The Russian president called the 2002 Winter Olympics “a flop.” The head of Russia’s church called it unfair. And a leading politician complained that Russia’s athletes have been robbed “in broad daylight, arrogantly, boorishly, insolently and cynically.”
The public here is boiling mad over perceived anti-Russian bias in the Games, and it looks increasingly likely that the Russian team will boycott the Closing Ceremony. Russian Olympics officials had threatened Thursday to pull out of the Games.
“Several things [at the Games] evoke astonishment, speaking mildly,” President Vladimir Putin said Friday. His spokesman and the Russian parliament both called for the boycott.
Putin lashed out at the International Olympic Committee leadership elected in July, pressuring them to act more forcefully in defending Russian athletes against bias.
“Their passive stance astonishes me,” Putin said.
And commenting on the overwhelming presence of NHL referees in the Games, he said, “Northern American athletes receive a clear advantage.”
The Olympics officials threatened the boycott Thursday after star cross-country skier Larissa Lazutina was disqualified when a drug test indicated a high level of blood hemoglobin. Russian officials attributed the results to Lazutina’s menstrual cycle, not doping.
That controversy came on the heels of last week’s decision to award a second gold medal to the Canadian pairs figure-skating team amid reports of judging misconduct. This was seen as a deep humiliation for the original gold medalists, Russian skaters Elena Bereznaia and Anton Sikharulidze, and many here believe it fanned ill will over later judging decisions that went against the Russians.
Thursday night Russia filed a protest with the International Skating Union after figure skater Irina Slutskaya lost a gold medal to American Sarah Hughes. Demands from Russian Olympic officials that Slutskaya be awarded gold, too, were rejected in less than 24 hours.
But also on Friday, Putin said Russia should see out the competition. “Let’s see how the Olympics end. Let us hope that the IOC leadership will manage to resolve these difficulties,” he said.
Attempts to placate Putin backfired when the Russian leader took umbrage at a letter from IOC President Jacques Rogge, which said all the judges’ decisions were correct.
The letter, delivered via the State Department, contained a blunder, which the presidential spokesman, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, exposed during a live program on the national NTV network.
“The letter is addressed to Mr. A. Putin!” he said, holding the letter up to jeers from a studio audience. “So I would like to say to Mr. Rogge that if he had the misfortune of ending up at the head of IOC and thus got into big politics, then before sending a letter to a head of state, it wouldn’t hurt to learn that he is not Antoine nor Andre but Vladimir.”
He said the letter symbolized the scornful attitude that many foreign bureaucrats and sporting organizations have developed toward Russia.
“We are being treated now differently from the way we were treated in the past,” Yastrzhembsky said. “At least they were afraid of us then. And they were afraid to mess with us.”
Complaints about the judging came from the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Alexi II, from captains of industry and from ordinary Russians who vowed to march on the Canadian Embassy on Saturday.
“The public is fuming and boiling now. The public anger against the USA is now the worst it has been in years. Every Russian citizen is holding a deep grudge against America now,” said Dmitri Rogozin, head of the Duma foreign affairs committee.
“How would you feel after they robbed you of your victory in broad daylight arrogantly, boorishly, insolently and cynically?” he complained.
Yastrzhembsky, the presidential spokesman, did acknowledge that part of the problem was Russia’s economic difficulties and declining state investment in sports.
Victor Tikhonov, a renowned former Soviet hockey coach of gold-medal-winning teams, said in a telephone interview that government indifference to athletics is to blame for the Russians’ low medal count in sports they once dominated.
“We have now come to the point where we are eating up the last crumbs of success planted back in the Soviet times. And it hurts very much when even these crumbs are stolen from us, as happened more than once in Salt Lake City.”
“The way our women skiers were robbed of their victory!” Tikhonov exclaimed. “That would have never happened in the Soviet times. . . . The world respected us, and no one could even think of playing such dirty tricks on us.”
Political analyst Andrei Piontkovsky of the Independent Institute for Strategic Studies, a Moscow-based think tank, said the scandal was unlikely to harm relations between Russia and the U.S. with delicate strategic-arms negotiations continuing.
“It is not the smartest statement our president ever made. It is a pity that the president allowed himself to be involved in this controversy where the Russian sports officials are trying to cover obvious shortcomings in their own work by accusing the games judges and organizers,” he said.
“This painful hysteria reflects the very sick state of the Russian political environment now.”
