A table tennis player succeeds a fencer at the head of Russian sport. Oleg Matytsin, 55, was chosen by the new Prime Minister of the Moscow regime, Mikhail Mishustin, to sit in the large but uncomfortable chair of Minister of Sports.
He replaces Pavel Kolobkov, who resigned last week, along with the entire government, after Vladimir Putin's state of the nation speech.
At other times, the casting change in the Kremlin offices might have seemed anecdotal for the international sports movement. A new minister, nothing more. But the threat of exclusion for 4 years from Russian sport, its athletes and its organizations, gives it an almost global dimension.
Oleg Matytsin (photo above, with Vladimir Putin) is anything but an unknown in the Olympic world. Certainly, his sporting past suffers from comparison with Pavel Kolobkov, gold medalist in epee at the Sydney Games in 2000. Table tennis player during the USSR, he never reached the highest level global. And even less experienced the exhilaration of the Games, his discipline having become Olympic at the Seoul Games, at the end of his career. But the new strongman of Russian sport has a much more solid record as an international leader than his predecessor.
First, he chairs the International University Sports Federation (FISU). The Russian inherited the keys in November 2015, for a first term of 4 years. He kept them last year for a new lease, after a re-election experienced without the slightest anxiety, no rival having dared to challenge him for the position.
Oleg Matytsin is also a member of the Presidential Council of the Russian Federation, where he has responsibility for the development of physical culture and sports.
Above all, the new Minister of Sports has his entrances to the IOC headquarters in Lausanne, where the FISU headquarters are located. He is one of the members of the Education Commission of the Olympic institution. He also sits on the International Fair Play Committee.
On paper, an impeccable profile to lead the delicate battle initiated by Russia before the CAS, in the hope of preventing it from living the next four years away from the international sporting scene.
According to the agency News, Oleg Matytsin would intend to keep his position as president of FISU, despite his new ministerial charge. Not necessarily a bad idea to keep one foot in the Olympic movement, at a decisive moment for the future of Russian sport.
Another promoted of the week: Dmitry Chernyshenko. The former boss of the organizing committee for the Sochi 2014 Games is also part of the government. He was chosen by Mikhail Mishustin to occupy one of the nine deputy prime minister seats, in charge of Sports. He currently chairs the media branch of the Gazprom group.
However, a name disappears from the poster. Vitaly Mutko, Minister of Sports between 2008 and 2016, involved up to his neck in the doping scandal at the Sochi Winter Games, is among the losers of the week. He lost his post as deputy prime minister, after being forced to relinquish the presidency of the 2018 World Cup and the Russian Football Federation in recent years.
Six months before the Tokyo 2020 Games, where Russia's presence remains very conditional, the arrival of Oleg Matytsin may not be enough to reverse the course of history. For Russian sport, the coming battle promises to be more legal than political. But the Kremlin's choice to entrust him with the keys to the stadium marks a desire to break with the past. It was time.
