The Olympics in Tokyo have come to a close. The participants fought for the last 13 sets of medals on August 8, following which the organizers hosted the 2020 Games closing ceremony.
Russian competitors outperformed President of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) Stanislav Pozdnyakov’s aim of 50-60 medals, bringing home the most medals since 2004. However, just 20 of the 71 medals were gold, the lowest amount in the team’s whole post-Soviet existence.
The Russian team finished sixth in the unofficial rankings, its lowest position ever at the Summer Olympics.
According to newspaper Kommersant, fifth place in the medal rankings is the lowest position Russian athletes have ever finished in the history of the Summer Olympics owing to a sequence of failures on the final two days of the Olympics in Tokyo.
“This, however, is not a performance to be mistaken for a failure. A respectable collection of medals and an abundance of missed – it appears, entirely due to bad circumstances – chances make it appear to be a step ahead from the previous Olympics “the newspaper observes 20 gold, 28 silver, and 23 bronze medals is a fairly amazing collection, and it’s stronger than it was in Rio de Janeiro or even pre-crisis London.
“Of course, all of these sites are, of course, extremely conditional,” says Izvestia. According to the publication, the Russian team’s personnel was not optimum owing to sanctions. For example, only ten people represented the country in sports.
Russian athletes also performed highly in a number of non-traditional sports for the country, including taekwondo and 3×3 basketball, according to Vedomosti.
“For years, Russian sports have relied on ‘traditional’ disciplines such as wrestling or synchronized swimming, and the birth of new medal sports is an uncommon occurrence in Russia,” the newspaper says.
