- Joined
- Jul 28, 2003
I found this article interesting because of how Rodnina talks about the need for Russia to follow the example of America.
http://ptichkafs.livejournal.com/25726.html
Three-time Olympic figure skating champion Irina Rodnina conducted a seminar for “Competitive Sport Management”. She talked about the problems facing athletic develpment in Russia, outlined her plan for getting out of the situation, and explained how American example can be beneficial for Russia.
“Three-time Olympic champion is begging for some money for children’s competitions.” Irina Rodnina, the chairperson of the central committee of the all-Russian voluntary organization “Athletic Russia”, considers this sentence humiliating, but uses it quite a lot – it works. A recent contract with “United Russia”[1] obliges the latter to help with seven massive children competitions. Rodnina considers the development of national children’s athletic programs to be of the utmost important; moreover, she views it as a purely political issue, with impact not only on the nation’s health, but on its very survival. To those who prefer not to think of those abstract issues, she sites the dry and very real statistic – a child’s attendance of a sports school costs the government about 6,000 – 8,000[2] rubles annually, while a child’s year in prison costs between 130,000 and 150,000[3] rubles. However, Irina Rodnina’s seminar went further than the problems of children’s sport. That’s understandable, as she herself has always personified primarily the elite sport. Very elite. As elite as it gets.
Note: Irina Konstantinovna Rodnina. Born in 1949. Graduated from the athletic CSKA school, and the National Institute of Physical Culture. Recognized master of sport. Three-time Olympic champion, ten-time World champion, and an eleven-time European champion in pair skating. Coached at the International Figure Skating center in Lake Arrowhead, USA, and prepared World pair champions Radka Kovarikova and Rene Novotny of the Czech Republic. Holds Lenin medal, Labor of Red Flag medal, and a medal for “Service to the Country” of 3d degree. Author of the book “Rough Ice”. Currently a member of the Presidential council of physical culture and sport, chairperson of the Central committee of the all-Russian voluntary organization “Athletic Russia”, president of the public academy of athletic achievements “Glory”, and a head of her own ice center.
«Two beer, please»[4]. Irina Rodnina on problems of Russian sports management. “Those problems are huge, hard to solve, and apply to all levels of athletic structures of the country. The main reason, as I see it, is that the Russian sports leadership still has the Soviet style officials, with a Soviet way of thinking. I am not saying they’re all bad people, but they are adverse to anything new; they are used to relying on numbers as opposed to skills; understandably, they don’t want to give up their places to give way to young officials with modern views. Consider this – National Olympic Committee of the USA employs 22 people; National Olympic Committee of Russia employs 160. Additionally, according to its own report, it spends 60% of the resources it gets from the IOC for the “organization of its own work”. There are different ways to evaluate this work, but trust me when I say that the athletic officials have nothing to do with the medals our athletes and coaches are winning at the Olympics. When those officials get a chance to defend the interests of Russian athletes, in other words in the very thing they’re paid to do, they are usually helpless. Can you recall even one international judging or doping scandal that our officials managed to resolve in our athletes’ favor? Of course not! It’s not even that they don’t want to do it. They just can’t. You cannot defend you country’s interests in a thing like that without being a competent lawyer. They, meanwhile, are not lawyers. You also cannot resolve those conflicts through an interpreter. Meanwhile, most of the members of our Olympic committee don’t speak any languages outside Russian; the same thing can be said of people representing Russia in various International sports federations. All they can say in English is “Two beer, please”. No wonder we’ve lost all authority in the world – all the key questions, be it about changes in the rules of competition or about specific tournaments – are decided without us. It’s not, as many think, because “they don’t like us”. No, it’s just that they cannot understand us, since, due to all the aforementioned reasons, we cannot clearly express ourselves.
Things aren’t much better in the National sports federations. In my opinion, the major problem here is that, as opposed to most of the world’s countries, Russian sports federations are financed out of the national budget, even though technically they remain public organizations, as is the Olympic committee. Each federation gets about 1.5 million dollars a year. However, when representatives of the Federal agency of physical culture and sport try to get a report on how the money is spent, they usually hear a reply – “According to Russian laws, the government has no right to interfere in the activities of public organizations”. In other words, the federations are not accountable to anyone.
