Assol Slivets was the fourth best. So, the accomplishment was quite logical.
Biathlete Darya Domracheva was one of the favorites for Olympic medals, therefore her winning a bronze medal was not unexpected. Her 6th and 8th places in other races just confirm her capabilities. At the same time, Sergey Novikov’s silver medal was more like a smile of fortune. His entering the top ten in separate disciplines of the World Cup season used to be regarded as an excellent result. No one expected a medal in the men’s biathlon, though. But the national team coaches did a great job when scheduled training thoughtfully to let the athletes get in optimal shape. Lyudmila Kalinchik and Nadezhda Skardino paraded their skills alongside Novikov performing at their best in their entire careers. There is a common opinion that they should thank German expert Klaus Siebert, who has been working with the Belarusian team for a few years now.
The athletes competing in other sports, such as skiing, skating, and short track, shot blank rounds again. Two ski mountaineers trained in Russia for the Belarusian team were quite predictably too far from the top.
It would be natural to expect an advance in speed skating after an open skating rink was constructed in Minsk. Also, Belarus had tasted success in this sport before: Igor Zhelezovsky took silver at the 1994 Games and Andzelika Kotyuga was 5th in 2002. But Belarus preferred pushing ski mountaineering, having no natural conditions, a proper infrastructure, or sufficient experts.
Ice hockey abundantly provided with invested money did not show any favorable results yet. Both the national team and the league have made no headway so far. The national team did not manage to make it through to the quarterfinals either in Vancouver, or at the World Championship in Germany. The youth and junior national teams stagger behind in the top division slipping down to Division One every now and then.

Gross figures and stock list

In Soviet times, targets with respect to two basic parameters were imposed on companies: gross earnings and the line of goods. If the gross earnings target was not hit, an enterprise saw no bonuses. But if the stocks were filled up with goods of each particular type as planned, the bonus money was good. It did not happen too often, though.
As to the total number of medals won during world championships in the Olympic disciplines, Belarus took 16 medals in 2010 against 12 in 2009, or even 19 against 12 if Olympic prizes are considered. The progress is obvious. However, it would be more accurate to compare the results of 2010 not with 2009, but with 2006. The matter is that the number of large-scale sport events is different in odd-numbered and even-numbered years. For instance, rowers, wrestlers, and weight-lifters compete every year, shooters and boxers compete once in two years, while track and field athletes have another schedule: Olympic Games and summer world championships (47 sets of medals each) in even-numbered years, and indoor world championships (26 sets) in odd-numbered years. Therefore, the years 2006 and 2010 are comparable regarding achievements.

World championships

In total, the year 2010 yielded just one medal less than 2006, but the regress is considerable when it comes to gold medals: six gold medals were won in 2006, while on only two athletes – shooter Sergey Martynov and shot-putter Nadezhda Ostapchuk – were above all on the winners’ podium four years later. The qualitative regress is as clear as the quantitative progress.

Ageing stars

The quality degradation is not incidental. It is caused by ageing of Belarusian sports stars and poor efforts towards replacement with younger athletes.
Olympic Champion Grishin and World Champion Ostapchuk are over 30 years of age. Martynov has attained 40. Yekaterina Karsten, 38, is the only medal winner in boat racing. Dmitry Kasperovich, 33, is the only prize-winner among gymnasts. Andrey Mikhnevich, renowned shot-putter, who comes up to the podium quite regularly, is 34; pistol shooter Victoria Chaika is 30; legendary rowers Roman Petrushenko, Vadim Makhnev, and Alexey Abalmasov are 30 to 31; European Champion in Greco-Roman wrestling Alexander Kikinev is 31; European Champion in table tennis Viktoria Pavlovich and her sister Veronica are 32.
Hammer throwers Vadim Devyatovsky and Ivan Tsikhan, who took the medals won at the Beijing Olympics back from the International Olympic Committee, are 33 and 34 respectively. In the men’s table tennis team, which took silver at the European Championship, three out four players are over 34: Vladimir Samsonov attained 34 in 2010, Vitaly Nekhvedovich is 35, Yevgeny Shchetinin is 40. They will be two years older by the time of the London Olympics.
The situation is critical. It is not that the Ministry of Sports is unaware of this. It is the bureaucratic habitual practice to report on the “here and now” that takes its toll. Therefore, the money is invested not in the reserve, but in those who can get a medal today, at least a bronze one.
And those who can replace the old-timers are quite few. They are rowers Denis Garazha, 22, and Oleg Yurenya, 20; rhythmic gymnast Melitina Stanyuta, 17; weight lifters Sergey Lagun, 23, and Andrey Aryamnov, 22; track and field athlete Andrey Kravchenko, 24; wrestler Timofey Deynichenko, 24… Who will qualify for the 2011 Olympics and win Olympic medals in 2012?

