If you try to sum up the medal results of the Olympic Games in Tokyo for Russian athletes, you will have to face two assessments that lead to diametrically opposite conclusions.

On the one hand, in the overall standings, the Russian summer sports team took fifth place - it did not fall so low either in the era of economic problems in the 1990s, or after the real doping sanctions that cut off teams in entire sports in 2016.

Although this comparison is exaggerated, dry statistics say: it was worse only at the dawn of the Olympic movement, when the Russian Empire still existed with its only champion for many years, Nikolai Panin-Kolomenkin.

On the other hand, in terms of the total number of medals, Russian athletes took third place, behind only the Americans and the Chinese.

The national team returned to its positions, which it occupied in 2008 and 2012, since the British were still ahead five years ago.

In total, 71 awards fell into the team's piggy bank, and this is the best indicator since 2004 - the last Olympics, at which there was no massive rechecking of doping tests and the subsequent revision of a huge layer of results.

How then to evaluate the performance of the team of the Russian Olympic Committee?

How is the decline since 1992 against the background of the rest of the world, or is it still a success?

We need to start with the fact that the Tokyo Olympics became a unique competition for history, which took place not thanks to, but in spite of, that it cannot but impose certain corrections on its perception. Was it possible two years ago to imagine that the largest sporting event could take place with empty stands, under conditions of a declared state of emergency, with a serious increase in infection with a dangerous infection, with an inevitable economic failure for the organizers, with incessant street protests, with the obligatory observance of extremely harsh and annoying security measures?

A city that has at least one of the listed problems would be an unambiguous outsider in the dispute over the right to host the Olympics. Subsequent generations of athletes and fans who were not direct witnesses of the Tokyo Games will certainly appreciate that they did take place (or they will condemn the insanity of the organizers, but in any case they will not take it for granted). The idea of ​​holding the Olympic Games in 2021 could have been buried, but it found its embodiment in 17 days of an uninterrupted stream of competitions, when not a single start even had to be canceled or rescheduled (except that the start time was shifted due to the heat). For modern sports, this achievement is the same as hosting Euro 2020, to which the media constantly predicted logistics problems due to the coronavirus crisis.

And in such a situation, the athletes have to rejoice in the very fact of participation, in the fact that their five-year training was not in vain, and they nevertheless showed the world their strength, skill and endurance.

Of course, the won medals and victories are more delightful, but those who were in Tokyo and were left without these awards need to remember what their summer of 2020 was like - the very one in which the Games were supposed to take place.

No matter how skeptical the fans are about the old slogan "The main thing is not victory, but participation", considering it an excuse for defeat, but now it has acquired a much deeper meaning, which is worth realizing.

From all this it follows that it is worth revising the views on what is considered a success and what is a failure, not only for individual athletes, but also for entire countries. The Russian team showed an excellent result in the number of medals, but did not make a breakthrough in gold medals (it was worse only in London 2012 - one gold less). If there was a breakthrough, then in silver - more second places, categorically included in the category of defeats, the domestic team had only 29 years ago.

Yes, silver is a defeat, because a defeat is everything that is not a victory. But then again, only in the competitions we enjoyed before the pandemic did these postulates hold true. The second places in rhythmic gymnastics, the defeats in the final matches and fights (in which the Russians lost 14 times and won nine times), and the gold missed because of one shot, and the victory that slipped away with equal points, and much more can be called a failure.

But try to tell swimmer Ilya Borodin or karateka Anna Chernysheva that Olympic silver is a failure, and only victory matters. Those who, like dozens of other athletes, strong and not so strong, did not come to Tokyo when they were so expecting it. Perhaps, had they come forward and take the second place, they themselves would have been terribly upset with such a result, but now they would probably give everything to even feel the even more disgusting bitterness of the fourth place (or the equivalent to it in the fifth place in single combats).

You can argue for a long time about what is more important in sports - victories or medals.

But, firstly, if silver and bronze had no meaning, then they would not exist, just as they do not exist in professional tennis, club football and some other sports.

And secondly, for one of more than three dozen Summer Olympics, victory is something more than a first place.

It should be noted separately that the place in the overall standings does not have a strict correlation with the number of medals won.

19 gold medals were enough in Rio to take fourth place, and now 21 would not be enough.

But if a country is ideally preparing for the Olympic Games and then shoots at them, then it can squeeze those who gape slightly.

We are talking about Japan, which took third place in terms of the number of victories, beating the UK, and dreamed of returning to the top of Russia.

For the first time in 53 years, the Land of the Rising Sun climbed so high and surpassed its national record by as many as 11 gold medals, and its performance in Rio de Janeiro - by 15.

Japan took advantage of the right of the hosts of the Olympics to break through.

She won the first gold in its history in table tennis and fencing, the third in boxing, broke the record for victories in judo, repeated the best result in women's wrestling.

The Japanese could be criticized for making the most of new sports - skateboarding, softball, baseball and karate earned them as many as six gold medals (while climbing and surfing are less valuable awards). Without them, the hosts of the competition would have lagged behind the UK and would no longer complain about judging Russian women in rhythmic gymnastics. But one cannot but count them, and this breakthrough is better perceived as at least some kind of reward for the organizers.

In general, in recent years, one can single out a tendency (or coincidence) that it is precisely those countries that have been striving for leadership positions in the overall standings for many years that hold the Summer Olympic Games in order to make a breakthrough due to them and stay at the same heights on the wave of success. China, before the choice of Beijing as the capital of the 2008 Games, did not think about disputes with the United States for first place, Great Britain barely climbed into the top ten before London's victory, almost the same was the situation with Japan. It should be noted that in 2024 the Games will be held in France (eighth place in the Tokyo standings), and in 2032 - in Australia (sixth place in the same).