Postcard from Bishkek

As the Games came to a close in London, the self satisfying congratulations lavished by the British Press on each and every success was noticeable, even from thousands of miles away, here in Bishkek. Let’s be fair … they did have something to celebrate.  Britain did have a “good games” – coming third in the final medals table, surpassing the impressive performance of Team GB in Beijing four years ago and their second best ever performance with 65 of  over 900 awarded at 302 ceremonies across 30 different venues – just over 7% of the total but more or less in line with the fact that 5% of all the competitors were British athletes.

Britain may have eventually have come in third place in the medal table, but Russia, in fourth, actually won more medals – 82.  It always strikes me as odd the way that the table is sorted first by the number  of Gold medals, then by the number of silver and finally by the number of  bronze medals … which means that a country with just one gold medal, (for example, Algeria, the Bahamas, Grenada, Uganda and Venezuela), ranks higher up the final table than one which has six or seven medals but missed out on any first place Gold medals, (for example Inda who won six medals).

For the record: Although it probably helped being the host country that has not always been the case.  The host country topped the table in Atlanta (1996), Beijing (2008), Berlin (1936), London (1908), Los Angeles (both in 1932 and 1984), Moscow (1980), Paris (1900) and St. Louis (1904) when the highest ever medal tally was scored by the USA, which is nine times out of thirty summer games – with the other games being more or less divided between the USA and the former USSR.  On the other hand, it didn’t help Canada when the games were hosted by Montreal in 1976 – although they managed to win 11 medals, they didn’t win a single Gold.

In the 1908 games which was hosted by London, Great Britain topped the medals table with 146 of the 323 medals available, including 56 Gold medals, 51 Silver and 39 Bronze; several weird and wonderful sports and  the only ever walkover in the history of the games, mind you – they had almost a third of of all the competitors.  The last time they hosted the games, in 1948, they had just under 10% of the competitors but they were only able to garner 23 of the 411 medals, and only three of them were gold medals.

It became clear, on the other hand, that Kyrgyzstan was not going to add to its horde of Olympic medals: a Silver and two Bronze.

For the record:  Kyrgyzstan has appeared in five Summer Games,  (1996, 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012) and five Winter Games, (1994, 1994, 2002, 2006 and 2010), but has won just three medals:

2000 Sydney – Judo – Men’s 60 kg - Aidyn Smagulov- Bronze
2008 Beijing - Greco-RomanWrestling - 66 kg - Kanatbek Begaliev - Silver
2008 Beijing -Greco-RomanWrestling - 60 kg - Ruslan Tiumenbaev - Bronze

Indeed it began to look as if, this time around, Kyrgyzstan was not going to find itself among the eighty odd countries that get onto the final Medals table at all.

Of course, everyone hopes to be a winner, but not everybody can be.  Sebastian Coe, who headed the London bid for the Games must understand that – having been so bitterly disappointed to be beaten into the silver medal position in the 800m race in the 1980 Mo0scow games, and equally the delight at winning the Gold in the 1500m race a few days later.  Oh, there were lots of of other pressures and influences on him and his chief rival, Steve Ovett, at the time … but I remember the contrasting photographs …

One year there was a special project – photographing not just the ecstasy of victory but also the pain and misery of defeat … coming in second, or third … or fourth and thus missing out on any medal recognition.

It has to be admitted that most of the 10,000 plus competitors must be under no illusions – they must be aware that there is little or no chance of them being a medal winner … but they still want to take part and, ( with a few notable exceptions this year), try their utmost to perform at the best that they are capable of achieving.  This year the BBC ran an interesting feature on the motivation of these “also rans”.

Unfortunately, most of the Kyrgyzstan athletes this year fell into this category.  Some of them appeared to have hopes of winning a medal, and that was reflected in the hopes and interest shown in them here in Kyrgyzstan.

