SOCHI, March 16 (R-Sport) – As it hosted its first Paralympic Games amid extreme political tension with key competing countries, Russia brushed aside the distractions of the wider world to put on a successful event and dominate the competition.
As with last month's Olympics, the nine-day Paralympics that ended in Sochi on Sunday checked just about every box, earning unequivocal praise from the International Paralympic Committee, and even exceeded its predecessor in selling far more tickets than expected - breaking the Vancouver 2010 record by 90,000.
The triumph for the host organizers was matched by victory for the home athletes, with Russia topping the standings with 30 gold medals and a total of 80 medals, the latter figure unmatched in the 38-year history of the Winter Paralympics.
While politicians claimed the real victory was the change in perceptions of a nation unaccustomed to seeing people with disabilities as role models, others insisted the triumph was the atmosphere of friendship that pervaded the Games, despite one of the serious political disputes in recent times brewing in Crimea, just 400km west.
"More important than the Games themselves is the shift in people's mentality," said Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak, the government's Olympic and Paralympic supremo, on Sunday.
"The Games were able to take the barriers off people's minds. And the packed stands at events testify to that."
While fiercely patriotic, the sell-out Russian crowd at the sledge hockey final between the host nation and the United States on Saturday displayed no acrimony towards the Americans, who won 1-0, cheering the U.S. team and its anthem at the medal ceremony.
"I was really surprised that the crowd cheered," said U.S. forward Josh Sweeney, who scored the winning goal. "Sometimes you don’t know what kind of reaction you’re going to get. Even in the U.S. they might not cheer if somebody else won, so it was awesome to be able to get a cheer from the crowd."
The Ukrainian team threatened to boycott the Games in the run-up to the opening ceremony March 7 in response to moves for Crimea to break away from Ukraine and join Russia, but eventually backed down and decided to compete, albeit only after sending a lone flagbearer to the show in a delicate gesture of protest.
Relatively muted Ukrainian acts of defiance were visable. Athletes from the country gave patriotic statements or covered their medals with their hands when the Russian anthem played at ceremonies – and it played often as Russia won a battle for supremacy with Ukraine in biathlon and cross-country skiing.
Russia’s standout hero of the Games was Roman Petushkov, who won six gold medals in biathlon and cross-country events, only a fourth-place finish on the final day Sunday stopping him from equaling the record of seven golds at a single Winter Paralympics, set by Norwegian skier and sled racer Knut Lundstroem in 1988.
A 36-year-old double amputee, Petushkov embodied much of the success of Russia’s team. Until recently, the veteran athlete was considered a solid skier but not quite among the world’s elite, but has improved rapidly over the last four years as Russia poured money into Paralympic training.
"I think that the Russian team have put on a tremendous performance," International Paralympic Committee president Philip Craven told R-Sport on Friday. "Russia have been investing in Paralympic sport now for many years but here we’re really seeing the start of the big payoff.”
The cross-country track also saw the emergence of two potential U.S. stars of the future in Tatyana McFadden and Oksana Masters. Both of them were adopted as children from orphanages in ex-Soviet countries, both first won medals in summer sports, and both picked up skiing within the last 18 months. McFadden finished with a silver in the 1km sprint, while Masters won silver in the 12km and bronze in the 5km.
On the Alpine ski slopes of Rosa Khutor, Germany’s Anna Schaffelhuber was the star, winning every event in her category for athletes who compete while sitting. That rescued an otherwise disappointing Games for Germany, which finished second to Russia in the final standings with nine gold medals. Schaffelhuber’s success was not without controversy, however, as she won the slalom title only after appealing a disqualification for an illegal start that had handed victory to her compatriot Anna-Lena Forster.
That was one of the few disputes of a Games that largely passed without sporting controversy, save the exclusion of Italian hockey player Igor Stella, banned for 18 months after failing a drug test.
The Sochi Paralympics saw the debut of a new event as snowboarding joined the program, initially as a sub-discipline of Alpine skiing, although it will be a full sport in time for the 2018 Paralympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
Snowboarding’s debut marked the culmination of a long journey for athletes such as Bibian Mentel-Spee, who won the first Paralympic gold medal. The Dutch rider was a leading able-bodied rider with Olympic medal hopes until cancer forced the amputation of one of her legs 14 years ago. She was back on her board within four months and became a tireless advocate to include snowboarding in the Paralympics, getting her wish in Sochi.
Russia made vast strides to become one of the strongest teams in two almost entirely new sports for the host nation, sledge hockey and wheelchair curling. Russia had never before entered the Paralympic in either sport and indeed barely had a sledge hockey team at the last Winter Games in Vancouver four years ago, a curious anomaly in a country hooked on the able-bodied version of the sport.
Helped with new training facilities and funding, Russia rose to become a major player in Sochi, charging to the final in both sports but being forced to settle for two silver medals when the inexperienced teams’ vulnerabilities were exposed at the highest level by the defending champions. A few hours before Russia’s 1-0 hockey loss to the US, its curling team went down 8-3 to Canada.
In Sochi itself, the so-called “barrier-free environment” of facilities fully accessible to disabled people offered a glimpse of a possible future for Russia, which has promised to roll out the concept across a country where many disabled people find it hard to play a full part in society. “This commitment to bring the barrier-free environment to the whole of the Russian Federation over time in legacy format is just a great, great commitment and it’s something that I’m confident that Russia will carry out and follow through on,” Craven told R-Sport.
One key aspect of Russia’s Paralympic legacy could prove to be the unprecedented visibility it offered to disabled people. From the moment wheelchair-using singer Yulia Samoilova took to the stage at the opening ceremony, disabled people’s talents were to the fore.
State TV broadcast 180 hours of Paralympic action, far beyond the near-invisible coverage of past Games.
The Sochi Paralympics took place in the shadow of a nearby conflict and at times struggled to maintain their global news visibility, especially as the trial of Summer Paralympic star Oscar Pistorius rumbled on in South Africa.
However, the Games were full of lower-key successes for athletes from around the world, and for Russia, which gained a new generation of disabled celebrities for the first time.
