Prokhorov Defends Russia’s Olympic Hockey Team
I completely agree with the big guy here – further I don’t really see how it improves athletic performance to threaten, insult, and fire everyone involved over the poor outing at the Olympics. Probably the best solution is more state investment in education and youth athletic facilities and programs, and a better environment for the private sector to create incentives for sponsorship and careers in professional leagues etc. I don’t think Prok would fire Brook Lopez after a bad game for the New Jersey Nets … and that team has only won six times this year.
“We shouldn’t ‘trash’ our team for one loss, as painful as it was,” said Prokhorov, Russia’s second-richest man with a fortune of $17.85 billion, according to Finans magazine. “Hockey here is on the rise. We shouldn’t tear it down with our own hands,” he said in an e-mailed statement late yesterday. (…)
“We shouldn’t play that favorite Russian game of looking for someone to blame,” Prokhorov said. “We usually waste all our strength on that and everything remains as it was. Just replacing one group of people with another isn’t enough. We’ve been through that many times before. It must be accompanied by changes in the system of sports as a whole.”
