Restructuring in the conditions of suspension: how will Russian biathlon start a new Olympic cycle

Will the updated format of the national team bring the desired (read - winning) result?

Journalists and fans ask this question almost every season, but now it’s more appropriate to say that the suspension of Russian athletes from international competitions for an indefinite period has provided the sports leadership with truly unlimited scope for any experiments.

And on the acquisition of teams as well.

The piquancy of the biathlon situation lies only in the fact that global reshuffles are still likely in the coaching staff of the country's main team.

At the moment, we have four coaching groups, one of which continues to be headed by Yuri Kaminsky, a specialist whose role is usually noted especially in relation to the Olympic success of the male part of the team.

But if, as a result of the June elections, Viktor Maigurov remains in the post of president of the Russian Biathlon Union, it is very likely that Kaminsky will leave the national team (and possibly biathlon): he does not hide that he is not too pleased with the current reshuffles, but the team with him is not worked well - this is also a fact that looks like a tangible click on the professional image of an eminent coach.

After Artyom Istomin went on an independent voyage, Kaminsky also lost his organizational safety net, and in this regard, he most likely will need a person who is able to take on absolutely all managerial functions.

Alexander Kasperovich could become such a person, and it is no secret that it is precisely this bunch that the current vice-president of the RBU Alexei Nuzhdov, Maigurov's opponent in the struggle for the presidency, sees at the head of the entire team.

In other words, Nuzhdov's coming to power (of which the candidate himself is sure) will almost certainly mean a change in the coaching hierarchy.

Although from the standpoint of practical work, having lost, with the exception of Eduard Latypov, the main fighters - Anton Babikov, Karim Khalili, Daniil Serokhvostov - Kaminsky only won: the reservists, who are now at the disposal of the coach, are, by definition, more executive and obedient, especially since they There is much more time to prepare now than in previous seasons.

In one of Kaminsky’s interviews, where the coach commented on the reshuffles in the team, an insult sounded: they say, it’s completely wrong that athletes make decisions, forcing everyone else to adapt to this choice.

But the same situation can be looked at from a different angle: an athlete always has much less time to realize himself than a coach.

Therefore, people prefer to work where the result seems to them more real.

From this point of view, the positions of only one coaching team, Sergei Bashkirov, seem to be the most stable at the moment.

Athletes unconditionally trust him, he is successful in terms of results and is always open to dialogue with any member of the team, which, in particular, was desperately lacking for all those who spent the Olympic season in the Kaminsky group.

The coach, of course, is not obliged to perform the functions of a psychologist, but in biathlon this moment is fundamentally important, since athletes and staff have to spend too much time away from their families in a closed team.

The more positive the atmosphere in the team, the higher its psychological stability - this is not even a theory, but a repeatedly confirmed fact.

An example is the rather long period of cooperation between Anton Shipulin and Andrey Kryuchkov: at the head of the joint work of the coach and the best biathlete in the country was not subordination, but rather partnership and absolute trust in each other.

The current situation is definitely a plus for Bashkirov: in the person of all (with the exception of Latypov) leaders of the national team, he received a unique opportunity for his own professional growth.

All his wards know exactly what they want, they are ready to work as much as necessary for this, but the main thing is that it is impossible, and it is wrong to try to lead older athletes according to a single scheme.

In other words, the coach must constantly develop in order to go one step ahead of those with whom he works.

And keep them interesting.

Whether Artyom Istomin, who went on an independent voyage with a female crew, will be able to realize himself in a similar vein is an open question.

In the bonus zone, the coach has the experience of working together with Kaminsky in the men's team and a solid safety net in the person of Vitaly Noritsyn, who returned to the national team after the "Bulgarian" contract ended.

On the downside is the lack of practice of working with girls, despite the fact that the current one can be significantly complicated by the transition of Khalili and Serokhvostov to him.

The problem here is not at all in the personal or professional qualities of a specialist.

And that in any collective the minority quite quickly begins to live according to the laws of the majority.

A vivid example is Russian football: no matter what legionnaire you take, after a couple of seasons in a Russian club, even the most talented and expensive players begin to behave “like everyone else”, both in terms of training and discipline, and the game itself.

As for the current situation in biathlon, such sparring will definitely benefit the girls, which cannot be said with confidence about the guys: it is no coincidence that the two-time Olympic champion of Turin, Svetlana Ishmuratova, noticed that she did not believe too much in the success of the mixed experiment.

But if Istomin and Noritsyn succeed in raising not only the women's team, but also the guys who joined it, to a new level, this will really become a grandiose achievement for the new coaching tandem.

It’s a paradox, but the “dark horse” in the Russian team remains the oldest and most experienced in biathlon Mikhail Shashilov.

In the current team, he looks like an absolutely non-systemic person, but at the same time (and not unreasonably) he knows his own worth.

The departure from the mentor Svetlana Mironova after ten years of joint work is a minus, rather, not for the coach, but for the athlete, in whose sports “history” there are not very well-founded ideas about her own potential.

Shashilov's desire to gather mostly Sverdlovsk athletes around him is also understandable: the specialist achieved the greatest success primarily as a regional coach, and if we consider his group as preparing the highest quality reserve for the main team, such a strategy definitely makes practical sense.

Why such an experiment should be carried out within the framework of the national team, and not in the Sverdlovsk region, is also understandable: the team has a different, incomparable with the regional level of support, and hence opportunities, therefore, there is reason to expect a more rapid growth in results.

And at the same time, for much tougher competition: the already announced amount of prize money (according to Nuzhdov, the prize fund of the Russian Cup alone can be more than 100 million rubles) may turn out to be a much stronger motivation for the team than all the reshuffles in the coaching staffs combined.