The accountability question, or the “how is the money spent”, is not an idle one in this case. It’s an issue of our sport and its achievements. Consider this – right now, coaches of the caliber of Tatiana Tarasova, Tamara Moskvina, and Elena Tchaikovskaya, in other words those who actually get paid by the federations, are earning 12,000[5] rubles a month. What can we then say about the coaches for children’s and junior sports schools (their average age, by the way, is now 52 or 53, since young people won’t put up with such a pauper’s salary)! What can we say about the level of the figure skating coaches who are now working with the kids’ groups – most of them have never even been to Russian nationals due to their level! At the same time, it is those coaches who are supposed to lay the foundation, and to teach what we used to call “figures” – be it edging technique or jump preparation. How they teach a child determines a lot. However, those coaches are incapable of teaching well. Actually, their main goal is not to teach well but to make ends mean (and who can blame them?!). They spend whatever extra minute they have not on the most talented children, but on those whose parents are willing to pay directly to the coach for that extra minute.
As a result, we have a failure. Of course, I am far from blaming it all on our sports federations; ultimately, much of today’s problems are rooted in late 80’s and early 90’s, when Soviet Union was falling apart, and the decades-old system of athletes’ preparation was going with it. However, the fact is that we are now back to the level of 1964. That year, the USSR figure skating team at the Winter Olympics in Innsbruck was represented by two singles, one pair, and one dance team. Most likely, that’s how our team for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics will look like; we have no one, we simply haven’t prepared skaters of the level sufficient for the medal contention.
I see the recipe for recovery of sports federations in organizing their work similarly to how it’s done in other effective places such as the USA. Their, the federations live not on the National budget, but on the fees of the sports clubs that form those federations. Consequently the federation leadership is elected by the leaders of the sports clubs, is accountable to the sports clubs, and is therefore forced to defend the interests of the sports clubs and athletes, not their own. I would also use America’s example in organizing athletic centers, camps, and schools. I know what I’m talking about as I coached at the International figure skating center in Lake Arrowhead for several years. In 1990, I became the second Russian athlete after Vyacheslav Fetisov to leave USSR with a personal contract in USA.”
“Each square meter must bring a square ruble”. Irina Rodnina on organization of athletic centers in the USA. “I will talk about figure skating as I know it best, but in general everything I will say about America can be applied to other sports as well. So, my first shock in USA was that each lesson I had to conduct as a coach was planned to last only 20 minutes. We weren’t used to that in the Soviet Union – what can be done in such a short time?! At first, I’d prolong my lessons, obviously without asking for extra pay. Very soon, someone from the Center’s leadership told me, “Of course, you can continue with this, but pleas consider that by doing this you’re lowering your own rating, and even the Center’s rating as well.” This is a basic principle of their professional ethics – all work must be compensated accordingly. Nobody there will ever consider running a loss-making athletic center. Quite the opposite, they must bring in the profit. And they do.
Everybody who trained in Lake Arrowhead had to pay all they way. You pay for the membership. If you need extra practices, you pay for that. You pay for passing the tests that you must pass to get to compete. You pay for perfecting the compulsory program and the exhibition piece. You pay for everything. With that, the Center’s percentage was athletes aiming for the elite sport, the Worlds, and the Olympics never exceeded 2 percent. The majority were children and youths, often not in very good health, and often with serious psychological issues. We’ve had alcoholics and drug addicts in various stages of rehabilitation, asthma sufferers, and the kids whose parents were going through divorce. In addition, there were separate groups for the elderly, though they did not pay much out of their own pockets, as most of their fees were paid by their retirement funds. The main aim of the center’s administration in working with those very diverse groups of people was in constantly offering them something new to encourage continuing lessons even for those who have obviously reached their potential, and can never reach the new level even in theory.
