Russians Bear Ill Will Over Perceived Injustices

The Russian president called the Winter Olympics “a flop.” The head of Russia’s church called it unfair. And a leading politician complained that Russia’s athletes have been robbed “in broad daylight, arrogantly, boorishly, insolently and cynically.”

As the ice wars played out, Russians stayed up late and fumed in front of their television sets.

The Russian ice hockey team was taking on the United States in what was widely seen as a grudge match recalling the famous 1980 face-off between Cold War foes. The Americans won then, and they won again Friday, 3-2.

The stinging loss added insult to hurt pride, as accusations of anti-Russian bias at the Games sweep the country. For a while, it looked as if Russia might even pull its athletes from the rest of the competition and boycott the closing ceremony.

It wasn’t until late Friday that Guennadi Shvets, a spokesman for the Russian Olympic delegation, put those fears to rest, announcing, “We will stay at the Games.”

Earlier Friday, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin said, “Several things [at the Games] evoke astonishment, speaking mildly.” His spokesman and the Russian parliament called for the boycott.

Putin, normally restrained and cool, lashed out at the International Olympic Committee leaders elected in July, pressuring them to act more forcefully in defending Russian athletes against perceived bias.

“Their passive stance astonishes me,” said Putin, who is an enthusiastic downhill skier.

And commenting on the abundance of National Hockey League referees in the Games, he said, “Northern American athletes receive a clear advantage.”

Russian Olympic officials first threatened to pull out of the Games on Thursday after a star cross-country skier, Larissa Lazutina, was disqualified; a drug test had indicated a high level of blood hemoglobin, which Russian officials attributed to Lazutina’s menstrual cycle, not doping.

That controversy came on the heels of last week’s decision to award a second set of gold medals to two Canadian figure skaters amid reports of judging misconduct. This was seen as a deep humiliation for the original gold medalists, Russians Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze, and many here believe it fanned ill will over later judging decisions that went against the Russians.

Thursday night, Russia filed a protest with the International Skating Union after figure skater Irina Slutskaya narrowly lost a gold medal to American Sarah Hughes, an outcome seen as robbery by Russian spectators. Demands from Russian Olympic officials that Slutskaya, too, be awarded gold were rejected in less than 24 hours.

On Friday, Putin said Russia should see out the competition. “Let’s see how the Olympics end. Let us hope that the IOC leadership will manage to resolve these difficulties,” he told reporters.

Attempts to placate Putin backfired when the Russian leader took umbrage at a letter from IOC President Jacques Rogge, which said all the judges’ decisions were correct.

The letter, delivered via the State Department, contained a blunder, which the presidential spokesman, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, exposed during a live program on the national NTV network.

“The letter is addressed to Mr. A. Putin!” he said, holding the letter up to jeers from a studio audience. “So I would like to say to Mr. Rogge that if he had the misfortune of ending up at the head of IOC and thus got into big politics, then before sending a letter to a head of state, it wouldn’t hurt to learn that he is not Antoine nor Andre but Vladimir.”

He said the letter symbolized the scornful attitude many foreign bureaucrats and sports organizations have developed toward Russia.

“We are being treated now differently from the way we were treated in the past,” Yastrzhembsky complained. “At least they were afraid of us then. And they were afraid to mess with us.”

Complaints about the judging came from the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Alexy II, from captains of industry and from ordinary Russians who vowed to march on the Canadian Embassy today.

Dmitri Rogozin, head of the Duma foreign affairs committee, captured the national mood in a phone interview with The Times.

“The public is fuming and boiling now. The public anger against the U.S.A. is now the worst it has been in years. Every Russian citizen is holding a deep grudge against America now. How would you feel after they robbed you of your victory in broad daylight arrogantly, boorishly, insolently and cynically?” he complained.

Yastrzhembsky, the presidential spokesman, acknowledged that part of the problem was Russia’s economic difficulties and declining state investment in sports.

Victor Tikhonov, a renowned former Soviet hockey coach of gold medal-winning teams, said in a telephone interview that government indifference to athletics is to blame for the Russians’ low medal count in sports they once dominated.

“We have now come to the point where we are eating up the last crumbs of success planted back in the Soviet times. And it hurts very much when even these crumbs are stolen from us, as happened more than once in Salt Lake City.”

He said that after the Soviet Union fell, the infrastructure of sports schools and training centers began to crumble, but no one cared because athletes were still bringing in medals.

Political analyst Andrei Piontkovsky of the Independent Institute for Strategic Studies, a Moscow-based think tank, said the scandal was unlikely to harm relations between Russia and the U.S. He expressed surprise at Putin’s remarks.

“It is not the smartest statement our president ever made. It is a pity that the president allowed himself to be involved in this controversy where the Russian sports officials are trying to cover obvious shortcomings in their own work by accusing the Games judges and organizers,” he said. “This painful hysteria reflects the very sick state of the Russian political environment now.”

With the flare-up over Russian perceptions of bias, the pressure was on the Russian team going into the ice hockey game against the Americans on Friday.

As the match approached, former Russian hockey champs involved in the 1980 showdown said Russian pride was as much at stake in Friday’s game as it was then.

Vladimir Krutov, 41, who played in the 1980 game, said memories of the loss still bring pain.

Before Friday’s showdown, he spoke of the pressure the athletes face. “Each of them must realize that they are playing not an ordinary game, but are defending the pride of their own country. If the Russians win this game, it will mean that the entire Russian Olympic team has won. That Russia has won. If we lose, it will mean that the entire country is defeated.”

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Sergei Loiko and Alexei Kuznetsov of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.