Instant results or chronic disease of Belarusian sports

The Olympic meeting held on April 9, 2010 was dedicated to build-up of replacements of today’s Olympic participants. Unfortunately, it was quite ineffective. The decision was made to elaborate a concept of training young athletes. Almost a year has passed but things have not budged an inch.
In 2010, Singapore hosted the first Youth Olympic Games, a rather harmful tournament, which stimulates boosted training of sportsmen of 16 to 17 years of age. First Vice President of the National Olympic Committee Igor Zaychkov said that the sports authorities did not set any medal targets. It turned out otherwise: targets were specified anyway and medals were counted thoroughly. Non-achievers were peppered for the failure to produce the results the sports functionaries looked forward to, while those who distinguished themselves were awarded and panegyrized.
It is generally admitted that only few junior champions keep leading positions in adult league sports. Rushing juniors off their feet, sometimes with the use of pharmacological boosters, alongside practice loads inappropriate for the age, only yields short-term effects. Such intervention quickly results in traumas, diseases, nervous break-downs, loss of interest in sports, and, as a rule, poorer results or stagnation remote from international standards. This is a chronic disease of Belarusian sports.
In order to remedy the situation, there should be no financial stimulation of sportsmen and coaches for successes in the under-17 and under-19 sports. Most sports officials (as well as coaches) do not care much about the sportsmen’s future. They try hard to sponge the youngsters of everything they are capable of.
The story of Baranovich-born track and field athlete Yekaterina Artyukh is a prime example. In 2009, the 17-year-old girl won a medal at the European Junior Championship. In February 2010, she won the Junior Championship of Belarus in hurdle race. However, her doping test run by the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) came back positive and Yekaterina was disqualified for three months. The Belarusian Track and Field Athletics Federation and NADA kept the public and international organizations – the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) – in the dark, although the Belarusian sports authorities were supposed to inform them in line with the World Anti-Doping Code.
Artyukh entered competitions as early as May. She did not undergo doping tests until the departure for the World Junior Championship in Canada in July. The pre-departure test result was negative. In Canada, Yekaterina made it through to the finals and won the gold medal in a 400 m hurdles race leaving the others far behind. It became known two weeks later that the doping test of the 18-year-old Belarusian was positive. The world champion was stripped of her title and she was disqualified for two years.
Neither her personal coach Konstantin Tverdokhleb, nor head coach of the reserve Yury Moyseyevich, nor the team doctor, nor the Belarusian Athletics Federation chiefs suffered any consequences. On the contrary, Moyseyevich was soon promoted to vice director of the Republican Center for Olympic Athletics Training. The Artyukh case is not an exception, but a regular practice.

Doping controversies

Six Belarusian sportsmen (track and field athletes and weight-lifters) were disqualified or suspended in 2010. Five out of six violations were revealed at world and continental championships. Above is Artyukh’s story. An even more sensational scandal erupted few months after the end of the April European Weightlifting Championship in Minsk. Gold medal winner Andrey Aryamnov and bronze medal winners Shemshat Tulyaev and Nikolay Chernyak were reported to have been tested positive for banned drugs.
A synthetic androgen, Proviron, was found in Chernyak’s test. Clenbuterol was found in Tulyaev’s test. Both are looking at four-year disqualification. Aryamnov is suspected of smoking “spice”, which contains marihuana. He is suspended for six months. It is notable that none of the three have been officially punished by the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF), although they had to miss the September World Championship.
Seventeen-year-old weight-lifter Vladimir Yakuta won the European Cadet Championship. The doping control authorities detected the anabolic steroid called Metandrostenolon in his test. The sportsman faces the threat of four-year disqualification. So, Belarus had to give back five medals in one year that had never happened before. NADA caught six more violators. All of them were young sportsmen. The habitual use of doping for spurring young sportsmen is one of the major problems of Belarusian sports.
In this context, the decision of the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne to give Olympic medals back to Belarusian hammer throwers – silver to Vadim Devyatovsky and bronze to Ivan Tsikhan – is somewhat a consolation. The Court recognized that the Beijing laboratory did not fully observe the established procedure when handling the samples, therefore the International Olympic Committee’s resolution on disqualification of the Belarusians was revoked.

