Double Olympic champion Olga Medvedtseva leapt to the defense of Russia's under-fire biathlon coaches on Tuesday, saying they need to be given more time to develop the team after the country's worst-ever performance at the world championships.
Russia finished the event in Ruhpolding, Germany, with two bronze medals from 11 events despite a squad that contained four gold medalists from the 2010 Olympics.
Since the championships finished Sunday, several Russian pundits have criticized the coaching staff, including former national team coach Vladimir Alikin.
“You need to give the coaches time, freedom and the ability to realize their plans. It’s time to stop all this messing about with changing the coaching staff,” Medvedtseva, who competed under the surname Pyleva for most of her career, said in her blog on the Russian Biathlon Union website.
Changing the coaches now would just disrupt preparations for the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia, she suggested.
“There’s less than two years left before the Olympics. No method, even the most brilliant one, will work in a year.”
“And not all of them start working immediately, you need time and adjustments. Only a cycle – two or three years – can yield a real result.”
The squad was in good condition and the coaches were competent, she said, pointing to the Russian biathletes’ impressive results in earlier World Cup events.
“Did we not prepare the right way in summer? No, throughout the season the results were actually decent. Were the coaches bad again? No, they were able to give us almost 30 medals with the guys this year.”
Other teams were simply unusually well prepared, she argued.
“All the leaders and even the dark horses like Slovakia and Slovenia came into the world championships in insanely good condition.”
Russia’s problems may lie in a lack of youth development and older squad members who are no longer competitive, Medvedtseva said, adding "it was obvious" that at least two team members, Anna Bogaly-Titovets and Yana Romanova, wouldn't be able to challenge for medals.
Medvedtseva won gold in the pursuit at the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City, and gold in the relay in Vancouver in 2010, as well as six world championship gold medals.
She was stripped of her 2006 Olympic individual silver medal after a positive drug test that she blamed on pain medication she had been taking for an ankle injury.
