The Russian national shooting team frankly failed the Olympic Games in London, winning only one bronze medal. At the same time, according to experts, the team in its current composition is far from the worst, if not the best in all recent years.
Nevertheless, the head coach of Russian shooters, Igor Zolotarev, at the end of the Olympics, said that he intends to resign due to the unsuccessful performance of the national team. In addition, he served as a sports director, which Zolotarev is also going to leave.
The Russian Shooting Union is one of those federations that could count on a harvest of medals in London. It was believed that almost every one of the 22 members of the shooting team could potentially climb the Olympic podium. At the last three Olympics, Russian shooters have won at least 4 medals. This time they counted on 5-7, while it seemed that 3 of them would be gold. As a result, only Vasily Mosin won one bronze medal in the double trap.
Zolotarev himself said that he had let the team down and had no right to be its leader. However, some experts believe that he was not a head coach in the team, since in each form there are coaches who work directly with athletes. Igor Zolotarev was rather involved in the administrative part as a sports director. Moreover, according to the former senior coach of the Russian national pistol team Sergei Barmin, he did his job well. Over the past two years, all domestic shooters, which at least somehow correspond to this level, have been taken out to international competitions.
President of the Russian Shooting Union Vladimir Lisin believes that the situation should not be dramatized. Objectively, our team is one of the strongest and not in vain is considered the favorite. Russia won the maximum number of Olympic licenses, and out of 15 types of programs in 9 participated in the finals.
Nevertheless, Lisin admitted that not everything was going well in the team during the competition. There were mutual reproaches towards athletes and leaders, some shooters allowed themselves to speak negatively about teammates.
However, Igor Zolotarev does not agree with this and in an interview with Russian journalists said that today the microclimate in the team is quite healthy. At the same time, he insists that the reason for his resignation is extremely weak sports results at the Olympics. After finishing work as a head coach, Igor Zolotarev plans to start writing teaching aids for shooting sports.
