Carriage to them, carriage

While the appraisers from the International Olympic Committee were treating Sochi with caviar, Putin, promises and wonderful views of the virgin forests of the Caucasus, the hockey team Wings of the Soviets noisily went on strike in Moscow, refusing to go out to a match with Ufa-based Salavat Yulaev. The fourth wheel in the famous Moscow cart, one of the best teams in the world in the 70s, “Wings” barely hold the axle, threatening to fall to where their Spartak colleague is lying, shining in the ravine like a coin that has gone out of circulation. And although the Krylia players interrupted the strike and went on Setun ice to sign the statements for the next defeat, you can’t deceive the trend: hockey has been leaving Moscow for a long time, talents to the West, in the NHL, money to the East, where the most high-minded people now live governors and tycoons. And even if Ralif Safin, the club’s president, well-known oilman and even better-known singer’s dad Alsou, agrees with Mayor Luzhkov to select a half-rotten Sports Palace in Setun from the VILS paramilitary plant, then the Wings team will still not become the leading team. Yes, and there is no need for this.

And I used to get into the train at the Kiev train station to look at the three “Wings” Pryakhin – Nemchinov – Kharin, and it’s strange for me that “Spartak” does not play hockey, but all this nostalgia even remains the bittersweet taste of private memories, and not a guide to the mandatory prosperity of all the glorious clubs in the USSR. Moscow, and so already yawning with hundreds of thousands of empty seats, even in old, at least in newly built sports arenas, is time to share, and not only with party and government Petersburg. At the traditional Russian Winter athletics competitions, where Ivan Ukhov jumped high to a very good 2.39 and where the beautiful Tatyana Lebedeva performed, the audience consisted mainly of relatives of athletes and a small handful of loyal fans of this queen. At the same time, in his native Lebedeva and Elena Isinbayeva Volgograd, if he was appointed the capital of Russian athletics, it was possible to collect thousands of people, even dollars, at the Russian Winter. At the matches of Dynamo Patrushev, the richest ball hockey team in the world, the base for the Russian national team, the stadium in Moscow does not even yawn - it cracks from the terrible emptiness and nonsense of the existence of this club in Krylatskoye. At the same time, in Kemerovo, even at the easily predictable semifinal match of the World Cup Russia - Kazakhstan, more than 30,000 fans sat and stomped. And who and why in Moscow needs the existence of the rich (that is, generously subsidized) Krylia Sovetov HC, well, except for Ralif Safin, if you suddenly assume that under the foundation of the Setunsky palace for which he is fighting, either the Inca gold or the library is buried Ivan the Terrible? For the proper performance of social functions to improve Setun’s teenagers, it’s enough that the “Wings” played moderately in the top or even the first league - Russian hockey will not suffer at all.

In those countries of Europe, on which Russia is equal in the Olympic medal standings, with whose clubs it fights in the Champions League, professional sports are scattered across all the cities and villages they have. The most popular game sports gather in large cities or in well-known industrial or tourist places, the less popular go to towns and villages. According to the tables of the French handball, volleyball and basketball championships (taken by me as an example), you can study all its provincial charm - Valenciennes, Bourges, Villeneuve d'Ask, Tarbes, Dunkirk, Chambery, Ivry, Arras. In all these towns no more than 70,000 inhabitants live. Almost always, a successful women's basketball team in one city does not share money and the public with either the men's basketball, women's volleyball, or even more so the football team.

And in our country there are such pleasant examples when a male handball left Leningradsky Prospekt in Chekhov, changing the name from CSKA to “Bears” along the way. And Sergey Kushchenko, realizing the whole financial vainness of the revival of the women's basketball CSKA in the neighborhood with the team of Messina, agreed with Samara. And now the local (strong and popular) club is proudly called - CSKA, and not crooked - VBM-SSAU. However, most often on the map of Russian sports it is more likely that you can study not geography, but places of links of political ambitions with business interests, where each project sticks out like a golden crutch. The main crutch, now clogged in Sochi, promises to gather around itself a human billion. And good. And please. If the Biathlon World Cup stage moves from the oil-bearing (but where a rare German gets to) Khanty-Mansiysk to tourist Sochi, I will only be satisfied.