Russia's Natural Resources Lack Medal

VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- The Russian athletes at the 2010 Winter Olympics can't be criticized for their patriotism. The sacrifice they employed the past fortnight in Vancouver should help the shrinking economy of their homeland stabilize, and maybe even realize some recovery.

After all, Russia won't have to cough up the $4 million to $7 million in prize money to those athletes for the 30 to 50 medals -- at least 10 of which were supposed to be gold -- it expected they would win. Going into Sunday, the final day of these games, Moscow doesn't even stand to hand $1 million to its medalists in Vancouver.

Through Saturday, Russia won three gold medals, five silvers and seven bronzes. Korea and Switzerland had twice as many gold medals. Austria and Norway had more medals overall.

What the heck happened to Russia?

The Russian haul of medals in Vancouver is so shockingly small and of concern to Russians that the Russian newspaper Vedomosti reported that a parliament meeting in the Siberian city of Tomsk on Thursday started with a moment of silence for the demise of the Russian Winter Olympic team.

"To our deep regret, the current Olympic Games have brought us more disappointment than joy and pride in our country," the paper reported the Duma speaker said. "The achievements of Russian sportsmen have turned out to be even further from the most pessimistic forecasts. I hope that [Vancouver] will be analyzed and lessons will be drawn."

That is Russian sports talk for "fire the coach," or "throw the bums out."

Remember when Russia -- or more accurately, the larger Soviet Union over which it ruled -- had the Winter Games on ice? In the nine Winter Olympics between 1956, when the Soviet Union first participated, to 1988, the Soviet Union topped the medals' table at all but two games. It did best at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, where it captured 29 medals, including 11 gold.

Russian medalists in Vancouver, however, have been as conspicuous in their absence as the Russian hockey team will be Sunday in the gold-medal game. (The funniest tweet I saw during these Olympics came during Canada's knockout of the Russian hockey team before the medal rounds: "@dbarefoot: "I can see Russia getting its ass kicked from my house.")

It is as if someone dropped a new Iron Curtain and the Russians can't get around it to the medal podium.

Now that the host Canadians have rebounded remarkably in these games, which their organizers unnecessarily boasted they would own, no country has more egg on its face -- in this case, fish eggs, I guess would be most appropriate -- than Russia. No wonder Russian hockey superstar Alex Ovechkin got testy with a paparazzi invading his private time after the Russian hockey team was blown out by Canada. Even a senior Russian parliament member said this was beyond embarrassing.

"This is beneath any criticism," Sergei Prikhodkov, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's top foreign policy aide, told Russian media Friday of the Olympic team's poor showing. "I have not watched any [Olympic] broadcast to the end."

It is easy to point to the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 from one union of republics with 293 million people to 15 countries, of which Russia is the largest, as the reason Russia is no longer the 800-pound bear at the Winter Games. That would ignore, however, that Russia remains home to 140 million people, making it the ninth largest country in the world.

The only countries participating in the Vancouver Winter Olympics with larger populations than Russia -- and credible teams competing in every event, or most -- are China and the United States.

China and the U.S. have taken a bigger bite out of the medal pie this time. China by Saturday equaled its medal count of 11 from the 2006 Winter Games in Turin, while the U.S. guaranteed it would set a new national record with 37 medals after its four-man bobsled team won its first gold in 62 years.

Other countries are faring better at winter sports, too, like Australia, which sent 40 athletes and won a record three medals.

But Russia is still roughly half the size it was as the Soviet Union and dispatched a full roster of athletes. It just didn't wield its girth the same.

Some have said Russia can't afford to try to dominate the games anymore, what with its struggling economy, or refuses to make the necessary investment.

"The current situation is a consequence of what we lost in the 1990s," Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko told the RIA Novosti news agency recently. "You can't prepare a top-level athlete in an hour."

Mutko was complaining about financing. It isn't what it used to be for sports even under a sports-loving Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. (Favorite placard at Canada-Russia hockey game: "Poutine. Not Putin." Poutine somehow became a popular French-Canadian dish of French fries, gravy and cheese curds. I declined gravy and cheese curds for my fries when offered several times on this trip. Foolish? I think not.)

But I digress.

Russia can't afford a performance like it had in these Winter Games at the next one, though, and it doesn't sound like it is about to. It hosts the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi and already there is chatter that heads are about to roll.

I'm not talking about Russian hockey coach Vyacheslav Bykov's peeved response to a query about his team's shortcoming: "Yeah, let's bring some guillotines and gibbets. We have 35 men in the hockey team; let's kill them on the Red Square! What's the point of trying to find out who is guilty now?"

The NHL, I suspect, would object.

Nonetheless, Time magazine reported last week that Boris Gryzlov, the parliamentary speaker and a senior member of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's ruling United Russia party, said he will summon Mutko and Leonid Tyagachev, the president of Russia's Olympic committee, to explain the country's embarrassing performance.

What can they say? Moscow, you have a problem.