The Russian government is to wait until the spring to set medal targets for the country’s first Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014, Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko told R-Sport on Friday.
With Sochi set to host a series of major tournaments in every Winter Olympic sports to act as test events for the wealth of new facilities, Russia will wait to see how its athletes perform there in the new winter sports season, Mutko said.
“This season is special. In Sochi there will be all the winter sports world championships,” Mutko said.
“At the end of the season we’ll formulate a target with sights set on the Sochi Olympics and we’ll tell the citizens of this country honestly what we want from this national team.”
Russia will be seeking to bounce back from its worst-ever Winter Olympic showing in Vancouver in 2010, which yielded just three gold medals, as well as five silver and seven bronze medals.
