This season has been extremely eventful in the world of shooting sports. At the end of summer, the World Cup, combined with the election of the leadership of the international federation, dropped the curtain in the Croatian Zagreb. Three weeks later, the Slovenian Maribor invited the strongest European masters of trap shooting. The final chords of the season are played this week in the Spanish Granada, where the shooters reveal the best in the World Cup finals.
Tournaments such as in Zagreb - that is, world championships in bullet shooting - are held every four years. This means that coaches and specialists have almost the only opportunity halfway to the Olympic Games to summarize and analyze the results of performances of both their team and rivals. Of course, the masters of bullet shooting still have many tournaments, but the World Cup has a special status. What did the starts in Zagreb show?
Dual power
Despite the presence of 38 countries in the medal table, we are primarily interested in the first two lines, for which there has recently been a struggle between the national teams of Russia and China. Moreover, it is obvious that the Russian riflemen will have to work hard to surpass the Chinese.
This is primarily indicated by the results of the World Cup. The Chinese won five victories in the Olympic disciplines, and the Russians - three. At the same time, our rivals won three more silver and two bronze medals, while the Russians won only three bronzes.
These results can be called objective, moreover, successful for the Russians. The post-Soviet period was not easy for Russian shooting sports. Many were forced to leave the sport, children's schools closed, and coaches changed their profession. However, since 2002, when the leadership of the Shooting Union of Russia changed, the situation began to change.
The peculiarity of shooting as a sport is that athletes are able to perform at a high level until adulthood, for the shooter in the literal sense of the word of his year is his wealth. And this is precisely what allows the national team to maintain a leading position now.
While in other sports many national teams have already gone through the painful process of generational change, those who forged the glory of Soviet sports continue to perform successfully in the modern Russian shooting team.
However, if the team has enough time to rejuvenate due to the peculiarities of the kind, then the restoration of the material and technical base cannot be postponed for tomorrow.
Rossport recently decided to build a shooting gallery in Novogorsk. It is unlikely that it will be commissioned so soon that it will be able to host the Beijing Olympics for training, but the next generation of shooters will train there. In order to establish the lost groundwork in the field of recovery of athletes and scientific support of teams, it will also take more than one month.
New check in the Balkans
Three weeks after the Zagreb World Cup, the Russian team reaffirmed its high level. Despite physical and psychological fatigue, the Russians won 14 medals at the European Championships in Slovenia, mainly in two of the three Olympic exercises - skite and double-trap. The most favorable impression in Maribor was made by young people: young shooters won five medals in the individual competition and two in the team.
Sergey Planovsky leads the youth team for only two years, but at 45, he is an experienced coach. Almost simultaneously with him, Ivan Derevsky began to work with the reserve. Both mentors have made changes to the training team.
“Our landmark in Beijing is gold, silver and bronze medals,” says Planovsky. If the result is at least half achieved, then our team will overcome the historical frontier: from the two previous Olympics, the standers brought only one medal each.
Chinese Wall
The successes of the Chinese shooters have become familiar and do not cause much excitement. But the team that appeared at the World Cup in Zagreb surprised even experienced professionals. Firstly, the average age of athletes in Zagreb was 25 years old. About 70% of the Chinese team are yesterday's teenagers. And they fought on equal terms with experienced craftsmen - like the 20-year-old air pistol Wei Pan, who bypassed our Mikhail Nestruyev.
At the same time, the Celestial team is strong and authoritative arrows. Olympic champions Li Duihu, Zhang Shan, Yang Lin and Li Du are still in service. According to the leadership of the Chinese team, a combination of youth and experience will help the team at the Beijing Olympics.
Bullet shooting is one of those forms in which Chinese athletes are especially strong. The first medal in the history of China’s participation in the Olympics was won by Xu Haifeng, the current national team coach, at the 84 Olympics in Los Angeles. After that, the progress of the Chinese shooters went by leaps and bounds. Over the past 10 years, the shooters, like the Chinese Olympians in general, have made a huge leap forward.
