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From the FasterSkier archive — posts syndicated from athletes’ and coaches’ own blogs between 2004 and 2012, kept online as published. Current coverage is at fasterskier.com.

Tag: Russian Ski Association

  • Russian Coach, Barred from National Team, Still Working with Athletes

    Russian ski coach Anatoly Tchepalov. Photo, Ivan Isaev, Russian Ski Magazine.

    The Russian Ski Association (FLGR) has received high praise over the last two months for its work to combat performance-enhancing drug use. After being fined more than $180,000 this spring, the country escaped a second round of penalties at meetings of the International Ski Federation (FIS) in early November, thanks to its anti-doping efforts—which included changes in officials and coaches affiliated with scandals.

    “We know they are on the right track,” Gian Franco Kasper, the FIS president, told the Associated Press.

    But while nearly ten individuals have been barred from employment by the Russian national team, at least one coach, Anatoly Tchepalov, continues to work with athletes racing and training at an international level. Tchepalov was spotted in early November at events in Finland sanctioned by FIS, where one of his athletes, Sergei Shiriaev, skied to a victory over stars like Pietro Piller Cottrer, Tobias Angerer, and Kris Freeman.

    “He was there,” said Pepa Miloucheva, the coach of the Vermont-based Craftsbury Green Racing Project, in an e-mail. Miloucheva’s team was racing in Finland at the time.

    Tchepalov is the father and former coach of Olympic champion and convicted doper Julia Tchepalova, who was caught using the blood-boosting drug EPO at a race in 2009 and banned from the sport for two years.

    Tchepalov also coaches Shiriaev—who served a two-year ban for EPO use that ended in 2009—and Vassili Rotchev, an Olympic medalist who is married to Tchepalova.

    In a press release earlier this month, the FLGR stated that Tchepalov would not be engaged as a coach of Russia’s national team for the next four years, due to his involvement in past doping cases.

    But according to Andrey Kondrashov, a Russian Eurosport commentator, Tchepalov broke his contract with the national team two years ago—and there is nothing that the FLGR can do to keep Tchepalov from continuing to coach Shiriaev, Rotchev, and others.

    “The sports federations have no rights to disqualify coaches under the Russian Constitution and labor legislation,” Kondrashov wrote in an e-mail to FasterSkier. “That is why coaches are prohibited from working with the national team only.”

    Shiriaev and Rotchev were asked if they wanted to join the national team last spring, but in an interview with the Russian newspaper Kommersant in November, FLGR President Elena Vyalbe said that the two athletes made a decision to work with Tchepalov instead.

    The FLGR did not respond to a request for comment about Tchepalov’s status. But according to FIS Secretary General Sarah Lewis, skiers like Shiriaev and Rotchev are free to pick their own support staff.

    “According to the information received by the Russian Ski Association, Mr. Tchepalov has been removed from any coaching function within the Russian Ski Association,” Lewis wrote in an e-mail. “Athletes that are not part of the national team…can choose the coach(es) they want to train with.”

    The FLGR suspended eight other coaches aside from Tchepalov, but he is not the only one to remain in the sport. Former national team head coach Yuri Charkovsky is now the squad’s manager, while according to Vyalbe’s interview with Kommersant, another coach, Victor Smirnov, is working as a technician for the Kazakhstan team.

    Asked whether she foresaw any action to be taken against Tchepalov or other coaches in similar situations, Lewis said that issue was in the hands of the FLGR.

    “This is a matter for the Russian Ski Association to follow up as to whether the officials they have dismissed are breaching the terms of their dismissal,” she said.

    But according to Kondrashov, there is not much more that the FLGR can do. Tchepalov, he said, “works independently, without financial support from the state and federation.”

    “Tchepalov [is] not deprived of a job [as] coach, and therefore has the right under Russian law to appear in any field,” Kondrashov said.

    Kondrashov said that there are several other athletes on Tchepalov’s team, most notably 23-year-old Alexey Slepov, who took fourth at one of the races in Finland earlier this year.

    So far this winter, Tchepalov’s highest-profile skiers have competed solely in second-tier races—not on the World Cup, where thousands of dollars of prize money are at stake at each competition. But in the Kommersant interview, Vyalbe said that Shiriaev and Rotchev could make an appearance at World Championships in Oslo, if they qualified.

    Criteria for making the Russian team for that event would be released in December, Vyalbe said.

  • Team 2: Russia

    Russia

    Nations Cup Ranking: 2nd (7701 pts)

    Men: 2nd (4180 pts)

    Women: 2nd (3521 pts)

    2010/2011 A Team

    Men

    Evgeny Belov

    Michael Devyatyarov

    Maxim Vylegzhanin

    Nikita Kriukov

    Alexander Legkov

    Alexander Panzhinsky

    Andrey Parfenov

    Alexey Petukhov

    Petr Sedov

    Sergey Shiriaev

    Ilia Chernousov

    Vasily Rochev

    Nikolay Morilov

    Alexey Moriakov

    Alexey Slepov

    Women

    Natalia Korosteleva

    Olga Savialova

    Evgenia Medvedeva

    Yulia Tchekaleva

    Svetlana Nikolaeva

    Julia Tikhonova

    What You May Have Missed Last Season

    Perhaps the biggest news about the Russians in the last year was how few of their athletes were busted for doping. The country takes a whole lot of flack for their less-than-stellar record with performance-enhancing drug use, but let’s take a step back and consider: Between 2007 and 2009, no fewer than 13 of Russia’s cross-country skiers were sanctioned for doping violations. That’s not even including seven other cases involving competitors in nordic combined, alpine skiing, and freestyle—although, to be fair, six of those were for marijuana metabolites. (Yeah, alpine skiers dope with the wacky tobacky. Really guys?)

