Alexander Katushev: the victories and medals at the Youth Olympic festival in Tampere from the athletes from the sport schools, which became the grants’ recipients of “The Russian Olympians Foundation”, proved justice and fairness of our choice

The Russian national team showed successful results at the X Summer European Youth Olympic Festival in Tampere (Finland), having won 36 medals (18 gold, 10 silver and 8 bronze) and gained a convincing victory in overalll medals count. The executive director of “The Russian Olympians Foundation” Alexander Katushev, which had started the new program of support of the children-youth sport schools since March 2009, commented the achievements of our team to the Agency of sport information “All Sport”.

“The success of our team at the European youth festival - which is also called the Youth Olympic Games among the European countries - is very impressive, - Alexander Katushev noticed. - It is impressive because of many reasons. First, the teams of Germany and Great Britain, which won 10 medals each, are far behind us. And these countries are our main competitors on the continent, and we should expect competition with these countries, according to experts’ forecasts, at the “adult” Olympic Games 2012 and 2016. It encourages us a lot. With the big share of probability the participants of this festival, who are under 18 years old now, are the reserve of the Russian team for the next Olympic Games. And it is not a secret that the victorious psychology is developed specifically in this age. It is a real art to win in the most responsible moment, when everybody is against you. And it was the Olympic festival in Tampere where our young boys and girls got their first experience, the first test on psychological sustainability, on the correctness of methodology of trainings. Yes, still the success of Russian youth teams surpass the results of the adult teams, but it says only about out potential. Besides, the succession is visible - the Russian youth team demonstrated its power in traditionally “our” sports” - athletics, artistic gymnastic, judo, handball. All this inspires  certain optimism, together with recent victory of our athletes at the Universidad in Belgrade”.

Alexander Katushev also noticed, that among the winners and medalists of the youth festival in Tampere there are pupils and graduates of children-youth schools, which got the grants of “The Russian Olympians Foundation” in March of this year,. “I think it is a very important moment, which once again proves the correctness and fairness of our choice. It means that the criteria of selection of schools, that we created, are fair enough. Anyway, the Foundation isn’t going to stop. I think in the nearest future there will be quantitative and qualitative expansion of the programs of support of children and youth sports. The Russian president, the head of “The Russian Olympians Foundation” Dmitry Medvedev said about it at the presidential council on March, 23, and at the meeting of the Tutorial council of the Foundation on April, 27. The decision about the individual grants, I suppose, will give a huge stimulation as to increasing of the level of sport preparation, as well it can help young athletes go through the stage of selection of profession, stay in Russia and bring medals to our country”, - Alexander Katushev concluded.