The Center’s administration succeeded in its task. Even though the Center’s lessons were rather expensive, the Lake Arrowhead ice was occupied down to the minute, and was never idle. The first lesson start at five in the morning, the last one ended at night, and additional lessons were conducted between 10 and 2 in the morning. To be fair, I have to say that the Lake Arrowhead Center’s administration does not deserve all the credit. America is a country where athletic activity is encouraged in all ways, including financially, as even the most modest athletic achievements promise one substantial rewards. For example, it’s enough to participate in the USA National figure skating championships to get an education grant; considering that higher education in the USA can cost between 30 and 50 thousand dollars a year, that does make a difference. A person participating in sports can expect a better deal on his medical insurance. And the list of benefits just goes on.”
… whereas in Russia. “Unfortunately, we’re not seeing any of this in our country. The main reason for it is again a lack of competent management. Our country has adopted a program, dictating 4000 various new athletic centers by 2015, catering not only to elite sport, but to the mass consumer as well. The question is, who will manage those centers, who will organize efficient use of them, and who will make them profitable? (So far, the vast majority of Russian sports centers lose money. Only fitness and tennis clubs bring their owners consistent profits.) We catastrophically lack new management material; we can’t rely on retired colonels who often managed stadiums and sports camps during Soviet Times.
In addition, I have doubts that those centers will be built in a way that will make them easy to manage efficiently. I’ve come to this conclusion after struggling with my own ice center; it designed by “Mosproject-2”, received all kinds of architectural prizes, and was absolutely vetoed by me. I won’t go into details, but will just say that the “zamboni operator’s office” was planned to be of a size more appropriate for a wedding ballroom. It was a huge room, doomed to be empty. Apparently, those who designed the project did not understand (though they were supposed to), that modern sport is a business, and that the use of an athletic center is a business, where everything has to be functional and logical, and where every square meter must yield a square ruble. Until we understand this, we are unlikely to get anywhere.”
Eurosport - RMA - 04/07/2007 16:54
http://www.eurosport.ru/figureskating/sport_sto1232795.shtml
[1] Government party.
[2] Between 200 and 270 USD
[3] Up to 5,000 USD
[4] This phrase is in English in the original, with the obvious grammatical error.
[5] $400
http://ptichkafs.livejournal.com/25726.html
Three-time Olympic figure skating champion Irina Rodnina conducted a seminar for “Competitive Sport Management”. She talked about the problems facing athletic develpment in Russia, outlined her plan for getting out of the situation, and explained how American example can be beneficial for Russia.
“Three-time Olympic champion is begging for some money for children’s competitions.” Irina Rodnina, the chairperson of the central committee of the all-Russian voluntary organization “Athletic Russia”, considers this sentence humiliating, but uses it quite a lot – it works. A recent contract with “United Russia”[1] obliges the latter to help with seven massive children competitions. Rodnina considers the development of national children’s athletic programs to be of the utmost important; moreover, she views it as a purely political issue, with impact not only on the nation’s health, but on its very survival. To those who prefer not to think of those abstract issues, she sites the dry and very real statistic – a child’s attendance of a sports school costs the government about 6,000 – 8,000[2] rubles annually, while a child’s year in prison costs between 130,000 and 150,000[3] rubles. However, Irina Rodnina’s seminar went further than the problems of children’s sport. That’s understandable, as she herself has always personified primarily the elite sport. Very elite. As elite as it gets.
Note: Irina Konstantinovna Rodnina. Born in 1949. Graduated from the athletic CSKA school, and the National Institute of Physical Culture. Recognized master of sport. Three-time Olympic champion, ten-time World champion, and an eleven-time European champion in pair skating. Coached at the International Figure Skating center in Lake Arrowhead, USA, and prepared World pair champions Radka Kovarikova and Rene Novotny of the Czech Republic. Holds Lenin medal, Labor of Red Flag medal, and a medal for “Service to the Country” of 3d degree. Author of the book “Rough Ice”. Currently a member of the Presidential council of physical culture and sport, chairperson of the Central committee of the all-Russian voluntary organization “Athletic Russia”, president of the public academy of athletic achievements “Glory”, and a head of her own ice center.
