Anfisa Reztsova: Shipulin betrayed the athletes who did not make it to the Olympics. Now he will go into politics. The two-time Olympic champion knows what Anton Shipulin will do. Anfisa Reztsova: “daughter Daria is expecting a second boy and is going to return to biathlon Od

According to two-time Olympic biathlon champion Anfisa Reztsova, the unsuccessful performance of the Russian women's team indicates problems within the team. She said that she does not expect medals from the Russians in the upcoming individual race.

ON THIS TOPIC

"There is no one to put in the race, no one to replace. As of today, there are four semi-disabled, semi-ruined women left in the lineup. How to run the relay? It’s not clear. Okay, an individual race, maybe, if there are no mistakes, someone will catch on to something, and even then it’s unlikely ", given their course," Lenta.ru reports the words of the champion.

At the moment, Russian athletes have not won a single individual award at the Biathlon World Championships. According to Reztsova, the blame for the unsuccessful performance lies with the leadership of the Russian Biathlon Union, as well as with the head coach of the national team, Alexander Kasperovich.

Neither the SBR management nor the head coach reacts to the situation in any way. They need to be asked what kind of chaos this is, what kind of chaos is going on. The service was called, then driven away. Virolainen was sent somewhere one day and returned to the IB Cup stage.

Let us remind you that the women's individual race in Hochfilzen starts at 16:30 Moscow time. Tatiana Akimova, Olga Podchufarova, Irina Starykh and Svetlana Sleptsova will perform for the Russian national team. Earlier, Olga Podchufarova and Tatyana Akimova became bronze medalists at the World Championships as part of the Russian team in the mixed relay.

Anton Shipulin, who has completed his career, is already stocking up on popcorn. Men's and women's sprint races will take place on Thursday and Friday, with pursuit races scheduled for Saturday and relay races on Sunday. The Russian men's team included Alexander Loginov, Matvey Eliseev, Evgeny Garanichev, Dmitry Malyshko (by decision of the coaching staff), Maxim Tsvetkov and Semyon Suchilov. The women's sprint entries include Irina Starykh, Ekaterina Yurlova-Perkht, Evgenia Pavlova, Margarita Vasilyeva, Svetlana Mironova and Valeria Vasnetsova. Larisa Kuklina will only be able to compete in the relay.

Before the start of the fourth stage, the Sports Day by Day correspondent spoke with two-time Olympic champion Anfisa Reztsova. We ended the conversation with the topic of RUSADA, and began, as expected, with Anton Shipulin. Still, not every Russian biathlete left so loudly.

- Anton Shipulin retired. Do you think he will sit idle for a long time?

I believe that he will go into politics.

- Into politics?

As a rule, all our great athletes go into politics. To the State Duma and so on.

- Do you see Shipulin’s ability for politics?

No. But I think they will make him such an offer. Although I would like Shipulin to coach, like all Olympic champions who have completed their sports careers. But, as a rule, they go into politics.

Don’t you see Anton as a TV commentator? Together with Dmitry Guberniev they will comment on biathlon on Match TV.

- (Thinking about it.) I still believe that Anton will choose a government career. I was surprised that he announced his retirement so late. Although I graduated six months ago. It seems so to me. Probably someone told him: “Let’s do it not today, but a little later.”

- In your opinion, did Shipulin’s family have a strong influence on his choice?

Anton is a self-sufficient person. He is responsible for himself. I don't think anyone influenced him. Neither mom and dad, Anton’s ardent fans, nor his wife.

-Who is our main star now? Alexander Loginov?

I don't know who the main star is. Now we need to train young people. Sasha has proven himself well. and God grant that he remains among the leaders until the next Olympics.

- Is Loginov ready to become the same leader as Shipulin was?

Maybe. If they don't bother him with this doping.

Johannes Boe said about Loginov: “If you get caught doping, you can’t get back the old respect.” Is it fair to say that?

Who is Johannes?

- One of the leading Norwegian biathletes.

And let him be on his team, and we must fight for our athletes.

- Alexander Tikhonov wished Loginov not to repeat Shipulin’s mistakes...

Sasha Loginov will train and prove that he is one of the strongest biathletes. I can't say anything about leadership. There is no such thing. There is a stronger one today, tomorrow it could be someone else. And what Tikhonov said... For me, Anton made one mistake.

- Which one?

He betrayed the athletes who did not make it to the Olympics. Shipulin did not fight for them, for himself, for the truth.

- How was he supposed to do this?

I had to find a lawyer and prove my case. Anton refused to fight (the IOC did not invite Shipulin and a number of other famous Russian athletes to the Olympics in Pyeongchang. - "Sport Day by Day").