Symptoms of degradation

Some other facts show that the climate in Belarusian sports is far from being favorable. For example, 11 out of 18 rowers left the national women’s boat racing team. Winners of the silver medals of the 2009 European Championship in women’s eights Nina Bondareva, Natalia Gavrilenko, Zinaida Klyuchinskaya, Natalia Koshel, Olga Plashkova, and Olga Shcherbachenya-Zhilskaya refused to work under head coach Vladimir Sinelshchikov. Another three, Nadezhda Belskaya, Natalia Privalova, and Marina Maslova, are done with sports seeing no future in their rowing careers. And they all are medal winners. The discontent was caused by the disappointing results against the background of excessive physical loads and the lack of confidence in Sinelshchikov. Two men’s rowing fours known for their achievements fell apart too.
The men’s tennis team dropped out of the second division of the Davis Cup after losing to Italy and the Netherlands. The drubbing taken from the Italians (0-5) was even more painful considering the conflict between captain and head coach of the national team Vladimir Volchkov and team leader Vladimir Ignatik, which occurred right on the tennis court.
Head coach of the national track cycling team Stanislav Solovyov was found having improperly used budgetary funds to the amount of over 50 million Belarusian rubles, which he has to pay back now. Last August, after all doping troubles, the road police detained Olympic champion Andrey Aryamnov for drunk driving for the third time in one year and a half. He paid a 10.5 million fine and settled the question.
The National Track and Field Athletics Championship in Grodno saw ugly manipulations in several disciplines. Specifically, according to eyewitnesses, judges added one centimeter to a triple jump of one of the sportsmen, who beat the favorite in this way. The protest that followed was simply shelved. The matter is that the jump length was measured in favor of the trainee of the national team’s head coach. The wind speed of 1.7 meters per second was entered in the record during the women’s 100 meters race. The actual wind speed was no less than 4.0 meters per second. Yelena Nevmerzhitskaya led the European standings with 11.05 seconds, and then failed to qualify for the second round with an embarrassing 11.63 seconds at the European Championship one month later.

Following BATE

Football lives its own life not connected with other sports in any way. Perhaps that is why Belarusian football players reached an all-time high. The national team started the qualifying competition for UEFA Euro 2012 nicely and beat the French and Albanians one-nil and two-nil respectively and managed draws against Romania and Luxembourg. Belarus finished the year second in Group D below France.
The under-23 football team crushed the Italians and qualified for the continental championship finals. The reigning champion of the Belarusian Premier League, FC BATE Borisov, reached the play-offs stage in the UEFA Europa League for the first time. Dnepr Mogilyov, Dynamo Minsk, and Torpedo Zhodino did a good job too. It looks like the reform of the national championship – particularly the reduction in the number of clubs down to twelve – was successful.
The women’s national basketball team has been doing well representing the country at top-level tournaments for the fourth season in a row. Playing at the World Championship for the first time the girls reached the semifinals. Back home, they addressed the Belarusian Basketball Federation Executive Committee with an open letter demanding to arrange a decent training camp “for high-grade practicing.” “In our opinion, normal training conditions mean suitable locker rooms, a massage room, a team’s physician’s office, a coach room, and a properly equipped workout room. Over the past years, the national team has not been given even a remotely suitable sports center for permanent and long-term use… The outfit quality gives rise to unfavorable criticism. Therefore, it makes sense to think over the improvement options,” reads the letter.1

Conclusion

The success at the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver was due to two small groups of professionals, but it does not attest to the overall progress of Belarusian sports in any way. Neither biathlon, nor freestyle are very popular sports. And in the popular sports like skiing, speed skating, or hockey progress plateaued long ago.
The 15-thousand crowds at hockey matches in Minsk Arena attracted by Dynamo Minsk – Belarus’ representative in the Kontinental Hockey League, KHL (this is the official spelling) – is probably the only gratifying thing about ice hockey. The medal advance in summer sports can hardly be explained by the personnel reshuffle in the ministerial offices. Besides, it is highly unlikely that it will last long.
The long-playing leaders of Belarusian sports have reached a critical age. There is no fully prepared reserve and no one seems to be eager to take pains to cultivate young leaders. The large scale doping of potential Olympians is really alarming. Weak and poorly financed NADA is obviously outnumbered in the anti-doping fight.
The total dependence of sports on the national budget is one more acute problem. Sports provisions are gradually tightening up while sports functionaries are working up their appetite.