«Two beer, please»[4]. Irina Rodnina on problems of Russian sports management. “Those problems are huge, hard to solve, and apply to all levels of athletic structures of the country. The main reason, as I see it, is that the Russian sports leadership still has the Soviet style officials, with a Soviet way of thinking. I am not saying they’re all bad people, but they are adverse to anything new; they are used to relying on numbers as opposed to skills; understandably, they don’t want to give up their places to give way to young officials with modern views. Consider this – National Olympic Committee of the USA employs 22 people; National Olympic Committee of Russia employs 160. Additionally, according to its own report, it spends 60% of the resources it gets from the IOC for the “organization of its own work”. There are different ways to evaluate this work, but trust me when I say that the athletic officials have nothing to do with the medals our athletes and coaches are winning at the Olympics. When those officials get a chance to defend the interests of Russian athletes, in other words in the very thing they’re paid to do, they are usually helpless. Can you recall even one international judging or doping scandal that our officials managed to resolve in our athletes’ favor? Of course not! It’s not even that they don’t want to do it. They just can’t. You cannot defend you country’s interests in a thing like that without being a competent lawyer. They, meanwhile, are not lawyers. You also cannot resolve those conflicts through an interpreter. Meanwhile, most of the members of our Olympic committee don’t speak any languages outside Russian; the same thing can be said of people representing Russia in various International sports federations. All they can say in English is “Two beer, please”. No wonder we’ve lost all authority in the world – all the key questions, be it about changes in the rules of competition or about specific tournaments – are decided without us. It’s not, as many think, because “they don’t like us”. No, it’s just that they cannot understand us, since, due to all the aforementioned reasons, we cannot clearly express ourselves.
Things aren’t much better in the National sports federations. In my opinion, the major problem here is that, as opposed to most of the world’s countries, Russian sports federations are financed out of the national budget, even though technically they remain public organizations, as is the Olympic committee. Each federation gets about 1.5 million dollars a year. However, when representatives of the Federal agency of physical culture and sport try to get a report on how the money is spent, they usually hear a reply – “According to Russian laws, the government has no right to interfere in the activities of public organizations”. In other words, the federations are not accountable to anyone.
The accountability question, or the “how is the money spent”, is not an idle one in this case. It’s an issue of our sport and its achievements. Consider this – right now, coaches of the caliber of Tatiana Tarasova, Tamara Moskvina, and Elena Tchaikovskaya, in other words those who actually get paid by the federations, are earning 12,000[5] rubles a month. What can we then say about the coaches for children’s and junior sports schools (their average age, by the way, is now 52 or 53, since young people won’t put up with such a pauper’s salary)! What can we say about the level of the figure skating coaches who are now working with the kids’ groups – most of them have never even been to Russian nationals due to their level! At the same time, it is those coaches who are supposed to lay the foundation, and to teach what we used to call “figures” – be it edging technique or jump preparation. How they teach a child determines a lot. However, those coaches are incapable of teaching well. Actually, their main goal is not to teach well but to make ends mean (and who can blame them?!). They spend whatever extra minute they have not on the most talented children, but on those whose parents are willing to pay directly to the coach for that extra minute.
As a result, we have a failure. Of course, I am far from blaming it all on our sports federations; ultimately, much of today’s problems are rooted in late 80’s and early 90’s, when Soviet Union was falling apart, and the decades-old system of athletes’ preparation was going with it. However, the fact is that we are now back to the level of 1964. That year, the USSR figure skating team at the Winter Olympics in Innsbruck was represented by two singles, one pair, and one dance team. Most likely, that’s how our team for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics will look like; we have no one, we simply haven’t prepared skaters of the level sufficient for the medal contention.
I see the recipe for recovery of sports federations in organizing their work similarly to how it’s done in other effective places such as the USA. Their, the federations live not on the National budget, but on the fees of the sports clubs that form those federations. Consequently the federation leadership is elected by the leaders of the sports clubs, is accountable to the sports clubs, and is therefore forced to defend the interests of the sports clubs and athletes, not their own. I would also use America’s example in organizing athletic centers, camps, and schools. I know what I’m talking about as I coached at the International figure skating center in Lake Arrowhead for several years. In 1990, I became the second Russian athlete after Vyacheslav Fetisov to leave USSR with a personal contract in USA.”
