Stanislav Pozdnyakov: “Russian team will be the cleanest one at the 2018 Games”

Within the Russian National Olympic Team Media Center project first Vice-President of the ROC head of the Russia’S Olympic delegation at the XXIII Olympic Pyeongchang Winter Games Stanislav Pozdnyakov spoke about ROC’s work to establish the conditions for athletes’ and teams’ optimal preparation for the 2018 Games.

– Preparation goes on schedule, with difficulties, as it is usual for any major tournaments, he said. – The Pyeongchang-2018 program is coming to an end. Within this program in the last four years about one billion roubles was spent to prepare the Russian Olympic team. We will continue to provide financial support to the winter sports federations so that the Russian team could perform at a high level at the Pyeongchang Games.

The first meeting of the operational headquarters of our Olympic delegation was held last week. We discussed athletes’ accommodation in the Olympic village, summed up the results of  the first stage of accreditation on the basis applications from federations.

At the end of October, the ROC delegation will visit Pyeongchang to finally resolve all issues relating to accommodation, food and transport support of the Olympic team during the Games.

In addition, at the initiative of the Russian Olympic Committee a great job has been done with the international federations, to eliminate the possibility of pressure on our team during the Olympics. As a result it was decided that all candidates for the Olympic team will undergo additional testing, including those who are not in the WADA testing pool.

Thus, we want to give another example of the fight against doping. How a country is able to completely reform the anti-doping system in a short time. We can say that now we are the leaders in this direction, and at the Games in South Korea, the Russian team will be among the cleanest teams.

I also note that the ROC has prepared and sent to all the national winter Federation guidelines on the peculiarities of athletes’ adaptation to time, climate and geographical conditions of Pyeongchang. It will also help our Olympic team to avoid unnecessary complexity in preparing for the Games in 2018.