Former Minister of Sports of the Russian Federation Vitaly Mutko explained to why the decision was made to naturalize the short track skater Victor An .
Ahn obtained Russian citizenship in 2011, before playing for South Korea. An won three gold medals and one bronze at the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi. He also has three victories at the Turin Olympic Games in 2006 as part of the South Korean team.
— Albert Demchenko said he was offered to switch to another sport, very similar to luge. He replied: “I looked at the beans in the bobsled and realized that they were so useless that you could only crash into them. »
-Albert is right. During the Soviet era, five research institutes worked on sports. There was a laboratory at Moscow State University that made bobsled beans. And then we didn’t produce anything at all, and we had a very difficult time in terms of skis, rifles, cartridges, beans. Of course, technical equipment in technical sports is the key to great success. The Germans won almost all the gold in sledding. And later we took it all in bobsleigh. The technical equipment decides a lot. It was therefore necessary to buy new beans, and the Canadian Pierre Lueders came as coach.
— Why did you call on foreign specialists? Have you decided to take the best?
— I am in favor of domestic staff, but we have been through everything. I saw how talented people worked in short track, they did a lot for the development of this sport, but we needed specialists who would train around the clock. If we saw that there had no such specialist in Russia, we invited a foreigner. This is how these guys appeared in bobsleigh and short track speed skating.
Willy Schneider came to work with the German skeletons, because, for example, Sasha Tretyakov was still among the leaders, but he needed to be “polished”. I’ll say more: we were interested in technical equipment, and Willy brought something. Skeleton and luge are technical sports, and we followed that path.
— You said that Sébastien Cros first impressed you as “a kind of little siskin”. Why did you decide to invite him to work with the Russian short track?
– You know, there is such a feeling. This is how I selected the football coaches. Cross was short, dressed like a professor. He opened the computer and there were some graphs. At first, he didn’t give the impression of a coach, but rather of a mathematician who was looking for something on his own. In our concept, a coach should be a little different. But we talked and it turned out to be a very interesting dialogue.
That’s when we came up with the idea for Anu. He was granted citizenship, although he was injured, and they operated on him several times. We understood that in Korea they had written him off and he had a great desire to prove that they had kicked him out of the national team earlier,” Mutko told .
Source : MatchTV
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