The sporting event of the week is the International Club Biathlon League Cup. Not even a week – a year. It had almost everything you could call a world-class competition:
Scene: one of the best ski and biathlon stadiums in the world. Take my word for it, I have something to compare: the Khanty are magnificent!
Writer-director: “”. Team of 80 people, 25 cameras. It is simply impossible to create and show a better image of biathlon or skiing.
Actors: the best biathletes from Russia and the entire planet, medalists and champions of the Olympic Games and world championships.
Plot: exciting combat at all distances.
A world-class show without reservations. Questions and complaints? They also exist. I didn’t like everything.
No matter what the commentators I respect say, there were surprisingly few spectators in the stadium for such a big spectacle. I don’t understand why – maybe other interesting events took place in Khanty last weekend?
I couldn’t find a single MLKB channel on social media. I’ll let you in on a secret (no): Nowadays, everyone, at least in my generation, watches TV shows with a phone in their hand at the same time. We usually do everything with our phone. Soon we will probably start practicing holding it in our hands. As you understand, I know most of the biathletes personally – and nevertheless it is interesting for me to clarify something about them during the race. I’m not saying that the modern viewer is accustomed to sponsor sweepstakes, quizzes and other means of entertainment.
But I think these are all small comparative things and the MLCB bosses will work on this for the next competitions.
The most important thing: for the first time, biathlon competitions of this class are organized by private companies. This is what I try to talk about and defend in almost every column I write. Civil servants are required to plan ahead and justify all expenses down to the penny. Companies can decide on Monday and announce the competitions on Saturday. Also, a business owner, if not for his personal business. I don’t know exactly what kind of money Alexey Viktorovich Nuzhdov spends. Or Umar Nazarovich Kremlev with his boxing races. It’s absolutely none of my business. It is important that the model they have imagined and are developing is the future of Russian professional sport.
…Now let’s talk about what everyone is interested in. About money. Yes, information reached Europe that the Russians were organizing competitions with crazy prizes. Anyway, I had to explain to several colleagues and acquaintances what exactly was happening in Khanty-Mansiysk. There are of course no “crazy prices” in MLKB. But they are already equal to what they pay at the World Cup stages (biathlon and skiing). Taking into account that we have 13% taxes on prize money, and in Europe they are several times higher. What if the prize money was higher?
Whether in skiing or biathlon, the situation is the same: around twenty people at most in the world earn a good living. Ten women and ten men. Those who win almost all the prize money and play among themselves. I’ll be honest: prize money is not the biggest income for world leaders; they get a lot more from sponsors. These same ten ski and biathlon athletes are indeed very wealthy people in every way. The others receive several times, sometimes dozens of times less. World leaders will therefore not yet come to meet us at the MLCB. They don’t need it, everything is fine with them – at least so far, it’s normal. But from the tenth number of notes – absolutely. They also became professionals not because they enjoy training 30+ hours a week, but because they want to benefit from it.
But we really need to create clubs – or something similar to professional cycling teams. So a certain Lars Larsson, coming to Khanty-Mansiysk, took with him only boots and a racing suit. Massage therapists, doctors, ski preparation, even the skis themselves, the club will provide everything. Biathlon rifle? This is of course not my question – but is it in vain that the guys from organize competitions where biathletes shoot from other people’s rifles? If you want to live, know how to spin. And shoot someone else’s gun just as well…
…I guess I sound very optimistic. But I have reasons. A year and a half ago, the same “contacts in Europe” felt sorry for me. And they themselves, by the way, too – some counted on me and made a lot of money from me, but then it failed. But they also sympathized as human beings. From Europe, it really seemed to them that Russia would not have time to play sports – they read their newspapers, watched their television. It was explained to them that Russia would not resist sanctions for long: transport problems, financial problems, almost starvation – what kind of sport is this?
But in reality everything turned out to be quite the opposite. At ski competitions in Khakassia and Khibiny last week, almost nine hundred people raced in total. Does this sound like a crisis? In Russia, there are more skiers, more or less professional, than in the rest of the world combined. There are definitely more biathletes. No need to listen to the negativists and whiners on the Internet: we now have (almost) everything so that ambitious children, adolescents and young people can play sports. Otherwise, where do these teams of young skiers from all over Siberia come from, so that they don’t give me passes now during training at the top of Teya, they all want selfies? I don’t know about other sports, but skiing and biathlon have survived the “excommunication from world sports” quite calmly, or whatever some people call it.
There was essentially only one thing missing: real major competitions, so that everything was like at the World Cup, and not in separate elements. And now such competitions are beginning to appear. Yes, for now in biathlon – but I hope you will soon hear other interesting news in this area. We are neither blocked nor stopped, we move forward, we develop!
Source : MatchTV
I am Sandra Jackson, a journalist and content creator with extensive experience in the news industry. I have been working in the news media for over five years. During this time, I have worked as an author and editor at various outlets producing high-quality content that attracts readers from different demographics.
