Moscow Athletics Week began with races for the second year in a row on Nikolskaya Street with the participation of professional athletes and show business stars. The Sport correspondent looked at how well-known people in certain circles overcame the shortest distance in athletics, 60 meters, and questioned the need for such events to popularize the “queen of sports.”
Last year, an hour before the start of the races, the entire space on Nikolskaya Street was so packed with people that it was practically impossible for ordinary passersby trying to get to the Kremlin or Lubyanka to squeeze through the crowd. Last Tuesday, you could easily walk up to the track along which the stars were running and touch them. The spectators only gathered more or less by the finals. But some street singers were performing away from the finish zone, and a lot of attention was also focused on them – although Olga Buzova was calling people to the track and field not to a «lip-synch», but live (exactly, «here it is», as they said in the film «Election Day») with her songs.
Buzova, of course, is beyond time and space, as noted by the famous master of the ironic and sarcastic genre Dmitry Guberniev. But the secret of the sold-out crowd at Nikolskaya a year ago is that the stars did not dance with a microphone in dubious outfits (by the way, the lesson after the scandal on Children’s Day was put to good use: Olga dressed most of her body in clothes). In a separate show race, figure skaters Alina Zagitova, Kamila Valieva, Adelia Petrosyan and Sofya Akatieva took to the track — and huge fan masses of the first two girls and slightly smaller masses of the third and fourth girls spread across the near-athletics street space.
Now the organizers have invited only one prima of the ice school of beauty and grace — Evgenia Medvedeva. Of course, fans came to support her, but there were not as many of them as at the ice performances. Perhaps people remembered that a year ago the figure skaters refused to compete and jogged 60 meters, trying to cross the finish line at the same time. The idea for athletics is, of course, original, but could it be called a spectacle? There are doubts about this. As well as about what Zhenya herself did in the race: she refused to compete with bloggers-singers Helen Yes and Milana Khametova, at the finish line she turned her back and imitated an axel.
Oleg Saitov, Roy Jones, Alana Mamaeva, Maria Pogrebnyak, Buzova, Guberniev — what can unite boxing stars, ex-wives of Russian football players and a TV commentator? They all believe that ordinary people will see how they cover 60 meters in half a minute, that is, practically on foot, and will immediately want to start running. Perhaps some of them also think that their jogging is especially graceful and worth watching. The latter is a matter of taste, about which there is no debate.
But you can argue about the first one. And the main argument in this dispute is that at ordinary athletics tournaments there are no more spectators after such dubious shows. Just as no one, plus or minus, went, they still don’t go. But the key word here is «ordinary». Where they try to introduce new formats and make competitions dynamic — for example, at the same “Battle of the Sexes”, which traditionally brings together fans of high jumps in January — the hall is always full. They love athletics in the regions — in Chelyabinsk, Cheboksary, Yekaterinburg, people always gather for tournaments. But obviously not because in Moscow on Nikolskaya Street another representative of the blogosphere shook her body 60 meters.
And on Nikolskaya on Tuesday, frankly speaking, our real runners were greeted much more noisily. Kristina Makarenko, who has been winning everything for many years, her husband Artem, whom ex-world champion Sergei Shubenkov can no longer cope with in the hurdle sprint, and the sharply progressing Konstantin Krylov, who, if things go at this pace, will run a hundred meters in ten seconds. These people definitely don’t need to mix up truly masterful running with antics on the track. And those who watched the television broadcast, I think, admired the beautiful picture more — but hardly in those minutes when the famous “dummies” were crawling towards the finish line.
Just as all these “shows” are not needed by the tens, or even hundreds of thousands of people who fill the city streets during mass marathon and half-marathon races. In which, by the way, stars also participate — and here they are real role models. What do those who jog 60 meters prove? That they can catch the bus leaving the stop? Each of us has done this many times without them, and it has nothing to do with a healthy lifestyle.
But testing yourself over a long distance — first, of course, having prepared — is a completely different matter. For this, people give up both alcohol and tobacco — try running at least three kilometers, if you have tar-soaked lungs. That's where the benefit comes from. This is all banal, but after his race, Roy Jones, when asked how to become like him, did not tell reporters anything more sophisticated than “no drugs, alcohol or anything that harms the body.”
“I believe that there is a place for such events — in the “come-sing-run” format. In my opinion, it’s beautiful,” Shubenkov, in response to a direct question about whether Buzova’s running popularizes athletics, was politically correct. But then he admitted that this really doesn’t increase the number of people in the stadium stands. Or it adds, but not much. In the end, a sociological survey has not yet been carried out to find out who came to the Znamensky Memorial after seeing the race of the ex-wives of football players.
But still, perhaps it is worth thinking about shifting the emphasis from the unclear aesthetics of sports activities to pure sport – of course, in a modern shell. Street athletics events with great organization bring people together and are remembered for a long time. Such, for example, as last year’s final of the “Queen of Sports” series in the high jump in the Historical Square of Yekaterinburg: the people filled to capacity not only the temporary stands installed around the sector, but also hung from the bridge in clusters to see the flights of real stars. The traditional pole and long vault festival in the center of Tver, which is held on Russia Day, is extremely popular. It’s a pity that it wasn’t possible to organize high jumps and pole vaults at the Bolshoi Theater during the Moscow Athletics Week, but I think people will come to Gorky Park to see Danil Lysenko, Ilya Ivanyuk, Natalya Spiridonova and Polina Knoroz. And they won’t need Buzova.