Photos from open sources
Breaking through to the games in Pyeongchang "even with a carcass, even with a stuffed animal", our sports functionaries promised to "show everyone" and to spite the whole world, shower the Motherland with a rain of Olympic "gold", thereby proving the ability of Russian athletes to win, no matter what. Everything turned out exactly the opposite - our performances at the 2018 Olympics play into the hands of those who prove with foam at the mouth that "Russians can do nothing without doping" ...
The Olympics have always been a magnet, an anticipation of a spectacle, a source of emotions - there are also ours: skaters, skiers, hockey players! And here - as cut off - does not pull to the TV, for the life of me. You catch a glimpse of one broadcast, another. And all - fed up. Almost entirely grief ...
As expected: medals (there are still no gold medals, a week after the opening!) - are given to us with great difficulty. The Russian national team is already 13th in the team competition! We are behind France, Italy, Korea, Switzerland and only today ahead of Australia! I represent the faces of Russian stars of the past Olympics, honored and titled, veterans ...
And before it was clear that it was difficult to expect outstanding results from the Russian team - bloodless, nervous, sometimes even convulsing. Until the last day, many athletes did not know whether they would go to Pyeongchang or not. And those who knew, perhaps, simply burned out ...
But we still hoped and believed. For example, the famous Yelena Isinbayeva promised on Instagram that Russia will show itself well in Pyeongchang, because "Russians become invincible in anger." Alas, failures follow one after another, they are even where ours were supposed to win. For example, in figure skating, where the chances of a pair of Evgeny Tarasov - Vladimir Morozov were highly quoted. But no, instead of the jubilant sounds of the victorious march, we heard the muffled sobs of our partner ...
Even the hockey players we hoped for the most are not yet impressive. And that's putting it mildly. The Russians did not lose, but lost in the first match of the Slovakian tournament. Oleg Znarok, the head coach of the "red car" (if so, then it is pretty loose) at the post-match press conference looked like an angry lion.
The defeat of the hockey players did not look quite natural. But it didn't look so unexpected either. True, in the second game ours defeated Slovenia. However, this is not the kind of rival, having overcome which, one must raise glasses of champagne. Let's see - of course, with the hope that the days to come are preparing for us.
Maybe Stalin will help? The question is not taken from the ceiling, but from life. A banner depicting the Father of Nations was spotted on the podium during the match between Russians and Slovenes ...
By the way, there are quite a few tourists from our country in Korea. And their mood is quite optimistic. Fans, despite the IOC bans, unfurl national flags, banners in the stands, chant at the top of their lungs: "Go Russia!" These people came from afar, having covered great distances, having spent a lot of money to support our team. Thank them for that ...
Let's go back to the Olympic tournament and evaluate the further chances of the Russian national team. Alas, apart from male hockey players and female figure skaters, we generally have nothing to hope for. I'm talking about Olympic gold, damn it ...
It seems that there is no need to talk about biathlon. We only lick our fleshly lips, watching other people's victories. Russians flicker somewhere beyond the horizon, in the second ten ... German Wolfgang Pichler recently trained Russian biathletes. But against him, although he was famous, titled, they unleashed a real war - they say, such and such, does not bring benefit. The TV commentator Dmitry Guberniev tried especially hard. Pichler endured, endured, but then he took offense and left Russia.
At the Olympics in Pyeongchang, Guberniev approached to take a picture with a German, but Pichler angrily brushed aside: “No, damn Gubernik! I will not take pictures with you, because you have been spreading rot for three years, and I could have won gold medals with Olga Zaitseva and other Russian athletes. " Now Pichler is preparing the Swedish national team. And he achieved very decent results with them. The Scandinavians won gold and silver medals at the Olympics. Maybe they will have other awards as well. But ours - hardly anything shines.
That's it, everything is, as always - there is no prophet in our Fatherland. Sad as it may seem, our athletes are in the unenviable role of extras not only in skiing, biathlon, but also in snowboarding, skating ... The position of Russian hockey players, who played three matches at the Olympic tournament and lost as many with a total score of 1:15, is no better. ... The luge is not doing better. But they at least entertained the scandal - the mentor of Semyon Pavlichenko, Eduard Burmistrov, had a falling out with the head coach Albert Demchenko. As the old Russian proverb says, don't get into your sleigh. But here everything is the other way around - Demchenko wanted Pavlichenko to ride his sleigh. But the athlete and his coach were against it. Like, their own - no worse.
