President of the Russian Biathlon Union (RBR) Viktor Maygurov said he was bothered by conversations with athletes about salaries.
Previously, a commission of SBR athletes was created, which included Ekaterina Yurlova-Perkht, Tamara Derbusheva, Eduard Latypov, Ekaterina Noskova, Alexander Povarnitsyn, Karim Khalili, Maxim Tsvetkov.
— Has athletes’ contact with SBR improved or worse?
— Thanks to the fact that we created an athlete committee, we began to communicate more. Previously, we had one-on-one communications, but now we regularly discuss pressing topics once a month. A committee of athletes is involved – seven people. If anyone else wants to tune in, for goodness sake.
— Did any of the athletes’ ideas surprise you?
— What bothers me the most is that we always talk about money: why, how much. I’m just going along with my time. Obviously we didn’t have any prize money…I don’t know. They are probably interested in many things, but the main conversations are about money. Yes, everyone needs money. It’s not the most important thing in life anyway.
—There’s nothing wrong with a person wanting to make money, right?
– Of course not. But when we explain that for one reason or another the SBR budget has decreased, but we keep the prize money at the same level, they say to us: “Let’s do more? We give priority to athletes. If you add it all up, it’s about 80 to 90 million. And 55 million – we help regional federations. Let’s ask the regional federations where to move this cup: towards the young people we raise, or towards the award-winning athletes? I think the choice will be obvious. So we try to maintain a certain parity. We try to support our regional federations as much as possible, which take care of those who will come to us tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. For the first time, this program worth 55 million was implemented. Next year we also want to preserve the Regional Support Program and the Regional Athlete Support Program as much as possible. We also never had prize money for juniors. That year, 111 juniors received payments for winning prizes in competitions. For adults, it was 58 or 68 people. I think it is also a good support to motivate them in a difficult period when our international season is over. They understand where to go. This is an important element to encourage young people to get started with our sport,” reports the correspondent of , reporting Maygurov’s words.
From September 16 to 19, the Alfa-Bank Russian Summer Biathlon Championship will take place in Tyumen. All races will be broadcast live on the channel and broadcasts will also be available on the matchtv.ru and sportbox.ru websites.
Source : MatchTV
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