Stanislav Pozdnyakov:
Dear colleagues, dear friends!
– I am glad to welcome such a representative community of renowned and decorated athletes to the Russian Olympic Committee. Today you will have to discuss the results of the work of the ROC Athletes' Commission in recent years and sel ect its new composition fr om representatives of summer disciplines.
I won't say how important it is to approach this procedure responsibly. I would just like to emphasize that in the modern world, the Athletes' Commission has begun to play an exceptionally serious role in all key domestic and international sports processes. Starting with the Athletes' Commission of the International Olympic Committee, the Athletes' Commissions of international sports organizations, and ending with the Athletes' Commissions in individual All-Russian sports federations, of which many of you are representatives.
You've probably heard the repeated thesis that it is the athletes, that is, you, who are at the center of the Olympic movement. Your rights and your interests are of paramount importance in the modern Olympic movement. This means that your opinion on the entire current sports agenda should be directly taken into account when making decisions by all major international sports organizations.
Athlete commissions play a crucial, connecting role between the athlete community and the governing bodies responsible for forming expert positions on sports issues. Who better than you to know all the problems that athletes face in the current conditions. But knowing and understanding is one thing, but communicating your position competently to relevant authorities, getting proper answers, defending a particular position, if necessary, and providing you with all the necessary information is quite another. This is the exclusive task of the Athletes' Commission of the Russian Olympic Committee.
Over the past two years, members of our Commission have regularly and in detail communicated not only with their foreign colleagues, but also with representatives of all major international sports organizations, including the IOC and WADA. One of the issues raised by us during these discussions is the inviolability of the rights of clean Russian athletes in the context of the sanctions and restrictions imposed by the CAS in the context of the WADA lawsuit against RUSADA.
I can say, and I know this for sure, that the efforts that Sofia Velikaya made as the chairman of the ROC Athletes' Commission and the current athlete, Elena Isinbayeva, as a member of the IOC Athletes' Commission and their colleagues, played a very important role in ensuring that, as a result of the decisions taken by the CAS, Russian athletes were able to fully, fully and practice your profession and compete in any competition without any additional conditions. Simply put, the voice and position of our athletes were heard.
As a result, our Olympic team competed in full at the Olympic Games in Tokyo and did it very successfully, which was noted by the head of state, among others.
Today, each of you has the opportunity to do what you love, continue your sports career, compete and win. But sooner or later your career will end, and you will face a choice of further path. Here, too, some assistance is often needed in order for the transition to a new level to be organic.
I was an athlete myself, just like you. While I was performing, sports training and focus on athletic performance always remained the main priority. And then a new stage of my life began, where it was necessary to transform the skills acquired in sports in order to effectively use them in a different role. Athletes always have a competitive advantage.
Sport teaches us discipline, endurance, and determination. This is an invaluable experience, which, nevertheless, requires integration with new specialized knowledge – managerial, methodological, linguistic or coaching. It depends on how you see the future direction of your development.
The Athletes' Commission is your main assistant here. Since it is designed to form and offer appropriate options in terms of additional education, advanced training, teaching foreign languages, and so on.
The Athletes' Commission has long ceased to be just a kind of advisory body with formal powers. Now it is an expert community that is designed to solve practical problems of a wide variety of formats for its colleagues. Share your experience and learn fr om your foreign colleagues.
To create and form new, practical opportunities for the development and further integration of athletes into specialized organizations. The need for qualified personnel in our sport is very high today. The Athletes' Commission has serious tasks in this regard. And first of all, it is designed to become an expert community wh ere each of you can contact on any issue and get the necessary information or a practical solution.
Working in the Commission is not about representing your own interests, but the interests of our entire large sports family. It's a job where it's not enough to just come up with an idea. It is necessary to find the resources to implement it and put it into practice. This implies greater responsibility for the decisions made.
Today you will have the opportunity to learn more about the activities of the Commission over the past 5 years, discuss plans and select your representatives for the next Olympic cycle who will adequately and effectively represent your interests.
I would like to thank all the members of the Athletes' Commission who actively worked during this difficult period for the entire Russian sport.
I also congratulate the winners and prize-winners of the Olympic Games in Tokyo, who are in the hall, on this remarkable success. I wish you an interesting and successful work!