The fact that the Russian national team has few medals is bad. This is the very poverty which, contrary to another well-known proverb, is a vice. First, domestic sports have never fallen so low. Secondly, he is so discredited that it will take many years for his rehabilitation. "The word 'Russia' is a bit of a swear word here after the country was banned from the game as punishment for a widespread and state-sponsored doping program," writes USA Today correspondent Nancy Armor.
And the poor performance of domestic athletes only plays into the hands of our enemies. Like, as soon as the Russians lost their leaders, who were involved in doping scandals, there was no trace of their former sports power, and the Russian team won at the last winter Olympics in Sochi with the help of forgeries and manipulations. But ... Before the 2018 Games, the Russian national team, following the decision of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), regained first place in the team medal standings of the Olympic Games in Sochi. Our athletes got their medals back in skeleton, cross-country skiing, luge, ice skating. So, they were recognized as "clean" and their excommunication from the Games in Pyeongchang was illegal?
However, the IOC did not think to retreat. And many in the West continue to bend their line - Russia is to blame, and it was in vain to be allowed to the Olympics.
A little more than a week is left before the close of the Olympics in Pyeongchang. The results of the Russian national team can be described briefly: not yet a failure, but close. This has never happened. I would like to believe that it will not.
Warm greetings to those who destroyed and betrayed the national sport ...
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Every year, a huge number of schoolchildren take part in the Olympiads, but only a few win. And, of course, it is difficult for everyone who was not among the lucky ones not to get upset, and the phrase “the main thing is participation” at this moment is unlikely to comfort you. We talked with psychologists at the Center for Pedagogical Excellence Marianna Voytsyk, Nikita Vlasov and Yulia Gorbunova about how not to lose interest in a favorite subject after defeat, and wrote down their advice.
Psychologists who work with Olympiads have two tasks: to increase the number of successful performances and to make sure that the competition is beneficial to the participant, regardless of what his result is. When a psychological service appeared in the Center for Pedagogical Excellence in 2014, it turned out that one of the main areas of work was precisely working with failure. Moreover, the higher you rise, the more expensive this failure is given to you. So for many children it is easier to accept that they did not make it to the finals than that which they did, but didn’t take any place at the same time. Although, in fact, getting to the final stage is already an achievement.
At the same time, of course, even in the event of a failure at the Olympiad, psychological trauma can be avoided and even emerge victorious from this situation. Here are some tips that might help:
Olympiad All-Russian Olympiad for schoolchildren The final stage takes place in March-April
Intellectual Championship of Russia for everyone. Conducted in 24 subjects in four stages for grades 4-11
Mathematics Computer Science and 22 more subjects
You can move, squat, tone the body.
... during the announcement of the results
- In order to worry less when announcing points or final results, you need to be absolutely sure that you did everything in your power, you could not change anything. And for this you need to work on the tour, focus on assignments, and not think about what will happen next.
- Once you know your scores, it's good to be alone for a while. For example, see your result and go for a walk or lock yourself in your room, just digest this information. Here everyone has their own tricks: you can draw something, you can take out your aggression and, for example, tear up some newspaper. If you feel that you have euphoria, then you can run and jump. The main thing is to give vent to your emotions.
- Analyze what your result says. Let's say you think that you have no chance of winning: think about the pros and cons that are in this situation. And here it is worth focusing on the fact that the pluses really exist, and not because you did not win, but because you participated. This, again, is a unique experience, new friends, impressions of traveling to a new city.
- Remember that the Olympiad is partly an accident, a kind of coincidence. We got such tasks, but others could get caught. You were in this state, and you could be in another. It is impossible to do everything, you cannot be 100% ready for the competition. We must not forget: the specificity of the Olympiads is that it is not just a school curriculum, but something beyond that, and the organizers can come up with something unusual. For example, this year, at the final stage of the All-Russian MHC Olympiad, there were tasks that concerned the world of Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings. And for many children it became an outlet, helped to survive an unsuccessful performance. They found a way out to their emotions: "How is it, the Olympiad in world art culture, and here the tasks are not about Stanislavsky and Degas, but about Hogwarts," they thought it was funny and ridiculous, jokes like "I spent 35 hours at the Tretyakov Gallery, but didn’t reread Harry Potter. ” And no one stopped the guys, because it was clear that this way it was easier for them to survive their defeat.
- After the announcement of the results, as a rule, the participants do not leave immediately, they still have to communicate with each other for some time, so it is good if the organizers conduct this stage intelligently. For example, last year at the All-Russia Chemistry Final, diplomas were first given, and then there was a closing ceremony and a performance. The guys were sitting in a dark room and everyone had the opportunity to be alone with themselves and to experience what had just happened, to calm down.
