From February 12 to February 28, 2010, the XXI Winter Olympic Games were held in the Canadian city of Vancouver. These over two weeks were filled with many sporting events. Participants and spectators became heroes and witnesses of victories and defeats, doping scandals, the struggle for Olympic medals and, unfortunately, even tragic events. This Olympics for the Russian team was the most unsuccessful in the history of the Games.
From the very beginning, the Olympic Games in Vancouver were held under the sign of an absurd tragedy: even before the opening of the Games, several athletes were injured on the bobsleigh track, and a young promising athlete from the Georgian team Nodar Kumaritashvili died after crashing into a metal support. Therefore, the opening ceremony of the Olympics began with a minute of silence.
But then events developed according to plan, despite the too warm weather and problems with demonstrators and strikers protesting against globalization. The very next day, the usual Olympic weekdays began, the first official competitions took place - jumping from the K-90 springboard, in the final of which the Swiss Simon Ammann won, who opened the scoring for the Vancouver medals.
Russian skiers started their performances not very well, and as a result they got only fourth places, which the coaches explained by the poor selection of ski wax. The first Olympic medal for the Russian team was won by the speed skater Ivan Skobrev, who took third place at a distance of 5 km.
The Russian team continued to be haunted by failures: the two-fighter Niyaz Nabeyev, on whom great hopes were pinned, was removed from the competition due to an increased level of hemoglobin in the blood. In the very first match with the Finns, the Russian hockey players lost 1: 5 and practically immediately dropped out of the fight for medals. For the first time in many years, there were no Russian athletes in the competition of sports pairs.
The first gold for Russia only on the 5th day of the Olympiad was won by sprinter skiers Nikita Kryukov and Alexander Panzhinsky. Evgeni Plushenko, who was predicted gold in figure skating, took only second place, which also became an unpleasant surprise and a reason for long disputes. Success was accompanied by ice dancers, skiers in the team sprint, biathletes and luge, who added a few more medals to the collection of the Russian national team. For the first time in the history of Russian sports, Ekaterina Ilyukhina won a gold medal in snowboarding. In the unofficial team event, the Russian national team was only 11th in terms of the number of Olympic medals.
At the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games, Vancouver handed over the baton to the Russian city of Sochi. Let's hope that the next Olympiad, which will be held in 2014, will bring more luck and medals to our athletes.