Let's get back to those who continue to perform. Dmitry Malyshko got to the stage in Oberhof by the decision of the coaching staff. Do you think he deserved it?

It was better to take a young athlete for a break-in. Now all our biathletes can either get into the top ten or take 50th place. Both Malyshko and Maxim Tsvetkov, who returned to the World Cup. Because there is no correct selection.

This season, the SBR selection was called the fairest. Before the first stage of the World Cup, test races were held, and based on their results, the lineup was formed.

Agree. There was a fair selection for the first stage, and then everything became the same as before. I want to push through mine, so I’ll push through him.

-Who are you referring to?

I'm not hinting at anyone. It just turns out that way: whoever wants whoever takes whoever. The women's team has the same problem. It will be good if they perform well at the World Cup, finishing in the top ten, but I doubt it.

Relay races will take place on Sunday. Should Evgeniy Garanichev be returned to the team race? His results are not bad, but everyone knows that he regularly fails in relay races.

We don’t have stable relay runners, so Zhenya might be worth starting. Now it’s difficult to judge who is ready for what. We will see this in the sprint and pursuit.

A WADA delegation came to Moscow again to collect the unfortunate doping samples. Could biathletes be affected by the uncertain situation with RUSADA? They say that Russian sports may be closed altogether.

1 comment

Write a comment

lab1 01/10/2019 09:57

Shipulin ended an inglorious career.
Inglorious precisely because of its end. The tossing and lamenting of “the little boy whose candy was taken away,” in his own words on the Match TV channel on the day of the final press conference, is over. This year there has been a massive change of generations in biathlon, the stars and superstars of this sport have left. Frenchwoman Marie Doren Habert was seen off with champagne at the finish line in the spring, several older athletes from the USA, the Czech Republic, the famous Norwegian Emil Hegle Svendsen, and, of course, the most star couple of world biathlon, Daria Domracheva and Bjoerndalen, left. More than worthy care for worthy athletes and for the same reasons: family, children, age. Now we see happy Daria and Ole Einar with their family, giving calm interviews, for which sport naturally took a back seat. Watching this, there is no feeling of “mourning” that we won’t see them on the track now, because everything is very natural and correct. And today this is literally the standard departure from big sport. Returning to Anton Shipulin, I frankly feel sorry for him, but not as an athlete, but as a person. At 31 years old, he remained a little boy in the Russian “biathlon family” (this is from Guberniev). But the reasons why he left are not at all characteristic of all those listed above, and the worst and most shameful thing is that they turned out to be insurmountable for Shipulin as a participant, and thanks to biathlon commentators and state television channels sponsoring them, who became the main representative of the “biathlon families". After what, in his words, did he finally give up? When, at the World Cup in Austria, the police came to the location of the team, where Shipulin, who was then not participating in the competition, was notified of an investigation into Russian biathletes for their use of doping at the last Biathlon World Championships in Austria in 2017. That is, first Shipulin received, according to his own statements, a strong psychological blow as a result of his exclusion from the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics, and now this. And so he says that after that he sat in the room for three days, lay and thought. But what was he thinking? His wife supported his desire to continue his career, the coaches were favorable, his personal trainer did not quit, his heart problems were resolved, this is all from his interview for this year. And yet, after reflection, he says something that he had not said before: “the sport has become very dirty.” The fact that Shipulin lasted the longest of our Sochi 2014 Olympic biathletes leaves a chance and hope for his doping purity. Immediately after the Olympics, Zaitseva and Vilukhina literally disappeared, then another “unexpected” end to the career of Evgeniy Ustyugov, against whom a doping investigation is currently open. And Shipulin, perhaps, was able to remain “clean” because he could rely on his own strength, it’s not for nothing that he was the most titled biathlete both in the times of the Russian Federation and during the performances of athletes from the USSR. But now he realized that it would still not be possible to remain untainted in this team, and, despite his hypothetical “purity,” his career also turned out to be broken by doping and participation in a PR campaign “to cover up the team”, unprecedented in sports, launched on the state sports channels of the Russian Federation as a “modest commentator” of biathlon. Now it becomes clear that Dmitry Guberniev came to biathlon in the Era of Big Doping, that is, when it was necessary to prepare the team for the Sochi 2014 Games, at the time of sponsorship of this sport by Prokhorov, and had simply incredible powers. He could advise coaches directly on the air to determine the lineups for races, he could give impartial assessments to athletes in case of failures and immediately call the coaches to account. And in case of successful performances, he directly compared their foreign rivals to the ground. Long before Crimea 2014, sanctions and hybrid hot and cold wars, he began a confrontation with the West in the person of the coach of the Russian women's biathlon team, Wolfgang Pichler. On the air he allowed offensive statements addressed to him, and then asked for an interview, and kept looking into his eyes, “Well, how did I make you?” Even then he behaved like a true “polite man.” Together with Prokhorov, he fired the coach live. Guberniev was especially “needed” by the team now, in Austria. Such a wave was raised to “protect our team from the Austrian police” that statements followed from a representative of the International Biathlon Union - “Guberniev has a negative impact on Russian and world biathlon”, and commentators on a Russian-language pan-European sports channel - “no detentions of Russian biathletes by the police and no removal of them from the competition was not planned or attempted. The hype was unnecessary." So what has Match TV commentator Dmitry Guberniev been doing and is doing all this time? Popularizes biathlon, creates a beautiful sports show, increases the rating of the TV channel? No. He creates a curtain of noise to cover up the state doping program in Russian sports. The words of the classic come to mind: “By deepening it, / I killed the hope of those behind.” That is, as often happens in such cases, where they wanted to hide more, on the contrary, they highlighted it more brightly. Doping scandals in biathlon may be no less than other sports, especially winter ones, due to the Sochi Olympics, but here they are the loudest. So Anton Shipulin’s departure turned out to be in the spirit of a biathlon show. Thoughts, monthly pauses, health problems, then their absence. And all this against the backdrop of interviews and special reports. A person who is on this team does not belong to himself in this system. He lives with caution. And they call it “a team fighter”, “the team has always been the main thing for him”, etc. And after the press conference, comments were heard: “Anton did it out of emotion,” “he left early, he should have stayed.” Of course, emotionally, there is no other way to leave you. And from Guberniev a short: “Thank you for everything.”
Fortunately, the recent commotion in Austria has not affected our team's current recruits. Why should they care if there is most likely no doping now, they passed the selection according to the sports principle, for once. And the coach on the team is again the same one who was once fired on live television. Therefore, they have nothing to fear, not even Guberniev.

