Question by Kyla: Why has Russias olympic medal count gone down in the last couple Olympics?
In the past Russia has always seemed to dominate the Olympics, until this year when they came out with only 3 gold medals. The president of Russia Dmitry Medvedev shockingly said that “if those responsible for preparing the athletes don’t resign he will make them”. Why do you think, since Russia has moved towards a capitalist country has their Olympic medal count gone down?
Answers and Views:
Answer by tuna.talkalot
So you advocate that if a country want to get more medals, it has to be socialist. Seriously!
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Actions have consequ says
First of all, RUSSIA never really dominated anything, the Soviet Union did. Different animal entirely.
When the Soviet Union broke up, they lost a lot of athletes to breakaway countries. Perhaps more importantly, they lost a lot of TRAINING facilities in those countries. Perhaps more importantly YET, they lost the Soviet system which allowed them to devote MASSIVE resources to sports, seen as a major international public relations tool. Winning was more important than feeding the people, in fact. The new capitalist Russian just can't afford the level of commitment, and their sports programs suffer because of it. The 'new' Russia approaches a third world country in terms of their ability to devote money to sports.
Nevertheless, I suspect with the Sochi games coming, the means will be found. Russia will not allow an embarrassment on home soil.
Richard C says
There is going to be an investigation on where funding earmarked for specific sports actually ended up. All I can say is….stay tuned.