Four-time world champion in biathlon Vladimir Drachev not only went through the thorny path of an athlete, but was also able to withstand the trials that fate sent him. Today he serves as president Russian Union biathletes. The life and career of this outstanding person will be discussed in the article.
Biography
Vladimir Drachev was born in Petrozavodsk on March 7, 1966. It was in this city that he had his first acquaintance with skiing. At first the boy visited children's and youth school By ski racing, and in 1980, at the age of fourteen, he began to engage in biathlon.
After receiving secondary education, he entered the Military Institute of Physical Education and successfully graduated in 1987.
The first serious award for biathlete Vladimir Drachev was a silver medal in the relay at the 1994 Olympics, held in Lillehammer. At this tournament, the athlete showed excellent performance in the sprint - only 1.5 seconds behind Sergei Tarasov, who won bronze. Thanks to these results, Drachev received a place in the starting lineup national team.
A distinctive feature of Vladimir Petrovich was his phenomenal speed. He sometimes had shooting glitches, but even with his misses he often finished in the top three.
Team leader
1996 became a key year in the career of Vladimir Drachev. At the world championship in Ruhpolding, Germany, he won four medals: two gold in the sprint and relay, and two silver in the individual and team races. In the same year, the athlete achieved another triumph - he won the overall World Cup. In the entire history of men's domestic biathlon, only Drachev and Chepikov were able to become owners of such a prestigious trophy.
In 1998, at the Games in Nogano, Vladimir Petrovich won the Olympic bronze in the relay. A personal award could have appeared in his piggy bank, but due to weather conditions the sprint results were canceled. And yet this season he was able to climb to the highest step of the podium. As part of the cup stage, the World Championship was held in Pokljuka, Slovenia, where Vladimir Drachev had no equal in the pursuit race.
The biathlete did not stop there and in the next two years added three more world championship awards to his own collection of medals.
Belarus
In 2002, the leadership of the Russian national team did not include Vladimir Drachev in the national team for the Olympics, which was to be held in Salt Lake City, America. According to the athlete, he was removed from the national team because he said what he thought, and not everyone liked it.
The biathlete began to consider options for moving to another team. Fellow Soviet national team member Alexander Popov invited him to the Belarusian national team, and Vladimir Petrovich accepted the offer.
In 2003, at the world championship in Khanty-Mansiysk, Drachev, who had already competed under the Belarusian flag, won a bronze medal as part of the relay. He finished second in the overall World Cup this season, behind only Ole Einar Bjoerndalen.
After retirement
In 2006, Vladimir Drachev left big sport. During his career, he won fifteen races at the World Cup stages, and was among the winners seventeen times. After retiring from sports, he worked as a coach of the Belarusian youth team. In 2010, he was invited to the Russian biathlon team as a consultant. Subsequently, due to conflicts with the team’s head coach V. Barnashov and frank comments about the work of the coaching staff, he was removed from his position.
After this, Drachev became involved in politics. In 2013, on the recommendation of A. Drozdenko, the governor of the Leningrad region, he was appointed deputy head of the administration of the Vsevolozhsk region, and in 2014 he became the head of the administration.
In 2016, Vladimir Petrovich was elected to the State Duma.
In May 2018, Drachev returned to biathlon, but as president of the Russian Biathlon Union.
Personal life
The famous athlete was married twice. The first wife Svetlana gave birth to Vladimir Petrovich’s son Ilya. Now he is already a grown man and is engaged in business.
In his second marriage to a woman named Tatyana, Drachev had five children: two sons, Alexander and Vladimir, and three daughters, Varvara, Elizaveta and a baby who was born quite recently, on October 17, 2018. Her parents have not yet disclosed her name.
Now Vladimir Petrovich is preparing the Russian team for the new biathlon season. According to him, the team’s main task is to stay in the top three of the Nations Cup. In addition, Drachev intends to develop regional biathlon centers and involve as many young people as possible in the main team.
Today Vladimir Drachev was elected president of the Russian Biathlon Union. What is the new leader preparing?
A year ago, I made the main decision - to help our biathlon through the creation of a board of trustees. First of all, this is support and money, which are difficult now.
The search for sponsors took time, there was a serious selection process - and people gave the go-ahead. But at the meetings they expressed the idea that if funding comes to biathlon, then proper management is also needed. So they offered me to join the RBU myself, already as president. To understand: last August-September the sponsors were ready to support the team, but no one wanted to work with the current management.
Key directions
The state of our biathlon is judged by the performance of the national team - this is in many ways fair, but, in addition to the national teams, we have a foundation: a reserve, a youth sports school, regional branches that are not developing. This is a big problem, a big lost work. Historically, our biathlon is regional, because almost none of the stars came out of big cities, with the exception of Olga Zaitseva.
Now the regions are formally included in the RRF, but do not feel supported. Of course, this is a question of money, but that’s why the board of trustees has been assembled - to allocate funds for start-up or restoration.
Another direction is working with their inventory: weapons and ammunition, belts - enterprises have the desire and opportunity to promote their products. The same Kalashnikov turned on very seriously.
Vladimir Drachev (left) in the State Duma
Third: the development of pneumatic biathlon is a crazy reserve here. All over the world, children start with pneumatic weapons, and not with small-caliber weapons. What's the problem with the little ones? Many regions do not develop this topic, because everything is tied to the acquisition of weapons, licenses, transportation, and the daily responsibility of trainers.
Although from 12 to 16 years old you can safely work with pneumatics, set up small shooting ranges - the same 30 settings, but the distance is 10 meters, not 50, as on the standard one. These are completely different costs - not 100-200 million, but 5-7. Any region will afford them.
Which of the athletes does not drop out after 16 years of age will move on to the minors - and already knowing how to ski and handle weapons. What else is convenient about pneumatics - free transportation. Any family can buy it; it is inexpensive and does not require maintenance costs.
Fourth, working with skiers: in fact, it is possible to get them into biathlon. While skiing, they can try pneumatics. It’s not even necessary to ride with a weapon; rifles can be parked on the shooting range on overpasses. He arrived and shot. Any interest? Let's continue the conversation. No interest - no problem, go skiing.
Fifth: competitions federal districts and then sending children to Russia so that the leaders, no more than 100 people, would flee there. Then just getting into the Czech Republic will be a great result for the region and the school.
Coaches and team structure
Let's review the entire system of preparing national teams. Some steps are already clear: we will assemble expanded coaching teams and expanded squads, up to 15 people - this is normal for the post-Olympic season. They will be better off in one porridge.
It is clear that there are individual cases, like Shipulin and his small group - communication is needed here. I would argue with Anton about independent work: people lose some self-control, communication with the team - not everyone benefits from this. Is it good for Anton? Things are not going exactly as we would like - the world championships showed this. In any case, I am against the order - development is important to me. If development is not visible, then we will make an appropriate decision.
Anton Shipulin has no personal victories at major competitions yet
The big topic is coaches. There is definitely a lack of seminars with reports: who is doing what, why. And it is important for athletes to chew on everything. I talked to athletes, read interviews - they do not understand why a specific training is needed. But you need to understand the task of each day, microcycle, collection.
The team should have professionals with experience, plus young coaches who could learn. Our task is not to lose the enormous coaching potential: people who know how to prepare for more than just one competition. In modern biathlon, especially in Russian, there is a daily assessment: demand at every race, at every stage - it’s difficult for the team, but we have to adapt.
And a separate story is the return of team spirit. How? Through communication, through closer work, through trust. I can talk for days about psychology, suggestion, proper nutrition and other details that a layman would not know. We also had weak spots, we also made mistakes and failed - and now we see it from the height of age. Thanks to our experience, athletes minimize mistakes.
Foreign coach and team selection
I am categorically against a foreign coach. Not because I doubt his skill, but because it’s a different mentality. Russia lives its own life: we have different principles, attitudes, views. A foreigner, no matter how much he strives to understand us, will remain in another dimension.
And one more thing: using the examples of Pichler and Gross, we see that with a foreigner the team is almost always located abroad, which again causes the regions to suffer. There are minimal training camps in Russia, the youth almost do not see the base, which does not participate in the general selections, or at the Russian Championship, or at the Izhevsk Rifle. If the team returns to the country, the image of biathlon will improve and the interest of young people will grow, who will learn and compare. For now, the first team is in a cocoon.
Ricco Gross (left) and Andrei Padin never brought the men's team to their peak form
But the regions must compete with it. If you are strong and have proven it, go ahead to the World Cup. There is a selection problem: when the conditionally weak defeats the conditionally strong due to the precise eyeliner.
But if the person who wins the selection does not show himself at the World Cup, he will go to the reserves or go home. And still, we will test a maximum of athletes in the elite, and not the same five or six. Look, the team hasn’t produced results all season, but exactly the same people are preparing for the March stages as for the December stages - what’s the point?
The strong ones will get to the World Cup in any case and stay there. They are also at the Russian Cup, but they understand perfectly well that there is no chance of breaking into the first team. The national team is cut off from everyone until April - this is a dead end for the region, because interest in development disappears.
If the base cannot or does not want to invite athletes from outside, it will never see its mistakes. It’s one thing when 8 collections were in the top ten at the selection – no questions asked. Another thing is that when the regions beat the basis, conclusions about the work suggest themselves.
Doping and relations with other teams
In the eyes of many Russian biathlon guilty of something - and it cannot be corrected instantly. But we will show changes, and as quickly as possible - without waiting for the next season or May.
I look at who trains and leads in other federations - almost everyone competed with me, some a little older, some a little younger. They know us and remember how we performed, what kind of dialogue we had. The main tool now is a willingness to discuss and build bridges.
Our biathlon should be visible and open to discussion. Then the attitude will change, although it takes time. On this moment we have a negative, and a hard one. But after the changes, we will prove ourselves both with results and contacts - at training camps, at stages, at all congresses.
Responsibility
I am ready for attention, for publicity, for pressure. The more attention on TV and the Internet, the better. For the last few years, we have been wondering how the national team is doing – what they are doing and what they are doing wrong.
But it’s better to show and explain it so that the work is clear to everyone. There are no secrets here; no one hides in biathlon anymore. But when they begin to keep secrets and consider themselves the smartest, the result goes away.
Photo: RIA Novosti / Alexey Filippov; Kommersant /Dmitry Dukhanin; RIA Novosti /Alexander Vilf (3-5)
The new head of the Russian Biathlon Union will most likely become a four-time world champion
Russian biathlon is facing dramatic changes. They will begin with the election of a new president of the Russian Biathlon Union, which will take place after the end of the current season. According to SE, the current head of the SBR, who has headed our biathlon since 2014, will leave his post. And the main candidate for this position is Vladimir Drachev.
LOSING TWO MONTHS IS DISTERNAL
It is clear that nothing can be stated, because everything can change at the very last moment, but the issue with the election Dracheva, according to SE, has been resolved by 99 percent. The formerly famous Russian and Belarusian biathlete has already announced that he will definitely nominate his candidacy for the position of president of the RBU. And there are no other people interested yet. Currently, Drachev is a member of the RBU Council from the Leningrad region, as well as a deputy State Duma.
The whole question is when the election will take place. By law, after the end of the Olympics, each sports federation is required to hold a reporting and election conference. The RBU is in no rush to do this and wants to finish the season first, and then decide everything in May.
Drachev insists that the conference be held as quickly as possible.
I very much hope that the reporting and election conference will take place much earlier. We can’t wait until May; fundamental changes are needed in biathlon. Losing two months is disastrous for our sport, which is in the deepest crisis, they quote Dracheva"News".
ATHLETE AND OWNER
The new president will bring with him new team. This has happened more than once or twice. And every time with some hope that this is it, now something will begin to change. You shouldn't expect instant improvements from anyone. When the oligarch was replaced by the head of the Center after the Games in Sochi sports training Ministry of Sports Alexander Kravtsov, many words were said and many promises were made.
But in the end we got absolutely worst results in the entire history of Russian biathlon. World Championships and Olympics without a single medal and conflicts in the national team. There are no miracles. Success comes only from hard work - the country's main skier can confirm. Are you ready for this? Vladimir Drachev? Are you ready to fight a system that chews up presidents and head coaches, and at the same time continues to live?
Drachev understands perfectly well the burden he puts on his shoulders. He has extensive experience not only as an athlete, but also as a manager. And not a sports functionary, but a business executive. He led the Vsevolozhsk district of the Leningrad region for three years, that is, he understands perfectly how a large structure is organized. True, opinions about his work as head of the district administration were mixed.
IT IS IMPORTANT THAT THE PERSON IS NOT INTERFERRED WITH
I remember how biathlon veterans were against the arrival of Prokhorov and his “basketball” team, blaming them for not knowing the sport. Drachev lacks this disadvantage. He is deeply immersed in biathlon along with all its problems and pitfalls.
And how can he not be immersed in his native sport? Drachev- the last holder of a grand prize in Russian history Crystal Globe. He has won silver and bronze Olympic Games, four world champion titles (and a total of 11 medals from world championships), three dozen podiums at the World Cup and 15 victories.
Drachev is not afraid to make harsh statements and commit equally harsh actions. In 2002, he changed his sports citizenship and began playing for the Belarusian national team. The reason was the non-inclusion of the then 35-year-old athlete into the squad Russian team to the Olympics in Salt Lake City. Four years later, Vladimir Drachev completed sports career, and then returned to his homeland.
The success of a business very often depends not only on coaching abilities, he said Drachev in an interview with SE in 2015 after his appointment. - It is very important that a person is not disturbed or interfered with. Otherwise, not even the most talented mentor will be able to reveal himself.
The same is true for Drachev himself. The position of President of the RBU will have many obstacles in its wheels.
The legendary Alexander Tikhonov has always been a favorite of journalists because he was not afraid to speak loudly and harshly. But this August became special: Tikhonov scolded Drachev and the leadership of the SBR, criticized Shipulin, complained about lost time, got into an argument in absentia with Anastasia Kuzmina’s husband, and the other day announced that he no longer wants to live in Russia. Sport24 reminds you how the month went best biathlete XX century.
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On August 1, it became known that Russian biathletes Anastasia Rasskazova, Ekaterina Bekh and Oksana Moskalenko are going through the process of changing their Russian citizenship in order to represent Ukraine at international competitions in the future.Tikhonov decided that the SBR was to blame for everything.
We have already suffered a lot of losses. They are simply running away from the current president, Mr. Drachev, and his team. Of course, female athletes are of interest to us. We lost Domracheva at one time. And now they are leaving because of Drachev’s inaction.
In the spring, Anton Shipulin was tired of constant criticism from Tikhonov. The leader of the Russian team decided to speak out against the former head of the RBU. ThatI was silent for a long time, but on August 11 I decided that something needed to be said.
I talked a lot about Anton, but after some of his statements I lost respect for him. I don't want to give any more advice. He, like Sergei Chepikov, wasted best years of your career. If he had listened at the time and chosen a different path, he could have had different achievements now. Now I wish him health and to make the right choice.
My generation spent its talent in the name of the Motherland. We were all patriots, but Chepikov, Shipulin, Kruglov, Maigurov, Tcherezov, Chudov, Rostovtsev will not be able to understand this. They are lost in this life. In terms of talent, Shipulin and Chepikov were not inferior to Bjoerndalen and Fourcade, but they chose a different path, more comfortable for themselvesIn the middle of the month, Tikhonov decided to go to the upcoming IBU Congress as a representative of Georgia. And when Viktor Maigurov turned to him for help, Tikhonov considered it necessary to tell everyone about it.
Recently I received an unexpected call from Viktor Maygurov. This came as a surprise to me, because for many years I had been purposefully criticizing Victor for his activities both at the head of the RRF and at the international level. He asked me to help talk with representatives of other countries so that they could put in a word for us.
I replied that I have nothing to do with the SBR, because all my proposals are Lately are ignored. I said: “You, Kushchenko, Pak, Barnashov and others ruined Russian biathlon and brought it to this state, and now you are asking for help. I’m going as a delegate from Georgia because your team didn’t offer me anything.”
But even despite fundamental disagreements with Maigurov, Drachev and other government officials in the RBU, I will support Russian biathlon at any level and by any means. But let them work on their own, and I on my own. This will be more honest with each other.
I will definitely speak at the congress, I will speak alone, clearly. I'll tell you what we did. I have something to say.Under our team, Russian biathlon was the best in the world, and what can they say in their speeches and reports. Maigurov and Kushchenko received an award for the development of biathlon in Russia, although I would give them for the collapse of biathlon in Russia.
Deaf and mute stutterers will go to the congress from our federation. If Drachev comes to the podium, it will only be a minus for us, not a plus, because he has a tongue of tin, and Maigurov, as vice president, has no right to speak.
Therefore, I will try to solve problems, but not in the same harness with them. They understand that I criticize and insult them deservedly.
Recently Daniel Kuzmin, husband of a three-time Olympic champion biathlon Anastasia Kuzmina, told under what circumstances she left the Russian team, calling Tikhonov’s words about the desire to keep Nastya on the team “tales.” Alexander Ivanovich decided to recall the nuances of that transition, and also called Kuzmina’s husband sick.
I asked coaches Polkhovsky and Selifonov:“Do we need Kuzmina?” They replied that she gave birth and she has such an ass that we don’t need her. I asked about Domracheva and they also answered that she was not needed. I said then that these two athletes would win more medals than our team.
Four-time world champion Vladimir Drachev managed not only to follow his path as an athlete and overcome all the tricky intrigues in the world of sports - he was able to defend his position and did not bow to the trials sent to him by fate.
Drachev Vladimir Petrovich
Born 03/07/1966
Achievements:
- Silver medalist of the 1994 Olympic Games in the relay.
- Bronze medalist at the 1998 Olympic Games in the relay.
- Four-time world champion (1996 - sprint and relay, 1998 - pursuit, 2000 - relay).
- Five-time silver medalist at the World Championships (1994, 1996 - team race, 1996 - individual race, 1999 - mass start and relay).
- Two-time bronze medalist at the World Championships (1998 - team race, 2003 - relay).
- World Cup winner 1995/1996.
- Silver medalist of the World Cup 2002/2003.
- World Cup stages: 15 victories, 10 second and 7 third places.
Path to glory
Vladimir Petrovich Drachev was born in Petrozavodsk. In his childhood memories, Vladimir devotes a special place to the village on one of the islands of the Kizhi nature reserve, where his mother is from. It was in this area that little Vova became attached to one of his main hobbies in life - fishing.
Vladimir’s acquaintance with skiing took place in his native Petrozavodsk. Then the standards that Drachev wanted to emulate were Zimyatov and Zavyalov. After getting into the same team with his childhood idols, he will understand that in sports he can and should achieve more than them. Vladimir linked his fate with biathlon in 1980.
Leader of the Russian team
The career of any successful athlete is a big ordeal. Sport forces you to give your best, and if you make a mistake, there may not be a second attempt.
Drachev passed his test, and the first serious award in his career was silver at the 1994 Olympic Games in Lillehammer. This silver relay for the Russian team and for Vladimir himself was hard work. Drachev also showed excellent performance in the sprint race - only 1.5 seconds separated him from Sergei Tarasov, who won bronze.
After the Olympics, Vladimir reserved his place in the main roster of our national team. A distinctive feature of Drachev was his phenomenal speed. He often experienced shooting glitches, which were especially unacceptable in the individual race. But if “just” one target missed, it was almost a guarantee of finishing in the top three.
The peak of Drachev's career came at the 1996 World Championships in Ruhpolding. At this start, the favorite of the competition already added two gold (sprint and relay) and silver (individual and team racing) world championship medals.
The 1995/1996 season gave Vladimir another triumph - he became the second domestic biathlete after , who was able to win the overall World Cup. Since then none of Russian athletes did not win this prestigious trophy.
1998 brought him another Olympic medal, which every athlete dreams of - in Nagano, Drachev won bronze in the relay. The long-awaited personal olympic medal, but the results of the sprint race were canceled due to weather conditions, and the next day Vladimir was no longer in the best condition.
But still that season he managed to climb to the top step of the podium at a major start. Pursuit races became part of the Olympic Games program only four years later, so the IBU management decided to hold the World Pursuit Championships as part of the stage in Pokljuka, Slovenia. Drachev was able to show composure in shooting, but on the track he was, as usual, inaccessible to the rest.
At such moments, many people come to the realization that there is nothing left to go to, the goal has been accomplished, but Drachev did not stop there and lower the bar of demands on himself, fighting to the end in every race. In the next two years, he will add three more world championship medals to his collection of awards, one of which will be gold.
Belarus
What happened next, no one can explain for sure. Preparing for the next Olympics in his career, which was to be held in Salt Lake City, Vladimir Drachev received a refusal from the leadership of the Russian team and the leadership of the National Biathlon Federation to include him in the main roster of the national team.
The biathlete later commented on the events that took place at that time in an interview: “I always say what I think. And not everyone likes this. Today, at the helm of the Russian men's team are strangers who once survived Khavantsev. The most talented coach with whom we won everything possible. I did not remain silent at a critical moment and as a result I lost two years. Despite being in good sports uniform, they didn’t take me anywhere. But I didn’t sit idly by, I kept in shape, and having met with an old acquaintance Alexander Popov, I offered my services. And I don’t regret it.”
Drachev left the Russian national team and went to defend his sporting interests in Belarus. In the new team, he received all the conditions to prepare for the upcoming battles. The main help for normal work was the friendly atmosphere in which the eminent athlete was received, and Drachev was again extremely fast on the track and collected on the shooting range.
In 2003, in Khanty-Mansiysk, as part of the relay four, Vladimir won bronze at the World Championships, proving to all skeptics what his character is capable of. Having had an overall strong season, Drachev finished second in the overall World Cup standings, behind.
Post-sports life
At the end of the 2005/2006 season, Vladimir Drachev left big sport. In total, during his career he won fifteen World Cup races and was a medalist in seventeen more. At the end of his career, Drachev was the coach of the Belarusian youth team and a consultant to the Russian national team.
The coaching burden is no less difficult than the life of an athlete. Fortunately, Vladimir has reliable support in life - his wife and son. The younger Drachev did not follow in his father’s footsteps, but biathlon also became a component of his life, in which he was taught wisely by the brightest biathlete of the 90s.
Now Vladimir Petrovich is a deputy of the State Duma. Despite the fact that political activity takes up a lot of time, Drachev continued to follow biathlon, regularly giving sharp and insightful comments in the press. It cannot be otherwise - biathlon will forever remain more than just a sport for Drachev.
And in May 2018, Drachev returned to big-time biathlon, becoming president of the Russian Biathlon Union.