    Considering the number of cases in previous years, the winter of 2010 was a surprisingly clean one for the Russians. Alena Sidko was busted for EPO (although the head coach of the Russian Olympic team originally said that she had been left off the squad because she was too fat), and Elena Vedeneeva refused a drug test, but that was about it—nobody was caught at the Olympics, or even at World Cups. Nikolai Pankratov was stopped early this fall with some suspicious drugs on the Swiss border and likely faces a two-year ban, but he’s not on the national team, and was said to have been planning on competing for Belarus this coming year.

    All the controversy surrounding the Russian doping problems is impossible to ignore, but it does overshadow an impressively deep program. Between their men and women, no fewer than 52 Russian athletes scored World Cup points last year—the most of any country. And their second place in the Nation’s Cup is especially impressive when you consider that they only had one athlete of each gender in the top 10 of the World Cup rankings—Maxim Vylegzhanin was the best-placed in eighth, with 532 total points.

    At the 2010 Olympics, the team ended up with four medals: gold and silver out of a sensational performance in the men’s sprint by Nikita Kriukov and Alexander Panzhinskiy, and two bronzes from the men’s and women’s team sprint. That tally would have pleased most nations, but it wasn’t nearly enough for Russia. After an angry letter sent by the country’s ski team to Russian president Dmitry Medvedev in the spring, the president of the country’s ski association ended up resigning, and a new one, Elena Vyalbe, took over. Vyalbe, a former Olympic gold medalist, was a certifiably nasty skier in her own right in the 1990s—she started in a national program at age 11, ultimately won dozens of World Cup races, and took five out of five gold medals at the 1997 World Championships in Trondheim, surely crushing the hopes of every Norwegian citizen alive. Vyalbe wasted no time turning things around once appointed president, ridding the association of a number of coaches tied to the doping scandals of the past.

    What You Should Know For This Season

    On the women’s side, the team has lost Irina Khazova, arguably the team’s third-best athlete, to pregnancy. But the rest of the team’s top five are all coming back. Yulia Tchekaleva appears to be on-form, judging from her seventh place in last weekend’s 10 k skate in Beitostolen (and no, banned former Olympic champion Yuliya Chepalova didn’t shanghai the International Ski Federation just by switching a few letters around—Tchekaleva is actually a different person), and Natalia Korosteleva will definitely be a force to be reckoned with in the sprints—she’s the one who almost knocked Kikkan Randall down to third place in Oslo last March.

    On the men’s side, Sergey Shiriaev started his season strong in Finland, while the trio of Alexander Legkov, Petr Sedov, and Evgeniy Belov locked the Norwegians out of their own podium in the tune-up races in Beitostolen. Legkov surely has an axe to grind after his fourth place in last year’s Olympic pursuit—he could be a threat to pull World Cup points by the bundle, but to do so, he’ll have to race more often. Last year, his season was over after Vancouver.

    One potential hurdle for the Russians to overcome if they want to contend for the Nation’s Cup is an issue with their visas, reported yesterday by the website SkiRun.ru. According to Vasili Parnyakov, a commentator for the site, the Russian visas for the Schengen-area countries—among them the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, and Sweden—are valid for only 90 days for the six-month period between October 1 and April 1. That could limit the amount of time each athlete spends in western Europe, which in turn could put a damper on individual World Cup point totals, but that’s only if the problem is not resolved before the end of the season.

    One thing that the Russians have going for them is their sweet title system. As far as this reporter can gather, the country still bestows titles on its athletes and coaches based on a system developed in the Soviet era that has carried through to the present times. For example, Elena Vyalbe is an “honored trainer of Russia,” and an “honored master of sport.” Alexey Batalov, a member of the Russian Ski Association’s presidium, is the “head of the theory and methodology of skiing” at the Russian State University of Physical Education, Sports and Tourism. Natalia Korosteleva is a “master of sport, international class.” Such a classification system is likely the only thing standing between North America and cross-country skiing dominance. Just think: Beckie Scott could be the “supreme viceroy of Canadian skiing, mounted division,” John Caldwell could be “honored mogul of the old school,” and, well, you get the drift.

    Who You Should Watch

    Petr Sedov is more than one to watch. He’s one to whom you should keep your eyes glued at all times. (The International Ski Federation thinks so, too—they tested him six times in seven days in Vancouver. The young man has started nine races at Junior World Championships, won five of them, and missed the podium in just one. He’s only 20, can barely grow a moustache, and is 6’1” and a mere 165 pounds. He’s already got Olympic experience, and in his two individual World Cup starts, he placed eighth and tenth. With ten more pounds and a bit more international experience, it’s scary to contemplate just how fast Sedov will be. He is coached by his father, Nikolai, who runs a squad of promising young Russian athletes. Nikolai also coached Irina Khazova, who won a bronze medal for her third place in the team sprint in Vancouver—and who also was caught using a masking agent in 2007 and banned for two years.

  • November 12 Roundup: Check out Northug’s Custom Skis

    –Norwegian superstar Petter Northug has his own customized pair of skis from Fischer, emblazoned with his name and his country’s flag. Check ’em out here—they’re reminiscent of the custom bikes made for professional cyclists.

    –The Norwegian support staff put on a waxing clinic for the media in advance of this weekend’s racing—they’re probably hoping to avoid what happened last year after the first race of the Olympics, where the press blamed the team’s wax staff for destroying the men’s medal hopes.

    –According to the Swedish site Langd.se, one of the coaches suspended by the Russian Ski Association in response to repeated anti-doping rules violations was the squad’s former head coach, Yuri Charkovsky.