The Russian Olympic Grades Slipped Reason Analysis

As an overmatch of the Olympic Games, the former Soviet Union had won many brilliant achievements, including six champions in nine Summer Olympic Games and seven champions in nine Winter Olympic Games. Russia, as the successor States of the former Soviet Union, ranking in the international sports competitions has declined these years. From 1996 to 2008, during the four Summer Olympic Games, Russia slipped to the third position in the medals table, behind China. More severe decline in the Winter Olympics, in 1994 Russia ranked first in the medals table (11 gold medals), but rapidly dropped to the eleventh (3 gold medals) in 2010 Winter Olympic Games. Moreover, the competitive strength of Russia's dominant Olympic events fell significantly, such as gymnastics and figure skating.This paper analyzes the factors causing the decline of Russia's competitive strength which mainly include the influence of the mentality of the former Soviet Union as competitive power; the chaos of Russian sports management system and its tremendous socio-economic reforms. This paper focuses on the latter two factors. In addition, in recent years, Russia emphases on mass sports by more government funding and national sports policy support such as Russian Federation Sports Development in 2006-2015, highlights the focus on the development of mass sports. Besides the internal factors mentioned above, there is also external pressure from the United States and China.Because of the historical reasons, China and former Soviet Union share many same places in the national condition, the social system, the economical condition and the sports management system. Therefore, the analysis on Russian competitive strength declines of Olympic Games has important reference significance to the reform of our country's sports management system. This paper also predicts some enlightenment about the reforms of sports management system in our country.