Team KG for London 2012 had been comprised of fourteen sportsmen:

• Athletics
• • Julia Andreevna (Arhipova) - Women’s Marathon
  • Erzhan Askarov - Men’s 800m
• Free Style Wrestling
• • Magomed Musaev - 96kg
• Greco-Roman Wrestling 
• • Arsen Eraliev - 55kg
  • Danyar Kobonov – 74kg (and the Team Captain)
• Judo 
• • Yuri Krakovetsky -  100kg
  • Chinghiz Mamedov 90kg
• Sailing
• • Ilya Ignatiev – Laser Class
• Shooting 
• • Ruslan Ismailov - Air Rifle 10m and Rifle 50m, 3 positions
• Swimming 
• • Dimitry Alexandrov - 200m Breast Stroke
  • Daria Talanova - 200m Breast Stroke 
•  Taekwando
• • Rasul Abduraim - 80kg
• Weightlifting
• • Bekzat Osmonoliev - 62kg (who also served as the Flag bearer in the opening ceremony)
• Women’s Wrestling 
• • Aisulu Tynybekova –  63kg

I think that it is worth listing their names yet again because it needs to be recognized that, even those that didn’t manage to win a medal, they had all made a considerable achievement in qualifying to participate in the Olympics in the first place.  As well as the commitment and training, which will have involved sacrifices and expenses, time and commitment as well as meeting certain thresholds … not to mention the necessity of being able to cope psychologically and emotionally with being one of the “also rans” … especially if they had really been a potential medallist. Not all of them were really potential medallists, of course, although funny things do happen in sport and you never can tell how things might turn out …

The great medal hope had been in the martial arts where Kyrgyzstan already has a record and reputation.  Hoping to capitalize on the record in the Greco-Roman wrestling competition, the competitors had performed reasonably well in the tournaments leading up to the games.  However, both the men lost in the bronze medal bouts of their respective competitions.  Likewise, both the Judo contestants were also eliminated in the early rounds of their competitions.

Aisulu Tynybekova had received a fair amount of attention, both in the West, where press reports hailed her as one of Kyrgyzstan’s medal hopefuls in the relatively unknown sport of Women’s Wrestling.  Womens Wrestling is so uncommon, they reported, that she had difficulty finding anyone to train with and so had to train with the men.  Time had even included her in its list of athletes to watch, but in the end she also fell in her first bout.  She had attracted a lot of attention here as well, largely due to an incident in one of the city centre underpasses where, (depending on whose account you accept), someone was in a bad mood, looking for trouble, pushing their weight around … or something … she complained to one of the local newspapers that people are always trying to “provoke” her.

Anyway, during the ensuing fracas which apparently lasted just seconds, another girl was “beaten” and ended up hospitalized.  The girls mother took the case to court, suing the athlete and submitting a claim for half a million som in damages.  Faced with accusations that she was simply trying to cash-in on the possibility of Olympic cash, she withdrew the claim and Tynybekova was allowed to leave for the Games, but the case resumes later this week.

By all accounts, her appearance at the Games lasted longer than the fracas by the ice cream stall – but not by that much – taking just two of the three possible rounds of 120 seconds before she was also eliminated.  Apparently she hasn’t commented, but her coach had no doubt that the affair had taken its toll and not simply affected but been detrimental to her performance.

Hopes of a medal were kept alive “right down to the wire”, to the last possible moment as Magomed Musaev, in the Free Style Wrestling was slated to compete on the very last day of the games – before the Closing Ceremony.

The football competition may well have kicked off before the official opening ceremony, but nothing was due to happen after “the Fat Lady sings” and the curtain falls on the closing ceremony.

For the record: the “fat lady” is a reference to Brunhilde in Wagner’s Götterdämmerung, the last of the immensely long, four-opera Ring Cycle, who has ten minute solo which brings the opera to it’s final conclusion.  Thank you Inspector Morse for teaching me that little piece of trivia.

In the end  … Musaev managed to progress to the Quarter Finals … but got knocked out of the competition by Reza Mohammad Ali Yazdani from Iran.   