The track in Oberhof is probably considered the favorite for Dmitry Malyshko, for which in 2013 it was here that his finest hour struck. Six years ago, our athlete won the sprint and pursuit race in one fell swoop, and the victory in the relay was the icing on the cake.

So far, Dmitry is not performing very well at the World Cup this season. He achieved his best result in individual races—12th place—at the first 20 km stage in Pokljuka. There are far more failures so far: 48th, 59th and even 70th place in Slovenia. I would like to believe that in Germany, motivation and pleasant memories will help reverse the trend.

The main hopes for men are now connected with Alexander Loginov, occupying a confident second place in the overall standings after Johannes Boe. Could we have imagined last season that someone other than Anton Shipulin could be better Martin Fourcade? It turns out it can.

Having Loginov is good, but he feels virtually no support from his partners. There are no other Russians in the top twenty biathletes. Matvey Eliseev ranks 21st Evgeniy Garanichev- 25, Dmitry Malyshko - 30. Taking into account the fact that in Oberhof the biathletes will run the second relay of the season, the prospects for the Russian team are not the most rosy.

The two-time Olympic champion agrees with this Anfisa Reztsova, who discussed whether Garanichev, who is not always reliable in relay races, should be returned to the team race.

“We don’t have stable relay runners now,” says Reztsova, “so Zhenya might be worth starting.” Now it’s difficult to judge who is ready for what. We will see this in the sprint and pursuit. Now all our biathletes can either get into the top ten or take 50th place. Both Malyshko and the one who returned to the World Cup Maxim Tsvetkov. Because there is no correct selection.

Search a woman

If the men have at least one leader, then our female biathletes are still disappointing. Yes, we perfectly understand the situation before the start of the season: three girls went on maternity leave, and they were replaced by untested newcomers. But I would like to see points in the overall standings a little more regularly. Thank you Ekaterina Yurlova-Perkht, which even climbed onto the podium in Hochfilzen. Without this event it would be completely sad. Irina Starykh, Evgenia Pavlova, Valeria Vasnetsova, Margarita Vasilyeva, Ulyana Kaisheva and Anastasia Morozova, frankly speaking, are not shining yet.

Fight for the truth

Reztsova also gave Anton Shipulin, who ended his professional career, a hard time. Let us remind you that he decided to leave biathlon due to pressure from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), due to which Anton missed the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.

“Shipulin betrayed the athletes who, like him, did not make it to the Olympic Games,” Reztsova told the publication “Sport Day by Day.” “He did not fight for his colleagues, for trying to achieve the truth. I had to hire a lawyer and prove I was right. And Shipulin simply left, gave up the fight.