“Each square meter must bring a square ruble”. Irina Rodnina on organization of athletic centers in the USA. “I will talk about figure skating as I know it best, but in general everything I will say about America can be applied to other sports as well. So, my first shock in USA was that each lesson I had to conduct as a coach was planned to last only 20 minutes. We weren’t used to that in the Soviet Union – what can be done in such a short time?! At first, I’d prolong my lessons, obviously without asking for extra pay. Very soon, someone from the Center’s leadership told me, “Of course, you can continue with this, but pleas consider that by doing this you’re lowering your own rating, and even the Center’s rating as well.” This is a basic principle of their professional ethics – all work must be compensated accordingly. Nobody there will ever consider running a loss-making athletic center. Quite the opposite, they must bring in the profit. And they do.
Everybody who trained in Lake Arrowhead had to pay all they way. You pay for the membership. If you need extra practices, you pay for that. You pay for passing the tests that you must pass to get to compete. You pay for perfecting the compulsory program and the exhibition piece. You pay for everything. With that, the Center’s percentage was athletes aiming for the elite sport, the Worlds, and the Olympics never exceeded 2 percent. The majority were children and youths, often not in very good health, and often with serious psychological issues. We’ve had alcoholics and drug addicts in various stages of rehabilitation, asthma sufferers, and the kids whose parents were going through divorce. In addition, there were separate groups for the elderly, though they did not pay much out of their own pockets, as most of their fees were paid by their retirement funds. The main aim of the center’s administration in working with those very diverse groups of people was in constantly offering them something new to encourage continuing lessons even for those who have obviously reached their potential, and can never reach the new level even in theory.
The Center’s administration succeeded in its task. Even though the Center’s lessons were rather expensive, the Lake Arrowhead ice was occupied down to the minute, and was never idle. The first lesson start at five in the morning, the last one ended at night, and additional lessons were conducted between 10 and 2 in the morning. To be fair, I have to say that the Lake Arrowhead Center’s administration does not deserve all the credit. America is a country where athletic activity is encouraged in all ways, including financially, as even the most modest athletic achievements promise one substantial rewards. For example, it’s enough to participate in the USA National figure skating championships to get an education grant; considering that higher education in the USA can cost between 30 and 50 thousand dollars a year, that does make a difference. A person participating in sports can expect a better deal on his medical insurance. And the list of benefits just goes on.”
… whereas in Russia. “Unfortunately, we’re not seeing any of this in our country. The main reason for it is again a lack of competent management. Our country has adopted a program, dictating 4000 various new athletic centers by 2015, catering not only to elite sport, but to the mass consumer as well. The question is, who will manage those centers, who will organize efficient use of them, and who will make them profitable? (So far, the vast majority of Russian sports centers lose money. Only fitness and tennis clubs bring their owners consistent profits.) We catastrophically lack new management material; we can’t rely on retired colonels who often managed stadiums and sports camps during Soviet Times.
In addition, I have doubts that those centers will be built in a way that will make them easy to manage efficiently. I’ve come to this conclusion after struggling with my own ice center; it designed by “Mosproject-2”, received all kinds of architectural prizes, and was absolutely vetoed by me. I won’t go into details, but will just say that the “zamboni operator’s office” was planned to be of a size more appropriate for a wedding ballroom. It was a huge room, doomed to be empty. Apparently, those who designed the project did not understand (though they were supposed to), that modern sport is a business, and that the use of an athletic center is a business, where everything has to be functional and logical, and where every square meter must yield a square ruble. Until we understand this, we are unlikely to get anywhere.”
Eurosport - RMA - 04/07/2007 16:54
http://www.eurosport.ru/figureskating/sport_sto1232795.shtml
[1] Government party.
[2] Between 200 and 270 USD
[3] Up to 5,000 USD
[4] This phrase is in English in the original, with the obvious grammatical error.
[5] $400