 

There had been a fair amount of comment in the (Western) press about the rate of return on investment when it came to preparing for the Olympics … with comparisons countries that had managed to achieve greater returns, (like Britain in the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis  who managed to walk away with 2 medals, having been represented by just three athletes – although two of those were actually from Ireland …), with those who had “underachieved” – like Canada at the Montreal Olympics. There was some speculation in the (Western) Press about how a country could maximise it’s medal potential by: (for example),

• concentrate on events where individuals compete,  avoiding team events – where you need a larger pool of available talent.  You also save on expenses for specialist equipment, travel expenses and so on;
• concentrate on sports which have minimal equipment requirements, thus minimising costs involved;
• concentrate on minority sports – sports which do not attract large numbers of potential competitors – hence reducing the competition;
• concentrate on sports which offer two bronze medals, like some of the combat sports such as: Judo, Wrestling.

Although this sounds a little cynical, it happens to provide a fairly good description of the Olympic teams of several small states, such as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.  Indeed it worked out very well to varying degrees for Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.  (Kazakhstan won a total of 13 medals: seven Golds, one in Athletics, another in boxing, a third in Cycling and four in Weightlifting; as well as a silver in Boxing and five Bronze, two Boxing and three in wrestling; Uzbekistan won 4 medals: a gold in Wrestling, and three bronze medals – one each in Weightlifting, Boxing Wrestling; and Tajikistan who won a Bronze in Boxing) …  but not for Kyrgyzstan.

Incidentally, I wonder if any of the athletes who managed to win one of the Gold medals might be tempted to take the IOC, (the International Olympics Committee), or the London organisers of the games to court for “misrepresentation”.  Apparently the Gold Medals, produced by the Royal Mint for the occasion, are not “golden” at all, well practically … something like 6 grams of gold are used to plate the disc which is about eight and a half centimetres in diameter and 7mm thick), and which weighs about 250 grams – the rest is made up of  copper, (just over 6%) and silver, (over 90%).  The medal itself is worth about five hundred dollars, but if it was made of pure gold it would be worth about a thousand dollars.

This year’s medals are actually quite big … the design is usually left to the host city and in some cases the designs have quite distinctive.  All the medals for the summer games, except those of 1900 – which were rectangular, have been circular, whereas designs for the Winter games have been more adventurous involving different shape and materials, (for example, inlaid glass, granite or ceramics).

Although winning is not supposed to be the most important thing, (which is supposed to be the “taking part”), many countries offer incentives to help, encourage and spur their athletes on.   In Singapore, a gold medal winner was awarded a prize of 800,000 dollars.  An American athlete on the other hand would be awarded just 25,000 dollars.  Kyrgyzstan, it appears, offered the third highest prizes … anyone winning a Gold Medal would also receive a prize of 200,000 dollars. A Silver medal would have netted 150,000 dollars and a Bronze, 100,000.

For the record: Smagulaov, who won Kyrgyzstan’s first Bronze medal in the 2000 games, was presented with a four roomed apartment in Bishkek.

It was not just medal winners who would have benefited, however, as prizes had been earmarked for anyone who managed to come in the top eight for any event and as some of the Wrestlers made it to the play for the Br0nze medal – I presume that they will be beneficiaries.   Fourth place brings 35,000 dollars, fifth: 30,000, sixth: 25,000, seventh: 210,000 and eighth: 15,000.  There were rewards allocated for trainers as well:  70% of the prize for the individual sportsman for Chief Trainers or 50% for Personal Trainers.

Those proposed payments have proved to be a little controversial because the Ministry of Finance also proposed some changes to the pension regime … reducing the payments made to pensioners who continue to work.  The suggestion did not go down well and a vox pop  survey was scathing about how difficult it was for pensioners to survive on what they receive from the Social Fund.

