The recriminations begin
Thursday March 4, 2010 - Email this article to a friend

Austria and Russia are the big loosers and the backlash has begun. France didn't do too well either.

Russia put in its worst ever Winter Olympic performance. They were 11th in the medal table with just 3 golds.

In the days of the Soviet Union it was a Winter Games superpower.  In 2010 it failed to get any medals in the ice hockey and figure skating, once its best sports.

The President, Dmitry Medvedev, has called for heads to roll and for people to resign in the sports' governing bodies.

"If they cannot do it, we will help them," Mr Medvedev is reported as having said.

Whether he means sacking them or deploying a team of crack KGB assassins with poison tipped umbrellas is unclear at this stage.

Russian Presidents though are not know for making wild threats that they then don't carry out.

It is particularly embarrassing as Russia holds the next Games in Sochi in 4 years time and the country will be compared to how the 2010 host nation, Canada, did.

Canada set a record with 14 gold medals and the crowning one was the ice hockey victory on the final day of competition.

Starting from a low base though Russia should improve on its medal tally in 2014.

If not the Siberian salt mines will definately have a few more employees.

Austria, another former winter sports super power, did barely any better.

The men won no alpine skiing medals and for a nation addicted to skiing it is hard to stomach.

Grown men are reported to have been crying into their beer as the skiers failed one after the other.

Benjamin Raich looked like he may have been stabbed with the aforementioned Russian umbrellas as he stared into space after he was knocked off bronze medal position in the slalom on Saturday.

It was Austria's last chance of success. He was also the reigning Olympic champion.

We reported on the Austrian failure last week.

The men's team has been savaged in the press, though the women's team did at least win 4 medals to save a few blushes.

Team GB did OK with its one gold medal from Amy Williams in the skeleton but the performance hardly fired up the nation and we were short of our target of 3 medals.

The women's alpine skier, Chemmy Alcott, is considering her future as we reported here earlier.

Here at PlanetSKI we thought she performed up to potential and were cheering as she came 11th in the Super Combined and 13th in the Downhill.

However in sport if there are winners, then there are obviously losers.

The joy of the victors is mirrored in the tears of the vanquished.

But also it is, dare we say it, only sport.

All the athletes contributed to a memorable XXI Winter Games.

Perhaps in all the recriminations and post mortems the one person that should be remembered is Nodar Kumaritashvili.

NEWS UPDATE, Thursday 09.00: The head of the Russian Olympic Committee, Leonid Tyagachev, has resigned.  He had been in charge since 2001 and is a former sports minister.

We will be keeping up our 2010 Winter Olympic section here on PlanetSKI for a few days as it is still proving remarkably popular. We were getting 1,500 visitors per day during the Games and it has dropped only slightly. 

So, if you can't do without your Olympic fix or just want to glance back over The Games then do take a look.

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