Olympic results can be reconsidered. Will Russian Aluminium succeed?

The Salt Lake City Winter Olympics may become the first and the last games in Jacques Rogge's career as the president of the International Olympic Committee. Rogge was following the American patriots’ tastes - the major investors of the Olympic movement.

The Russian magazine Itogy wrote that Russia could strive for the re-election of the president of the International Olympic Committee, and therefore, the repeated consideration of the Olympic results could be achieved. It is only necessary to have a certain number of votes for Rogge’s re-election, and Russia can do this - our country still has the control over the Olympic committees of the former Soviet republics. In addition to this, Russia has the strategic cooperation with the colleagues in Beijing and the National Olympic Committees of other countries. Former IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch was considered to be Moscow’s big friend, so the new “friend” should be taught a lesson. This is possible in theory, taking into consideration the fact that the incumbent Vice President of the IOC is Vitaly Smirnov – a Russian guy.

The company Russian Aluminium, the general partner of the Russian Olympic team, announced that it was going to protect the Russian athletes. PRAVDA.Ru wrote about it before. The company was going to attract the world’s leading law firms in order to protect the interests of the Russian athletes. The company released the official statement on February 22, setting out its concern about the actions of the IOC and of the organizers of the Winter Olympics, in connection with the biased and discriminating approach to the Russian athletes. “We believe that the biased judgement allows to conclude that the organizers of the Olympics declared a war to the Russian athletes. Despite the huge moral damage, which was caused to the members of the Russian team and to the Russian fans, this war seriously hurts the Russian Olympic sponsors. Needless to mention that the reputation of the Russian companies is growing with each victory, with each medal. If our athletes are deprived of their victories and medals, this lessens the value of sponsorship. We are deprived of our right to be the sponsors and partners of the Olympic champions and prize-winners. We believe that our moral and material contribution in the preparation of the Russian team was depreciated because of the judge’s abuse of discretion.”

The head of the National Olympic Committee of Russia, Leonid Tyagachev, said before the Games started, that the words “Russia’s prestige” meant a lot to Russian Aluminium. Well, this is really ironic. Russia’s National Olympic Committee was the first to make a step back and did not want to solve the problems.

Sergey Stefanov PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov