No. 2, 2008

One hundred years ago, Russia’s Olympic team, consisting of just five athletes, took part for the first time in the Olympic Games. This was in 1908 in London. Today, nearly 500 Russian athletes are preparing to go to China to vie for the Olympic gold. Several leading Russian companies, including LUKOIL, an official partner of the Russian Olympic Committee, are going to render financial support to the country’s Olympic team.

A bit of history

The 29th Olympic Games will be held in Beijing from August 8 to 24, 2008. The Games, which sports enthusiasts all over the world always look forward to so eagerly, have a long history, spanning many centuries.

According to present-day historians, the very first Olympics were held in 776 B.C. at the Greek holy place of Olympia situated in the western part of Peloponnesus. The holding of the Olympic Games was not discontinued even after Hellas was conquered by Rome. In fact, it was only in 394 A.D. that Theodosius I, the Roman emperor who was an ardent adherent of Christianity and viewed the Olympic Games as a pagan custom, put a total ban on them. By now, the number of the Olympics held over a period of 1,168 years totaled 293. Among the participants and winners of the Games at different times were such celebrities as the historian Herodotus, the physician Hippocrates, called “the father of medicine,” the philosopher Socrates, the orator and statesman Demosthenes, the satirist Lucianos, and the philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras.

The Olympic Games owe their revival to Pierre de Coubertin, a great French sports enthusiast. Thanks to his many years of effort, the International Olympic Committee was set up on June 23, 1894 to become the highest leading body of the Olympic movement for all time.

The first world sports competitions identical to the ancient Greek Olympics took place in 1896 in Athens. Only nine sports were on the program of the First Olympic Games: track-and-field athletics, gymnastics, swimming, weightlifting, wrestling, shooting, fencing, cycling and tennis. From then on, the Olympic Games became the topmost international sports event. They have been held in various cities of the world, including Moscow (in 1980). The four-year Olympic cycle was violated on three occasions only: in 1916 – because of World War I, and in 1940 and 1944 – because of World War II. Furthermore, the year 1924 saw the birth of the Winter Olympics.

It was in the Fourth Olympic Games staged in 1908 in London that Russia’s athletes took part for the first time. A total of 22 countries sent their athletes there, and the overall number of competitors was 2,034. For the first time ever, the Olympic program included figure skating, field hockey, javelin throwing and racquets (a game for two or four played with a tennis ball and rackets on a four-walled court). Also for the first time, a table of unofficial team standings was published. It was headed by the Games’ hosts, the British team.

The Russian team was made up of just five participants. Its figure skater, Nikolay Panin-Kolomenkin, won his country’s first (and last) gold medal in the history of prewar Olympic Games. Russian wrestlers, Nikolay Orlov and Alexey Petrov, captured then two silver medals.

Today, a century later, several hundred Russian athletes are preparing to take part in the Beijing Olympics.

Good chances of success

In China, the figure eight is believed to bring luck. The Beijing Olympic Games are scheduled to open on August 8 – the eighth day of the eighth month of the year 2008. Whom will this combination of 08.08.2008 bring luck to? The majority of experts are inclined to believe that for the first time in the modern Olympic history the top place in the unofficial points count may go to an Asian country – namely, to China, and its main rivals will be Russia and the United States.

Chinese athletes will compete in practically all of the sports on the Olympic program. The record of the previous Olympics shows that the host country team usually wins at least 20% more medals than was expected. Furthermore, for the first time in the history of the Olympic Games, the athletes will encounter such arduous climatic and ecological conditions as they will in China. Last year, for instance, August temperature in Beijing reached 45 °C, and humidity, 80%. The coming Olympics are likely to prove a trying experience to the contestants.

According to Russian Olympic Committee President Leonid Tyagachev, Russia will emerge one of the three top contestants in the final team standings at the Beijing Olympics. He also predicts that the United States is likely to win first place, since its athletes captured the bulk of the Olympic sports medals at last year’s world championship tournaments. The head of the Sports Committee of the Russian Federation, Vyacheslav Fetisov, also believes that Russia is capable of winning third place at the Beijing Olympics, by grabbing 40 gold medals or thereabout.

The complete Russian Olympic team will come to Beijing four or five days before the opening ceremony – enough time for the athletes to acclimate to the weather (August is the hottest month of the year in those parts) and psych up for the Games.

Our Olympic hopes

The Russian women’s volleyball team is one of the top favorites of the coming Games. By the way, in recent years it has been sponsored by LUKOIL.

“We’re going to put up a real fight for Olympic medals in Beijing,” says

Marina Sheshenina, the playmaker of the Yekaterinburg volleyball club Uralochka-NTMK, the 2006 world champion and the silver medalist of the 2004 Olympics. The path to the Beijing Olympics proved to be a thorny one for the Russian women’s volleyball team. Last fall, during the World Cup tournament, the team failed to qualify for the Beijing Olympics. The much-coveted goal, however, has been recently attained at a volleyball tournament in Germany.

Another Olympic hopeful is the Russian men’s basketball team, winner of the latest European championship tournament. One of the leaders of the national women’s basketball team, Ilona Korstin, has said that they are “quite ready to vie for the Olympic gold in Beijing.” For many years Russia’s modern gymnastics and synchronized swimming teams have been regarded as the world’s best and, consequently, the top prospects for winning the Olympic gold. Highly optimistic in that respect is the Russian handball team, winner of the latest world championship tournament.

The Russian free-style wrestling team, which captured six gold medals in the 2007 world championship tournament, also looks like a very strong competitor for the Olympic gold. All of the members of this team are going to Beijing.

Russia’s Olympic hopes are closely associated with such track-and-field athletes as Tatyana Lebedeva, Yelena Isinbayeva and Yury Borzakovsky. In August 2007, at the world championship tournament in Osaka, Lebedeva won the gold in the long jump and the silver in the triple jump. For several years running, Isinbayeva has remained unrivalled in the pole vault. Winning the silver medal in the 800-meter race at the 2007 world championship tournament, Borzakovsky has significantly improved his performance over the last six months.

The diver Gleb Galperin is a good example for other Russian Olympians to follow. In March 2007 in Melbourne, he became the world champion in diving from a 10-meter platform, outdoing the Chinese athletes who until then had held the lead in that event. A real present to all tennis lovers was Maria Sharapova’s decision to take part in the Olympic tournament, for she is one of the world’s best professional tennis players.

A total of 1,151 athletes from 74 regions of Russia have prequalified for the Olympic team, and about 500 of these will appear on its final line-up. Chosen to compete in individual Olympic sports have been first and second place winners of Russia’s championships, as well as athletes specially approved by the council of coaches. World title winners in 2007 have been given a wild card.

LUKOIL has taken an active part in preparing Russian athletes both for the 2004 Olympics in Athens and the coming Games in Beijing. The Company has been an official partner of the Russian Olympic Committee for many years.

In 2005, JSC LUKOIL decided help the Russian Olympians Support Fund and became one of its sponsors. The Fund gives targeted assistance to members of Russian national teams in the Olympic sports, which makes it possible for future champions to prepare purposefully for the Olympics and to score outstanding results. Moreover, in 2007, the Company rendered financial assistance to the Sochi-2014 Committee to solve organizational problems involved in nominating the city of Sochi as a host of the 22nd Winter Olympic Games in 2014.