Team doctor defends his treatment as accusations fly
For the Ukrainian team, the Winter Olympics ended in a salt lake of tears and disappointment.
Ukraine didn’t win a single medal after bringing home two from the 1994 Winter Olympic Games in Lillehammer, Norway, and one from the 1998 games in Nagano, Japan.
The recriminations are already flying.
The National Olympic Committee held a press conference March 1 to discuss the reasons for the poor showing.
“It is a realistic picture of Ukrainian sports today,” said committee President Ivan Fedorenko.
The poor performance of the country’s cross‑country skiers and biathletes was the subject of heated discussion. “They didn’t get the desired results because of a mistake by the head doctor [of the team],” said Bronislav Ometsynsky, President of Ukraine’s Skiing Federation. Two of the country’s cross‑country skiers were disqualified for doping.
Ometsynsky criticized the decision to give the skiers a blood‑boosting drug (which raises the number of red blood cells), saying that at higher altitudes, the cell count rises naturally.
He also blamed housing conditions. The Ukrainian team lived 2,200 meters above sea level, while other teams were at 1,900 meters.
“Blood boosting drugs and [high] altitude are an impossible combination,” Ometsynsky said. He was supported by Volodymyr Brynzak, the president of Ukraine’s Biathlon Federation.
Neither Fedorenko nor Vyacheslav Popov, the team’s head doctor, took responsibility for the results. Popov delivered a complex technical lecture, supported by various chemical formulas and charts, and Fedorenko promised to create a special committee to get to the bottom of the failure.
“It was funny to hear such excuses,” Brynzak said of Fedorenko and Popov’s statements. He pointed out that when the skiers moved to a lower altitude near the end of the competition, their performance improved.
Various speakers searched for scapegoats at the press conference, but apparently no one invited the athletes to give their views.
One thing everyone at the conference agreed on was that Ukraine has a lot of work to do before the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy.
“The way things are done in sports today, Ukraine will hardly win any medals in any international competitions,” Ometsynsky said.
Athletes should train from childhood if they hope to win gold medals, he said. Ukrainians are already out of the running in several sports. In the past 10 years, no new bobsled tracks, skating rinks or ski jump areas have been built in the country, Ometsynsky added.
Officials’ attitudes toward coaches and athletes could also stand some improvement, one coach said.
“We still have not been paid for the medals that Yana won in the Olympics,” said Nina Kohyh, who coaches Yana Klochkova, a swimmer who won two gold medals and one silver in the Sydney Olympics two years ago. That should entitle Klochkova to $130,000, and Kohyh to $65,000.
Kohyh says only half the amount was paid, and the rest was to be deposited in a bank account ‑ but the government still hasn’t gotten back to her with the name of the bank or the account number.
One world‑class athlete has already decided to vote with his feet. Mykhailo Slyvinsky, a three‑time world champion in kayaking, decided to join the Polish team after the 2000 Olympics, claiming he was cheated by Ukrainian sports officials.
“The government assigned me $3,500 of support for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta,” Slyvinsky said. “I got only $100. How you can practice in such conditions and win?”
Slyvinsky took first place for Poland at the 2001 Kayaking World Championship, and is now preparing to represent his new country in the next Summer Olympics.