Oh … and then there is tax to pay on those winnings – although I am not sure if the medal itself is taxable, as it is in both the US and the UK.  Earlier this year there was a move to exempt prize money won in international competitions from tax – but it hasn’t yet gone through the legislative process and I am not sure of the current status of the proposal, or if it would apply to these awards which are not part of the official prizes.   The “value of an Olympic medal” can be seen in many different ways, some of them financial, others material and not forgetting those which are more intangible:

• the cost of the medal itself,
• the value of the prize money won by the athletes …
• the investment required in order to create a winning performance.  (It is estimated, for example, that every gold medal won by British athletes will have involved an investment of  something like USD15 million – creating facilities; providing equipment; paying trainers and doctors;)
• the time and commitment invested by the athlete themselves in their training

That’s in addition to the general value of taking part in the Olympics, to the sportsmen themselves, the sport in the country and to the country as a whole, to which a medal will bring additional value:

• the increased opportunities for future development, sponsorship and so forth
• the status if brings to the country
• the status it brings to that particular sport in the country … one of the themes of this years Olympics was to ”inspire a generation”
• the personal status and standing of the sportsman in their home community and their sport;
• the experience gained by those participating in the event which can be transferred to others, to other events and circumstances  - illustrating the basic principle of NLP, (Neuro-Linguistic Programming),  the value of learning from experience, (that “there is no such thing as a waste of time or a bad experience “).

Even before the games were over, some of the local press seemed to have caught one of the British diseases and turned on their sporting heroes.  We see it all the time with Football players, Cricketers, Rugby players, stars of the Tennis courts and so on … we build them up as great heroes but at the first sign of a setback the press seems to turn on them and scathingly deride each and every mistake or fall from grace.  Well, on Wednesday, an article appearing which analysed “the collapse of Kyrgyz Sport” as illustrated by the performance of Kyrgyz athletes in the London Olympics.

It began with a summary of the results to date and painted a sorry picture. To be fair, the author also pointed out that the games were not over and there were still opportunities for Kyrgyz athletes to be score successes.  Also, on the whole the analysis was not directed as criticism against the athletes themselves  … however, the tone of the article was very definitely that: “the overall results of the national team is already clear”. The author went on to quote local sporting celebrities who decried the fact that:

• there is no mass support for sport in the Republic,
• which may well be because we have no outstanding sportsmen, (like there were in the 1970′s and 80′s – in the days of the Soviet Union);
• also there is a dearth of qualified coaches;
• many of the facilities are old and obsolete;
• there are problems of finance, there is not enough to pay for the training facilities, travel expenses to events or to pay the sportsmen a stipend.  Last week the Judo Federation announced that they were actively looking for sponsors – or else they might have to “sell” their two top athletes to Kazakhstan, (at first I thought the article was saying something like “risk losing” these athletes but the text clearly says “prodat” – to sell).  They complained that with only official funding, payments are delayed to the last moment, so tickets cannot be bought in advance … and, often, disbursements are insufficient to meet the cost;
• there is a lack of support for the development of sport in schools and youth clubs.  One commentator pointed out that shortly after independence there were about 100 such specialist sporting youth clubs in the capital, but many of them have now been closed and sold off to serve as offices – for example, for the Social Fund.

Some commentators went on to criticize the athletes, albeit in general terms … they were big headed and overestimated their skills and potential, or maybe they suffered from “star syndrome” or, perhaps, simply “poor preparation”. There were a couple of interesting suggestions …

• it is important to have at least one “sports palace” complex which is built to modern international standards … which could be used for training purposes as well as staging major events
• the role of the state and other potential sources of financial support needs to be explored – the state cannot afford to do everything, (and there are many people that think that it shouldn’t try to, anyway!).

To me, however, perhaps the most important thing in this whole article was the idea that it is already time to start planning and working for the next Olympics, in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.

It seems that after every Games people of different nationalities are either inspired and want to build on success, or else they are spurred on by the relative “failure” of poor performances and are urged on to try for better results.  Debates start about the need to involve children in sports whist still at school, what sort of sponsorship programmes are needed and so forth.     I see that the debate has started in Britain – just as it has here.

Apparently Pele thinks that Rio is not ready for the 2016 Olympics, but there is still four years to go and they will probably I think that it’s unlikely that they will go the same way as Denver in 1976.

For the record:  having won the bid to host the Winter Olympics, then faced a taxpayers rebellion who refused to subscribe to a bond issue designed to raise funds to finance the event.  In the end, Innsbruck, (who had hosted the 1964 Games), stepped into the breech.

 

 

 

Tags: For_the_Record, In_the_News, Kyrgyzstan, Life_in_Kyrgyzstan, Sport