“I think he will go into politics.” As a rule, all our great athletes go into politics. To the State Duma and so on. I think they will make him such an offer. Although I would like Shipulin to coach, like all Olympic champions who have completed their sports careers. But, as a rule, they go into politics.

Let's see if Reztsova's prediction regarding Shipulin's work in the State Duma comes true, but for now Anton himself is preparing for the competition. Only now he chooses not biathlon, but a ski marathon. The country hosts many different amateur tournaments, and Shipulin plans to enter some of them as a participant.

Name: Anfisa Reztsova

Age: 54 years old

Height: 162

Activity: biathlete, skier

Family status: Married

Anfisa Reztsova: biography

Anfisa Reztsova, a Soviet and Russian biathlete and ski racer, has many titles to her name. In addition to the official sports awards, the athlete is given the unofficial title of queen of biathlon, since she is the first Olympic champion in this sport. Reztsova is also the only winner in the world of Olympic gold medals in two different winter sports.

Childhood and youth

Anfisa Anatolyevna was born in December 1964 into a large family of a builder and a postman. In addition to their daughter, Anatoly Mikhailovich and Nina Pavlovna Romanov raised three sons. They planned to name their daughter Vera. However, the mother liked the name of the woman who served in the church where the girl was baptized. So my daughter returned from her christening as Anfisa.

At the age of 7, Anfisa moved from the village of Yakimets to Vladimir. There I went to a regular high school and at the same time to a gymnastics school. But soon the coaches advised the girl to take up cyclic sports. And from the fifth grade, skiing entered Reztsova’s life.

After the first lessons with a passionate teacher, seven remained in the group of 25 people, including Anfisa. Although the girl understood that the first coach did not see any prospects in her, she continued to train with enviable persistence, despite the health problems that were soon identified.

At one of the regional competitions, Anfisa was noticed by a coach from Dynamo. So the girl got to the all-Union level. Victory at the national championship brought the future champion to the junior team. Studying at school faded into the background, but after that Reztsova decided to enter law school. The coach of an already adult women's team dissuaded her from becoming a lawyer, arguing that Anfisa had great prospects in sports.

Biathlon

Anfisa Reztsova did not begin her sports biography in biathlon. Having just graduated from school, Reztsova won two bronze medals at her first world junior cross-country skiing championship. At the next championship she repeated her success, and in 1983 in Finland the skier won her first world champion title.

In 1985, Reztsova was included in the national team of the Soviet Union, in which she quickly occupied a leading position. In the same year she received a gold medal as a world champion in the relay race. From the 1987 World Championships, held in Germany, Anfisa brought gold for winning the relay and two silvers for distances of 5 and 20 km.

At the first ever Olympics in Calgary, Reztsova won a gold medal in the relay race and silver in the top twenty. The skier considered her own performance unsuccessful, as she hoped to take the highest award. Perhaps the fact that in preparation for the Games the athlete did not fully recover from the disease played a role. And intensive training at the qualifiers led to problems with her leg: Anfisa was running on injections.

At the end of the Olympic season, Reztsova went on maternity leave, but returned after only 8 months. Then a conflict occurred, which the press diplomatically refers to as inconsistencies with the coaching staff. But the sports world knows Anfisa Anatolyevna as a straightforward, sometimes harsh person. Thanks to her candid interviews, fans are aware of many behind-the-scenes events.

During Reztsova’s absence, new faces came to the fore in the national team -,. And each with its own ambitions. The girls were not happy about Anfisa's return. Team coach Alexander Grushin was unable to extinguish the beginning fire, and the titled skier began to think about leaving the sport completely and immersing herself in family concerns. My husband Leonid, who was finishing his sports career by that time, and his former coach suggested that I try my hand at biathlon.

Reztsova’s distinctive feature in biathlon was the combination of poor shooting and good running. To achieve a result, Anfisa only had to hit at least half of the targets; the athlete more than made up for the gap she had made while running the distance.

In this sport, already in the second season of performances, the biathlete held the Big Crystal Globe in her hands based on the results of the World Cup competitions. The same award went to the athlete in the 1992-1993 season, after 7 personal victories and 5 prizes.

Anfisa trained for the 1992 Olympics in the men's biathlon team of the Trade Union Council under the leadership of her husband. Then she joined the country’s men’s biathlon team, agreed to endure the appropriate loads and, according to the coach, worked so hard that everyone was amazed. As a result, Reztsova won a gold medal and the title of the first biathlon champion in the history of the Winter Games. These were supplemented by bronze in the relay, as well as silver from the subsequent World Championships.

