The performance of Belarusian athletes at the 29th Summer Olympic Games in Beijing was a major improvement on their performance at the Athens Olympics, said President Alexander Lukashenko on 9 September at his meeting with the athletes-prize-winners of the Olympic Games in Beijing.
“Yesterday, at the meeting with journalists from Russian regional mass media, I made a hasty remark calling these Games an Olympics of ‘missed opportunities’. According to my estimates, we could have won five gold medals more, and had good reasons to expect them,” said the Belarusian President. There are outstanding professionals in many sports in Belarus who are capable of training high-class athletes, and all the necessary conditions for their professional growth are in place, he said. “It is because of this that I said that although this Olympics was successful, it was also an Olympics of ‘missed opportunities,’” Alexander Lukashenko added.
Alexander Lukashenko expressed profound gratitude to Olympic champions Andrei Armyanov, Oksana Menkova, brothers Alexander and Andrei Bogdanovichis, Aleksei Abalmasov, Artur Litvinchuk, Vadim Makhnev and Roman Petrushenko, and to silver and bronze winners of the Olympic Games. “The entire country was supporting you, hoping for your sports victories and expecting them; with the feeling of pride was watching the State Flag being hoisted and the Belarusian anthem played in honour of the winners,” said the President.
Belarus won 19 medals in 7 types of sport, including 4 gold medals, 5 silver and 10 bronze medals. Belarus was 13th in the overall medal count among 204 countries. This is a major improvement on the performance at the Athens Olympics, Alexander Lukashenko said, when the Belarusians were 18th in this respect.
Alexander Lukashenko said that a detailed analysis of the Olympics results would be held at the next meeting of the Belarusian Olympic Committee, scrutinizing the performance of each Belarusian athlete in each particular kind of sport. Particular attention will be paid to the management of the Belarusian sports federations, up to the point of dismissing some of the top managers of the federations. The Head of State underscored that his earlier instructions related to development of sport should be accomplished.
The raising of future winners of the Olympic Games in Great Britain should begin today, Alexander Lukashenko said. |
