News and Views
Andreeva Svetlana
May 20, 2010 15:00 Moscow Time

Russia’s Deputy-Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov has been elected as the president of the national Olympic Committee, and he will have two jobs. The replacement of the leaders of the Russian Olympic Committee became clear after the disastrous performances of the national team at the Olympic Games in Vancouver. At the time, President Dmitri Medvedev made it clear that officials who were responsible for the preparations of the sportsmen for the Games must step down. After this, president of the Olympic Committee, Leonid Tyagachev resigned although he said that he would not bear responsibility for the bad performances of the Olympic team and he had resigned to take the heat.

There were several suggestions concerning the next head of the Olympic Committee. Among these were president of the Para-Olympic Committee, Vladimir Lukin, four-time Olympic swimming champion, Alexander Popov, the president of the biathlons union, a famous businessman, Mikhail Prokhorov, and the famous Olympic champion, Irina Rodnina. However, when Russia’s 19 sports organizations and Shamil Tarpishev, a member of the International Olympic Committee nominated Deputy-Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov, no one expressed desire to compete with the senior official.

Alexander Zhukov is 53, holds the title to the Master of Sports in chess and plays football. He is well aware of achievements in sports as he handles this area in the government. Here is an opinion from the vice-president of the Olympic Committee, Igor Kazikov.

“Alexander Zhukov is quite informed about the situation in sports and development of physical culture in the country,” says Igor Kazikov. “He was the president of Russia’s chess federation for a long time and has headed the organization committees in charge of preparations for both winter and summer Olympic Games. Alexander Zhukov is handling the preparations for the 2014 Games in Sochi.

Given that all these tasks are directly linked to the activity of the Olympic Committee, I believe that it will be difficult to find a better candidate than Alexander Zhukov,” Igor Kazikov said.

The main task before the new president of the Olympic Committee is to prepare the national team for good performances at the Olympic Games in Sochi in 4 years. Alexander Zhukov said: “Promoting the achievements of the Russian sports is an important task of the Olympic Committee. By promoting achievements Russia should display real success. 76 percent of Russians are proud that the 2014 Olympic Games will be held in Russia. We should not disappoint them”.

Source: http://english.ruvr.ru

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