Moscow - Russians and Ukrainians regard as a failure the performance of their national teams during the first half of the Olympic Games in London while people in Belarus and Kazakhstan on the contrary find that their national teams have exceeded all expectations, judging by a poll.
Out of the interviewed Russians 48% said that the performance of the team in London is unexpectedly poor and 21% more described the small number of gold medals as a complete failure while only 14% were satisfied and 17% more were moderately optimistic about the way Russia is doing at the Games.
The results of the poll were reported to Interfax on Monday at Integration fund that conducted a joint study with NewsEffector monitoring agency in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine (6,012 respondents).
Many Ukrainians are also dissatisfied with the performance of their national team – 41%, 39% are happy about the number of medals and 20% are optimistic about the results.
In Kazakhstan 61% said that the performance of the national team exceeded all expectations and 24% more called it good.
Belarus is also generally satisfied with its team – 63% of all respondents.
Russians account the failure of their team to the following factors: the impact of the collapse of the Soviet system of sports (25%), the inefficiency of sports officials (22%) and the absence of massive sports in the country (19%).
In addition 10% place the blame on corruption at sports organizations and on the general situation in the country, 7% point to the absence of a normal system of training in children’s sport, 6% – to the shortage of financing, 5% – to the shortage of good coaches, 4% – to the low motivation of athletes and the absence of patriotism.
Only 2% said Russian athletes were misjudged at the Olympic Games in London.
Presently Russia holds the ninth place among participating countries with four gold, 16 silver and 15 bronze medals. On Monday 18 sets of medals in eight sports will be competed for in London.
