As foreshadowed in Russia’s Ministry of Sports review earlier this month of various sporting teams’ progress heading into Rio, the Russian Swimming Federation (RSF) has recommended that Sergei Kolmogorov take over as its new National Head Coach. Kolmogorov is the new leader of both Swimming and Open Water, replacing current coaches Anatoly Zhuravlev (swimming) and Alexei Akatevu (open water), who will both remain on staff as senior coaches.
Kolmogorov, who has just one year to prepare the Russian squad for the 2016 Olympics, is a doctor of biological sciences, professor and academician who previously directed an integrated research group of national teams in Russia. (news4) He has published several bodies of work involving swimming technique and biomechanics, including “Technology for Decreasing Active Drag at the Maximal Swimming Velocity” in October of 2014.
With Russia earning just 4 medals in the pool, while yielding no hardware in the open water events at the 2015 FINA World Championships, Russia’s swimming federation president Vladimir Salnikov described his nation’s results as “hardly satisfactory” and hinted in the council’s performance review that changes in leadership would indeed be imminent.
Of his faith in Kolmogorov to turn the lackluster Worlds result around come the 2016 Olympic Games, Salnikov said (via Google translate): “Sergey V. is one of the world’s leading experts in the field of competitive swimming, is aware of all the modern methods of training athletes, working for many years with the team, he completely owns the information about the state of affairs in our sport, is familiar with all the coaches and athletes know the situation from the inside. In this situation, he will be able to solve their tasks and become that consolidating figure who is able to rally the team in the final stage of preparation for the main start of the Olympic four years.”
