Olympic Medals Prove Elusive For Russia

The Olympics are not even half over, but Russia seems to be suffering a collective panic attack over the lackluster performance of its athletes. “Russian Olympians Lose Historic Superiority” was the front-page headline on Thursday in Kommersant, an influential newspaper. Some politicians and commentators are calling for the firing of Russia’s sports minister and the head of the Russian Olympic Committee.

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The gloom seemed to thicken on Friday as Russians woke up to the news that their superstar figure skater, Yevgeny Plushenko, took only the silver. Even worse, Russia's powerhouse men's hockey team faltered against Slovakia, falling to the former Soviet satellite, 2-1, in a shootout.

Favored Russians have floundered in the biathlon, and the women’s hockey team was trounced twice by a collective score of 18 to 1. (It is best not even to mention pairs figure skating results around here.)

Among the few areas where Russians could still earn a gold medal at the Vancouver Olympics, the mass circulation tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets said, is excuse-making. Athletes have blamed the weather, the facilities and even the humidity for their lapses.

After Australian aboriginal groups accused a Russian ice dancing pair of mocking aborigines, Valentin Piseev, president of the Russian Figure Skating Federation, suggested that they were the target of an international plot to force them to alter their performance.

“I think that this is a well-executed strategy directed against our athletes,” Mr. Piseev told Russian television from Vancouver.

In Russia, international athletic competitions — particularly the Winter Olympics, in this frozen country — are considered one of the last prominent international arenas to showcase the country’s strength. The anxiety has been heightened because Russia will host the next Winter Games at the Black Sea resort of Sochi in 2014.

The governing United Russia party, led by Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, released a statement on Thursday suggesting that there could be repercussions for athletic officials if Russian athletes continued to fall short in Vancouver.