The World Shooting Championship, held for two weeks in the Croatian capital Zagreb, the Russian team completed with a second result. It was not possible to get ahead of the Chinese team, which succeeded mainly in bullet shooting. But the separation of Russian athletes from national teams of other countries is more than impressive. The results of the World Rifle Forum in an interview with Gazeta correspondent Tatyana Milevskaya are summed up by the head coach of the Russian national bullet shooting team Oleg Lapkin.
- You brought from Zagreb the promised number of medals - six, only “in quality” didn’t get one “silver”.
- The main thing is that we have three gold medals. It makes me happy. The only sad thing is that we are far behind the Chinese.
“ Were they better prepared?”
- Yes, for objective reasons. Over the past few years, they worked hard, built children's sports schools, and prepared the material and technical and methodological bases. The Chinese have adopted the Soviet system. The country's population has allowed them to grow enough athletes from which to choose the best. Now they are reaping the benefits.
- Their team was younger ...
- Yes, they have an average age of four less than in our team. I honestly did not expect such a sharp rejuvenation. But we have no place to take capable young people from, so we try to save those who are. We are reaping the fruits of the crisis, which lasted until 2002, until the leadership of the Shooting Union changed.
- One of the main advantages of the Chinese is psychological stability in stressful situations, without which the finals of the world championships are unthinkable. The Russians reached the finals with better results, but lost to the Chinese athletes.
- Yes, we lost at least two medals.
- Do you mean Marina Bobkova, who faltered in the last shot?
- Some photojournalist came up and took a picture before her very last shot. He believed that he was shooting a future championship medalist. But the flash of the camera ruined everything. Taking photographs during competitions is strictly forbidden. Marina could protest the photographer’s actions in one single way - not to shoot and raise her hand. Then this protest would certainly have been accepted. But she considered it possible to continue shooting. How can you blame Marina for something? She showed the best result in her career.
- Whose medal came as a surprise to you? Maybe Natalia Paderina?
- Of course, she presented a surprise. But on the other hand, Natasha was both a medalist and a European champion.
Long awaited awards from Vladimir Goncharov. In junior age he was very strong, and with the transition to an adult team he was lost. When he took third place, we breathed a sigh of relief ... Frankly, it was difficult to count on the victory of Artem Hadzhibekov. For a long time he no longer had bright victories, and this one was given to him with great difficulty. It's nice that Lyuba Galkina became the champion. She actually wanted to extend the post-Olympic vacation, but we managed to dissuade her - there were fears that the break would be delayed and she would not want to come to the shooting gallery anymore.
- You did not insist on connecting a psychologist to work with the national team?
“You think it's so easy to find him?” Do we have specialists? I'm not sure. Our coach traditionally acts as a psychologist.
- The championship was not marked by high results.
- It is not uncommon when world championships are held without high achievements, but I was surprised by the conditions in which the competitions were held. The owners of the championship were to build a new shooting range, but this was not done. It is unclear how they received the approval of the technical delegate - the conditions did not even meet the standards. According to the rules for one of the types of shooting there should be 80 firing positions, and here it’s only 70! And the pneumatic shooting gallery was not air-conditioned at all - it’s 40 degrees in the heat! All of the above affected the results: for example, in pneumatic pistol shooting, the winner scored 584 points - this is below the standard of an international class master of sports.
- Four years later, by the next world championship, less than half of the current team will remain. Surely you closely watched the junior championship. Who will replace the veterans?
- Now there are two or three promising juniors, no more. But I am sure that we will retain the second team place, however, it is not known by what margin. I hope that we won’t let the Chinese go too far.
- Is it possible to somehow influence the situation today?
- Unfortunately, while we have very low training loads - in other words, athletes do not make the required number of shots. We cannot fulfill the standards that were previously in the Russian team. And the reason is the most banal - we spend a lot of time traveling. Athletes should have better conditions for recovery and training, but so far we do not have a single base. In winter, we cannot fully train in Novogorsk - there is no necessary shooting range there. However, not everything is so bad: the project for the construction of a shooting gallery in Novogorsk was approved. In the summer, we train in a new shooting range, opened in the Fox Hole shooting range. If a hotel for athletes is built there, this sports complex will be an ideal place for summer training.