Won or lost?

Since Thursday, when the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled and suspended Russia for two years from all major international competitions, almost the entire Russian sports community has been asking this question.

“It could have been worse,” said Tatiana Danchenko quite rightly, whose wards have won several dozen top awards in synchronized swimming, including gold in the last four Olympics.

“You won’t file any appeals here.

It's good that they were suspended for two years, not four.

At least there is something positive.

But I can only express my regrets to our athletes, ”said Vyacheslav Koloskov, Honorary President of the Russian Football Union (RFU).

Two years ago, the head of the Russian Olympic Committee and four-time Olympic champion Stanislav Pozdnyakov admitted that the organization had to go through a lot and perform a decent amount of serious routine work, which had very specific tasks.

“We found ourselves at the epicenter of global processes and had to do everything in our power to keep Russian sport in its rightful place in the international system and to provide athletes with the opportunity to take part in all Olympic competitions.

At the moment we have a clear feeling that we, shall we say, “zeroed out” the situation and are moving synchronously with the IOC in the right direction.

President Bach met with the head of the Russian state, we received him here, at the Russian Olympic Committee.

This, I think, is a serious sign that the page of the crisis has been turned over ... ”, - explained Pozdnyakov.

Subsequent events (in particular, the deprivation of the Olympic awards of Olga Zaitseva and Yevgeny Ustyugov without presenting irrefutable evidence of their personal guilt to the biathletes) showed that the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is not going to end the war with Russia, and the IOC simply stepped aside - took an observant position.

Probably the point has not been set even now: the CAS verdict is rather a pit stop, an intermediate pause to prepare for the next attack.

The former head of Russian sports, Olympic champion Vyacheslav Fetisov noted that he was not ready to consider the decision of the Court of Arbitration for Sport a victory.

“It seemed to me that for six years that this whole story was dragging on, it should have somehow ended,” he complained.

- During this time, in our country, three sports ministers have changed, there were many promises up to and including statements that playing under a neutral flag would shame the country.

As a fan, I truly believed that all these promises and statements were based on something serious.

They were encouraging.

Now I am not ready to be glad that instead of four years of suspension we received only two.

Two years is two Olympics, just in case.

And if you are innocent, but you go to the Olympics as a suspicious person in neutral status, I don’t think that this is a reason for positive emotions ”.

The head of the ROC adheres to the same point of view.

He made it clear that he does not consider the CAS verdict positive for the country.

“We do not welcome the decision to partially satisfy the claim.

Our position is initially based on the fact that there are no grounds for any punishment of RUSADA and, as a consequence, sanctions against the participants in the process.

The court did not fully take into account the arguments and arguments, ”Pozdnyakov told reporters.

The Olympic Games in Sochi are considered to be the starting point of the current history, although we lost our positions in sports long before those Games.

They began to crumble back in the 90s of the XX century along with the collapse of the country.

It was then that Russia lost a whole layer of outstanding figures in sports diplomacy, who had considerable international authority, and, most importantly, resources that allowed dictating their own rules, finding supporters, enlisting support at the international level and further down the list.

Russia began to get out of this hole not so long ago.

As the country began to emerge from the crisis, the pressure intensified.

And the IOC, like WADA, has become an instrument of policy for certain groups.

If we continue to reason in this vein, it is not surprising that after the victorious Games for Russia in Sochi, the blow was dealt primarily to sports: after all, it is sport that is considered to be the most vulnerable point for the entire Russian people.

Further, it all comes down to the well-known laws of any fight: as long as a pain point exists, it will be targeted.

How they beat Alexander Karelin in every fight at the Games in Atlanta.

For some, it looked mean, although it was just the rules of the game.

To which Karelin himself was just one hundred percent ready - that's why he won.

In this regard, big sport teaches that victory sometimes needs to be gnawed out of the teeth, and not expect that the enemy, having inflicted a series of sensitive blows, will offer a draw.

Why should one suddenly make such gifts to people who have already accepted other people's rules and are ready to play by them?

Observing what is happening from the outside over the past few years, it was very difficult to get rid of the feeling that any actions of the same WADA take our country by surprise.

Russian sports leaders, despite Pozdnyakov's words, lost their positions rather than strengthened them.

They failed to work out any intelligible tactics and strategy, and the most amazing thing is that they still remain confident that at some point the war will end by itself.

And that at the end of the corridor, along which Russia has been driven for six years like a beast on a hunt, there will certainly be a laid table and glasses for peace and friendship will be raised.

Did Russia have a chance to turn history in a different direction if, say, at the state level, on the eve of the Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, it was decided not to accept the proposed humiliations and boycott the Olympics?

I do not know.

This is too painful a question to be answered unambiguously.

According to Fetisov, with such a step, we would simply throw ourselves out of Olympic life for many years.

On the other hand, many athletes were thrown out of this life anyway.

Including - well-deserved, titled and with a crystal clear reputation.

So what if, on the eve of the Games, CAS satisfied the claims of 28 out of 42 athletes who were previously excommunicated from Olympic sports?

None of them were allowed into Pyeongchang anyway.

It was not by chance that Elena Vyalbe remembered how some new requirements for Russian athletes constantly appeared, forcing them to sacrifice more and more people.

“Until recently, we didn’t know who and for what reason would be refused an invitation.

Why was Sergey Ustyugov not invited to Pyeongchang in our sport?

Or Gleb Retivykh, who never took part in the 2014 Olympic Games?

- the famous skier is surprised.

- Therefore, I still hope that some authoritative person will appear in the international sports community who will say: "That's enough!"

You can’t punish people many times for the same violations that were not committed by them ”.

Why multiple sanctions are taking place, Fetisov exhaustively explained, saying that innocent, in fact, athletes are punished not for their own sins, but only because the entire system of state sports of the country is punished.

In other words, people simply fell into a trap (and continue to be in it in a certain sense), not of their own free will.

They became hostages of other people's ambitions and someone else's inability to play and win in it.

At the 2018 Games, Russia managed to realize the cherished dream of a huge number of fans - to win Olympic hockey.

But one should hardly forget that our country won gold without a flag, not under its own name, and that victory will never be listed as Russian in any sports reference book.

In other words, even in this case, we did not manage to achieve complete and unconditional triumph.

Was it worth all the humiliation the country has endured?

It is difficult to answer this question.

Former sports chief Valery Sysoev, who headed the International Cycling Federation for ten years, said that he understands perfectly why Rene Fasel is fighting so desperately on the Russian side now.

They say that the President of the International Ice Hockey Federation understands perfectly well that there can be no ice hockey without Russia.

If Russia made the decision not to go to the Games in Pyeongchang, would the IOC fight just as actively to bring such a major player back?

Perhaps such a move would really make the world community stop and think about the implications for the whole sport.

Although with the same probability this could not have happened.

Sport, with all its external attractiveness, is not at all an activity that humanity cannot do without: the last year has shown this more than clearly.

And it makes no sense to talk about all this now.

It remains only to continue to play according to the proposed rules.