... after the Olympiad
- There is no need to identify yourself with your result. Many people reason like this: "I am my intellect, and my intellect is my result." Following this logic, if you performed poorly at the Olympiad, then you are zero. But this is not true. First, the Olympiad does not measure intelligence: it measures specific knowledge on specific issues at a specific point in time. Secondly, in addition to the intellect, a person also has feelings, emotions, experiences, there is creative thinking.
- Analyze your performance at the Olympiad and think about how to make it better next time. Thoroughly approach the preparation: structure all the information that you need to master, create a table with marks: which topics have already been covered and which have not. Make a cognitive map: write down the entire system of knowledge within the framework of your subject and find in which directions you have gaps, decide on a lesson plan.
- Often the guys say: “I really wanted to make a present for the school, everyone was so waiting for my victory, this is so important for me!”. This is the wrong, unhealthy approach. Remember that your outcome and the expectations of your teachers are different things. They have no right to demand any success from you, you must not live up to their expectations. The only person who has the right to evaluate you is yourself. And, as already mentioned, in the Olympiad, not only knowledge and ingenuity are very important, but also luck.
- Remember that the Olympiads are not suitable for everyone and not everyone likes, and this is normal. You can try yourself in this direction, but it may turn out that you have a disposition of character, thinking, personality that is not suitable for this occupation. And this is not bad, it means that you are just a different person. For example, most of the Olympiads are now aimed specifically at children who have a large amount of knowledge, and there are not always many creative tasks in them.
- Do not forget that any school Olympiad is just a test of the pen, the main achievements in life are still somewhat different. Perhaps you will be more fortunate here!
In light of the upcoming Olympics in Brazil, we found out which other Games had the worst organization.
The Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, before they even began, were overgrown with scandals and incidents, such as the outbreak of the Zika virus on the eve of the Games, polluted water, a fire in the Olympic village, an unstable political situation in the country and a number of other kinds of problems.
But as history shows, these are not the only Games in the Olympic movement with organizational problems.
1. Paris, France, 1900
These Games are considered the worst Olympic Games, calling them, like the Games of 1904, the "Fair Games". The organization was so bad and disorderly that many athletes did not even suspect that they were participating in the Olympics.
2. Mexico City, Mexico, 1968
From the moment the IOC chose Mexico to host the Olympic Games, heated discussions and controversies began. Doctors and coaches of national teams sounded the alarm, believing that at an altitude of 2240 meters above sea level, physical activity can be dangerous for the body of a person accustomed to life at sea level. To which the Mexicans themselves, laughing, replied that those who want to justify their defeat in advance can say so.
As a result, what they feared happened, many athletes, due to oxygen deficiency, experienced serious health problems and some were literally carried away on a stretcher after the competition.
And 10 days before the opening of the Olympics in the country there was an uprising of students demanding a revolution. The authorities, without ceremony, brought troops into the capital, and, using force, brutally dispersed the crowd. According to unofficial reports, hundreds of protesters were killed.
3. Atlanta, USA, 1996
The organization of the Atlanta Games has come under heavy criticism. Criticized from all sides: officials, athletes and journalists. There were problems with the organization of traffic, as a result of which the city was mired in traffic jams, malfunctions of information systems, incompetence of volunteers.
The opening ceremony was extremely strange and depressing.
In the midst of the Games, in the Olympic Park, an explosion occurred during the festivities, which took the lives of two people, 111 were injured. The organizers decided to continue the Olympics, strengthening security measures.
The mascot of the 1996 Olympics, named Izzy, is considered the worst in the history of the Games.
At the closing ceremony of the Olympics, Juan Antonio Samaranch, President of the IOC, for the only time in his presidency did not utter the phrase that has become traditional, "These Games were the best in history."
4. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2016
The Rio Olympics have just begun, but already has every chance of winning gold for the worst organization of the Olympic Games.
The threat of terrorist attacks, the Zika epidemic, a polluted environment, the political and economic crisis - this is an incomplete list of the problems of the 2016 Olympics. Without waiting for the start of the Games, the mayor of Rio described the Olympics as a "lost opportunity."
And we will wait until the end of the Olympic Games and draw our final conclusions.
They do not shine with results, but they still become heroes of the Games.
The Olympics are an event that brings together some of the strongest athletes in the world who have dedicated their lives to the dream of winning a gold medal. However, at almost every Games there are stories about athletes who came to the competition rather for the sake of the "Olympic spirit": they perform poorly, but are remembered by the audience. The last example was the Mexican skier Herman Madrazo - he came last, but finished with the flag of his country, as if the winner.
How such athletes are selected for the Games
Previously, national teams could recruit any athletes to their teams: it was enough to show at least some results in local tournaments. Because of this, athletes appeared at the Games who could not compete with anyone.