Beijing virus
In many respects, the Chinese arrows owe their progress to the fact that Beijing was chosen as the capital of the 2008 Olympics. This stimulated the already active support of the development of sports from the state.
Already in Athens, the Chinese were reaping the fruits of universal “sportization" of society: after the 2004 Games, a record number of Olympic champions appeared in the country. In Athens, the Chinese team won 32 gold medals, surpassing the Russians for the first time and losing only three gold medals to the US team.
The arrows made a significant contribution to the total piggy bank of the Chinese, having won four gold, two silver and three bronze medals.
The value of success is emphasized by the fact that it was achieved mainly by young athletes. A few months before the start of the 2000 Games, a training camp was organized in Beijing for 220 shooters, whose age did not exceed 23 years. The process was led by national team coach Xu Haifeng.
“I’m not afraid of rivals,” said the cheeky 19-year-old Wu Luxu, who displaced veteran Chan Kon from the team. The question of the psychological stability of the newcomers did not cause unrest in Xu Haifeng: “Two-thirds of our team are young shooters. Veterans are distinguished by rich experience and good technical training, but they experience strong psychological pressure. And young athletes have high spirits and a strong will to win. If the competitions are held exactly, they can give all the best. "
As a result, the coach was right: three out of four gold medals were won by newcomers who first participated in the Olympic Games.
"Gift" Nestruyev
After the triumph in Athens, the Chinese team has a new head coach, former shooter Wang Yifu.
Wang Yifu spent his entire athletic life in the team led by Xu Haifeng and experienced all the intricacies of the relationship between the links in the team. Wang Yifu was remembered by Russian sports fans as a participant in a drama in the Olympic finals of the competition in the 10-meter shooting range, when five minutes later the winner Mikhail Nestruyev “gave” the Chinese gold.
Since 1984, Wang Yifu has participated in the Olympic Games six times in a row, winning two gold, two silver and one bronze medals. This is a record result.
At the same time, the coach of the Chinese team is deliberately modest. In an interview with the People’s Daily newspaper, Wang Yifu said: “The reason for the successful development of shooting sports in China is not that someone in some competitions achieved some results, but because leaders, coaches and athletes of several generations applied common efforts. As for me, I just went all the way to the development of shooting sports in China over the past 20 years. "
Playing coach
“After taking up the post of head coach of the national team, Wang Yifu, defending the regime of paramilitary command control, carried out managerial reform,” writes People's Daily. - A sports commission was created in the team, with the help of which members of the national team can express their opinions and comments. Wang Yifu said that currently all decisions are made on the basis of a survey of the opinions of experts of the sports commission. Team members thus gained more democratic space. ”
In addition, veterans, who at one time won gold or silver medals at the Olympic Games, were involved in the new national team of the country in bullet shooting. On behalf of head coach Wang Yifu, they patronize young shooters.
It is possible that the coach himself will take part in the Olympic Games for the seventh time! “We all feel a lot of pressure since the 2008 Olympic Games will be held in Beijing,” he said. - The homeland and the people expect the best results from us. Therefore, our task is not easy. And I will do everything for success that depends on me. Even if you have to go to the targets yourself. ”
How to defeat the Chinese?
Mikhail Nestruev, Olympic champion:
How many people are involved in shooting sports in China? How many do we have? .. It’s easier for them to create a long bench. And we have every shooter worth its weight in gold. To maintain your level, you need to create as many children's schools as possible. I would open my school, but, alas, the legislative framework does not allow it. Now the legislation is so confusing and imperfect that a simple person can not understand it.
Boris Kokorev, Olympic champion:
It is necessary to build as many modern shooting galleries as possible. In Soviet times, we spent 255 days a year at training camps, now only 150. In the remaining six months, I, the Dynamo athlete, have nowhere to train. The shooting gallery assigned to us is located in the under-stands of the stadium, and, it’s ridiculous to say, there are four poorly illuminated target installations.
Tatyana Goldobina, Olympic medalist:
The team needs a psychologist. When we are together for a long time, we need a person who would regulate our relationship, would help to leave after nervous overload.
Tatiana Milevskaya