In late August XXVI World Summer Student Games ended in the Chinese city of Shenzhen. Russia with 132 medals was second in the national team classification. Russian athletes won 42 gold, 45 silver and 45 bronze medals. Only Chinese students performed better, so the odds are high that two years later, when hospitable Kazan hosts the World University Games, Russian students will be able to take the palm away from their Chinese peers.
Some hope!
Regrettably, the current standing of student sports in Russia is usually discussed only in the context of reviewing the performance at the next University Games. Such an approach is appropriate only as bureaucratic reports and does not mirror a real situation with sports at the national sanctuaries of learning.
Russkiy Mir invited Merited Master of Sports, Olympic fencing champion and celebrity coach Alexander S. Shirshov who has trained a galaxy of young champions and prize-winners at national and international tournaments, as an expert to discuss the burning issues.
– Mr Alexander, how did your students perform in China?
– Not very successfully – unfortunately, the Russian men’s team of saber-fencers where my trainee Kamil Ibragimov was fencing could not make it to the top three. This was a great disappointment because any athlete is a warrior and the warrior is thirsty for victories, especially at such a young age. On the other hand, I am partly satisfied with Kamil’s results in this season. Frankly speaking, I am much more concerned about his inner spirit now, than about his immediate results. Losses are part of the training process. An athlete must be able to learn by his failures and losses in order to win later on – this is one of the fencing fundamentals.
– I’d like to know your opinion about the system of student sports in Russia. Are you content with it? Or Student Games are very much a tick-box competition in the reports of sports officials? It’s absolutely evident that Russian national student teams in different sports are mainly comprised of the (so-called) students of PE academies and institutes. In other words, they are professionals easily competing with their peers from Harvard or Oxford who devote much more time to real education and train themselves only during the leisure hours…
– I would not downplay the sport aspirations or the academic activity of Russian student athletes, but I wouldn’t be complacent either. Generally speaking, it’s wrong to talk about sports development at Russian universities on the basis of the Student Games’ results. Figuratively speaking, Student Games are just a tip of the iceberg; theoretically, 5/6 of the iceberg must be hidden underwater…
– In Russia this is a foam plastic iceberg as I see it – all achievements are at the top…
– This is too strong and offending a metaphor for many experts engaged in daily routine work in the gyms of our colleges and universities. Yet this harsh negative assessment is not without reason. Indeed we pay more attention to the results of student sports than the process, which is certainly wrong…
Overseas experience – in particular the experience of the United States where I happened to work as a coach for some time – shows that sports at institutions of higher learning can be developed and organized. Moreover this experience suggests that going in for big sports and successful performance at major sport events can be compatible with education. In this country they do not like to cite the US examples, but there sports are a real hobby of very many young people. And in this country we must create a situation whereby sports will set a sound and healthful vector of young man’s personality development and evolve into special space where youth will learn to build a positive team experience and to join hands for the sake of success. For sports play a huge role in social life and youth upbringing that should not be downplayed.
– This is such a general point, you’d agree, that seems to be rinky-dink…
– I don’t agree because I can see the situation from within. You may think there is a certain system of training an athlete from the first steps in a sports club to a medal at Student Games? Alas, this is not so! This is what we had in the days of the Soviet Union, but that integrated approach was gone with the USSR. The Soviet system was relegated and its best aspects ignored.
– Does your School of Warrior go back to any previous system of sport training? Are there any contemporary analogues?
– Talking about the Soviet time, many know about the so-called sports boarding schools. As a matter of fact, in senior school grades I went to one of such boarding schools in Moscow. The point is that an athlete starts showing first serious results at the time of completing the secondary school and entering a college or university. I think boarding schools were conceived as educational institutions where sportsmen are aided both in their studies and training. But frankly speaking, too little time was given to studies at a Soviet sports boarding school, or to the quality of education, to be more exact.
So I wish to create a comprehensive school where a teenager, tomorrow’s student, might get a wide range of knowledge, both in sports and academic sciences along with life experience. After all, why have we forgotten such useful subjects as dancing or the decencies? Why is it not possible to hire a teacher of oral speech even for a high pay? These arts would be useful both for an athlete, student and university graduate. Moreover one day he or she might use fencing skills and some other day – the eloquence skills.
– Why the School of Warrior then? Sounds too militaristic!
– Martial arts are attractive in themselves, but if someone is a bit familiar with the Oriental traditions, he or she is certainly aware of a comprehensive approach to warrior’s education in oriental lands. Incidentally, Alexander Pushkin had only two undisputed excellent marks – in French and fencing. I am again looking for some parallels…
Please note that great Pushkin stood out among his peers by his ability to fence and later became a genius of the word. Will anybody now reproach the lyceum director for making the genius train himself in a gym in addition to grinding away at studies?
– In other words, sports must become a fully legitimate part of a university’s image, with both Nobel Prize and Student Game winners among its graduates…
– Exactly! Unfortunately too little emphasis is laid in this country on the visual appeal of student sports. It is contrary to the existing tradition to “mold” heroes out of athlete students, though they are ones in actual fact and a role model for other students. Not only are they good students, which is the bottom line; they also bring fame to their universities.
The subject of visual appeal is directly related to the upcoming Student Games in Kazan. To make them an attractive investment object, their organizers will have to create an attractive brand from scratch, because Student Games have no snap in them, no exciting legend or image. I took part in the Student Games myself and can say that usually national sports federations send second or even third-echelon athletes there. Only here in Russia we’ve preserved a good old tradition to send high-class sportsmen to university games. The rest include top-class celebrities in the teams only occasionally.
Competition in all sports included in the program of Student Games must be of interest to spectators, sponsors and fans. However all upcoming changes are to be made prudently and with caution. We should change the image of Russian sports on the basis of the best traditions developed back in Soviet times. And yet reforms in student sports can no longer be postponed. If sound ideas are being born now, hanging thick in the air, they need to be actively discussed, models are to be found along with ways of their implementation and let’s get down to action.
Andrei Morozov