Over the years, dissatisfaction grew from athletes who trained for years, but could not get to the Olympics - unlike similar "amateurs". Therefore, in 1988, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) adopted the Eddie Eagle Rule: OI applicants must prove themselves in international competitions. To qualify, it is now necessary to get into the top 50 or 30% of the best results in the pre-Olympic season. At the same time, not all international competitions bring together the best athletes, which gives the “underdogs” a chance.
Another way to get to the Games is “wildcard”, special “invitations” from the IOC and international federations. They are often given to countries where a sport is just beginning to develop. For example, this is how African athletes qualify in atypical winter sports.
Michael "Eddie Eagle" Edwards
Michael Edwards is the very man because of whom the IOC now allows only athletes who have achieved something on a professional level to the Olympics. Until the 1988 Games in Calgary, the UK national team did not participate in ski jumping for several decades. At the age of 25, the plasterer Edwards, who until then was only engaged in alpine skiing, decided to fix this.
The Briton did not look like an Olympic athlete: he wore thick-rimmed glasses, weighed several kilograms more than needed for his sport, did less than two years, and showed the worst results at the World Championships. But he was the best ski jumping in the UK - because he performed there alone.
In Calgary, Edwards became a hero and received the name "Eddie Eagle" for his low flights. In all disciplines, he took the last places with a significant lead over the competitors, but went down in the history of the Olympic Games.
Eric Musambani
At the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the IOC issued a wildcard to swimmer Eric Mussambani of Equatorial Guinea. Although it was difficult to call him a swimmer: the athlete learned to swim eight months before the Games and trained in a small pool at the hotel. Fishermen taught him the technique.
At 22, Mussambani ended up in Australia and saw a 50 meter pool for the first time, which scared him. Representatives of delegations from other countries helped the athlete to train. The Olympics became for him not only the first international tournament, but also the first trip abroad.
In qualifying, Mussambani was supposed to compete with a Tajik and a Nigerian, but both were disqualified for a false start. The swimmer was left alone with the pool. He swam the first half of the distance in 41 seconds, with a world record of 48 seconds for all 100 meters. But in the second part of the swim, he practically began to drown, because his legs were failing. Mussambani nevertheless completed the 100-meter distance in almost two minutes.
Habte Division
Another swimmer is the Ethiopian Robel Habte, who got to the Olympic Games in Rio. He performed much better than Mussambani at the 100m, covering the distance in one minute and five seconds. But the athlete was remembered primarily for his non-"Olympic" sports form. It was later revealed that Robel Habte is the son of the President of the National Aquatics Federation.
Philip Boyt
Kenyan Philip Boyt is one of the main legends of the "white" Games. He attended three Olympics, but the first one is most memorable - in Nagano in 1998. For a long time, the athlete was running, and he saw snow only in 1995 in Finland. Boyt recalled: "It was difficult to endure the weather, in Helsinki it was -17, and I fell, putting on skis."
After several trainings, he qualified for the Games in Japan: there were legends that for a place in the team he competed with another Kenyan, with whom he earned for equipment with him. In Nagano, Boyt competed in the 10 km race and came in last. Norwegian Bjorn Daly received the gold medal, but he stood at the finish line for another 20 minutes to personally congratulate the Kenyan.
This Olympics was the beginning of the friendship between the African and the Norwegian. Philip's first child is named Daly Boyt. Former athletes still sometimes skate together.
Pita Taufatofua
Even at the Olympics in Rio, the famous "Tongan in oil" participated in taekwondo competitions. However, in 2017, he abruptly changed his sport and started skiing. According to the athlete, he trained for only 12 weeks before the Games, but on the last day of qualifying competitions he was able to get to South Korea.
The debut of the Tongan in the cross-country skiing of 15 kilometers ended in 114 out of 116. Only the Colombian and Mexican, with whom Taufatofua trained, performed worse. After that, he did not lose heart and said that he had completed two main tasks - he finished the race before the stadium closed and did not crash into a tree.
At the 2020 Games, the athlete wants to try his hand at swimming. So he will participate in three Olympics in three different sports.
US non-professional skier Elizabeth Swainy competed for Hungary in the women's halfpipe ski competition at the Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea on February 19
Ski halfpipe involves difficult jumps that must be performed on a curved structure. The athlete with the most points for tricks wins. However, Swainey does not know how to ski and therefore, trying not to accelerate too much, she simply drove along the half-pipe (a special design that resembles a half pipe). At the competition, she took last place, gaining 30 points. At the same time, the athlete who took the penultimate place fell during the performance.