The President of the Russian Biathlon Union told �Sport-Express� (Russian national sport newspaper) about his first impressions of 2005.

- New Year holidays are a usual problem for us, he said. � I discussed it with our top athletes and they are unanimous in their wish to spend these free days somewhere near Moscow instead of going home. Now we�re holding talks with Moscow government about it.

Meanwhile, the national team members, each of them, have to spend the New Year break  at home. We know the results of it. For example, Pavel Rostovtsev and Olga Pyleva had to spend those days in Krasnoyarsk, which boasted minus 34 degrees at the end of December. There�s no point of even thinking of any decent trainings. Moreover a few athletes returned to the team being ill with flu (again Rostovtsev, Albina Akhatova, Sergei Bashkirov) So, we need to save the healthy ones from it! Rostovtsev finally was able to start in the relay squad, but didn�t manage to do the sprint. Both Akhatova and Bashkirov even couldn�t start in the WC.

You must also take into account long flights from Europe to Siberia, which is the native land for most of our athletes. Such journeys take much time of the athletes to acclimatize and re-acclimatize themselves after it.  This is the result of the New Year relaxation. And every year it is the same situation. Our European competitors are unaware of such obstacles.

So the only way out is to live through this break in the Moscow region. It is usually snowy and not cold.

- This year it�s even too warm�

- It�s not a problem to freeze an artificial track. Just look at the rains we had in Oberhof and Ruhpolding, still they didn�t prevent the organizers to prepare it. So, I repeat that the reason for the current recession we have in our team is obvious. I learnt it when I was an active biathlete myself. There was a moment when I stopped going to my native Novosibirsk on holidays. Besides in January we usually had a training session in a mountain region preparing to the world Championships. My wife and my two children came to se me and we usually spend our holidays together, for example in Bakuriani (famous Georgian ski-resort). I had enough time to acclimatize myself in an alpine zone, because came there almost a week before those who spent New Year at home. You know the result, I had almost no failures during 20 years in my career.

-Well, but at the same time athletes need a rest, needn�t they?

- It depends on the rest. If you�re at home, you�ll relax (sometimes more than necessary) even if you don�t want to. You know, wife, children, parents�

-So, do you think it�s the main reason for unsatisfactory results of our team in Oberhof?

- Certainly. Moreover, Oberhof is a very complicated place as it is. The track is difficult, fogs and rains, which press the service group and complicate the choice of skis. Before the first Oberhof race the general condition of our team was very poor. Ruhpolding was a positive dynamics. Our girls made an outstanding performance with a golden relay, double golden sprint and a pursuit golden too. At the same time our men still can�t rise after that functional fall. If we look at Nikolai Krouglov, he still can�t regain his shape. We remember the Ruhpolding relay, when Nikolai lost too much time at his first leg and the others couldn�t compensate that gap.

- Can you say that the supersuccess of the first three WC stages was a surprise for you?

- To some extent, yes. Especially that of our men. I haven�t seen such a start for a long tie already.

- How can you explain it?

- I think the reason is that we paid more attention to working at speed in our national team this season. Our girls showed high class even after the New Year break due to it. And I expect our men to do the same very soon. We plan young Maxim Tchoudov and Vladimir Grigoriev, performing perfectly in the European Cup, to start in Antholz in a few days.

-Our girls managed to recover very fast after the Oberhof failure. We learnt it after the first Ruhpolding race, I mean the relay. And we can�t but remember the dramatic last leg. What about you, did you expect them to win in the end?

- You are free to believe me or not, but before the race I said that we would win a minute from the second place. They  won 47 seconds.

-Didn�t you change your mind even before Zaitseva�s last shooting, when we seemed to be aspirants for only the third position?

- Didn�t you know I have an intuition sharp as a wolf�s scent? And here we saw a German � Norwegian duel, when the athletes made each other flunk the shooting. It�s a known fact that Poiree as well as German girls are all very good when they are far ahead of the rest of competitors, but they falter as soon as a local fight sets up. That�s why the German had problems at the last shooting. As for Poiree she drove too hard on the track. Zaitseva performed very well, she stood all the pressure. 

- We�ll remember that relay for a long time, I think. And we won�t ever forget the sprint!

-Fully agree with you. Just imagine, a double victory! Tchernousova rocketed to the top after a certain recession and Pyleva killed two birds with one stone, won her first race this season and regained the yellow bib.

-How can you explain that Liv Poiree, who was the star of the previous season, is in a rather mediocre condition now ?

- I�m sure, we�ll here about her. I don�t know her preparation system, but in any case Norwegians and Germans spend dozens of millions on sport science. And they are certain to have gamblrd on the World Championship. As for our national team, I don�t imagine what we would do but for our sponsor, the �Mechel� Company. And it would be unjust to complain, because both the Russian Olympic Committee and the Federal Agency on sport allocate quite a sum of money for the development of biathlon.

- Do you think it is possible to completely avoid periods of recession during the whole season? Is it possible for a human being to bear such load?

- Why not? But unfortunately we lost our bygone methods of training. In the Soviet period we had stored much knowledge and experience of it and now we�re trying to restore those systems. We are likely to use more our training stations, to return to our periodical trainings in alpine zones. We used to train in Bakuriani and Tsakhadsor a lot. Tsakhadsor has been restored lately which makes me feel very satisfied, as I trained for 6 years there. By the way, Anna Bogaliy, Olga Zaitseva, Pavel Rostovtsev and Ivan Tcherezov are going there when the WC in Antholz to prepare for the alpine stage in Torino.

     Lina KHOLINA Translated by Wilhelmina

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