Later, the coaching staff decided to focus on skiing, paying less attention to shooting, which was already Reztsova’s weak point. The error of the decision was revealed in subsequent competitions, the results of which tended to zero. At the World Cup of the 1994-1995 season, Anfisa failed all personal performances and only once stood on the podium for a bronze medal in the relay.

At the Olympics in Norway, the individual races also ended in failure, but Reztsova still won the gold medal in the relay. But the wild celebration of this victory became the reason for the exclusion of the multiple champion from the team.

Anfisa used this time usefully: she gave birth to a child and graduated from the Academy of Physical Education. In 1996, she tried to return to biathlon, however, according to the athlete, she was offered to join the national team not on sporting grounds at all. Then the biathlete changed her role, turning again to skiing.

The ambitious athlete planned to go to the next Olympics, in Nagano, but the Federation directly refused the skier. In justification, the head coach of the national team said that Reztsova’s non-inclusion was due to her low results in shooting and constant violations of the regime. However, in the “new old” sport, Anfisa received another medal of the highest standard at the World Championships in Austria.

The skier had her sights set on the 2002 Olympics, but two years before the Games she and her husband suffered from hepatitis and decided that “entering the same river five times is extreme.”

Personal life

Anfisa Reztsova is the mother of four children, which is considered a feat for a former athlete, and she gave birth to her fourth daughter Masha at the age of 44, already being a grandmother. The head of the family, Leonid Reztsov, is a former athlete and coach of his own wife, and runs the family business – a sporting goods store in Moscow. The family lives in Khimki near Moscow and adheres to a non-public lifestyle: interviews and photos of mostly Anfisa and daughter Daria are distributed on the Internet.

The couple got married in 1985 and waited three years for the birth of their first child. When they finally found out about the happy event, they had to sacrifice the child for the sake of the Olympics.

Reztsova does not hide the fact that for the sake of sporting victories, her eldest daughter also had to make similar concessions. Dasha, like her sister Christina, is involved in biathlon. According to Anfisa Anatolyevna, the eldest daughter was not taken to the national team for a long time, remembering the harsh character of her mother and her habit of telling the truth, despite the regalia and the situation.

Thus, the athlete was one of the first to admit to doping when she tried to return to biathlon after a break, and she sees no point in hiding it.

The champion, by her own admission, has no friends, except perhaps. Since childhood, Reztsova has communicated more with boys, but does not believe in female friendship. Anfisa Anatolyevna headed the Biathlon Federation of the Moscow Region from 2011 to 2015.

Anfisa Reztsova now

In January 2018, Anfisa Reztsova’s words that she was “neither cold nor hot” from apologizing to Russian athletes who were not allowed to participate in the Olympics in Korea received a warm response on the Internet. The famous athlete believes that sports officials are also obliged to personally apologize to athletes.

The Olympic champion implements her active life position as chairman of the Control Commission of the Council of Deputies of the Khimki Urban District. In the same city there is a children's and youth biathlon school named after the athlete.

Awards

• 1985 – world championship gold medal
• 1987 – gold and 2 silver medals at the World Championships
• 1988 – gold and silver medals at the Olympic Games
• 1992, 1993 – Biathlon World Cup
• 1992 – silver medal at the World Championships, gold and bronze medals at the Olympic Games
• 1999 – world championship gold medal

ON THE SKI THE ADVANTAGE OF COMPETITORS IS TANGIBLE

“At the first two stages of the World Cup, Russian biathletes generally show stable shooting and a fairly smooth move,” Anfisa Reztsova said in an interview with Team Russia. “It gives me a certain satisfaction.” But in the same way we lost, we continue to lose. And if this were the minimum... Unfortunately, on the track the advantage of our competitors is still noticeable, and every mistake immediately sharply sets us back in the final protocol.

– As in the case of Ekaterina Yurlova-Perkht, who made four mistakes in Saturday’s pursuit race and fell from third place to 20th position after the sprint?

– But look how many mistakes the winner Kaisa Mäkäräinen made. Three! In a contact race, when everyone is close together, three misses can be dealt with. And Dorothea Wierer had four unsuccessful shots. However, the Italian only moved from first place to third. Our move doesn't work out. This means that not enough work has been done, and this is probably a question that should be addressed to coaches who control physical training. So far, our team hasn’t found what needs to be changed so that the results on the track are closer to those of our competitors.

– Maybe it’s worth attracting clean skiers?

– She offered her services more than once. I am ready to periodically come to the team for free for the preparatory period and, perhaps, for the period of entry into the season. Men have their own specifics, but for girls I could suggest or even show in practice what needs to be corrected. But, apparently, some people find me inconvenient, others don’t like me. For now, the team has nothing particularly to praise for. We've been marking time for years.