Worried about our athletes. How do they live? Are they starving? Has the last currency bag been lowered from the mezzanine?

Life has prepared an unpleasant surprise for the champions: sport may not be very profitable. I deliberately do not write “free”, because no one removed athletes from bets in the CSP and the regions: they received them before they were suspended from international starts and will receive them after. This Nepryaeva and called “for the medals.” Well, at least not for food.

But foreign prize money has really come to naught. Where to get incentives now? Medals somehow do not inspire, sand is an unimportant substitute for oats. Maybe not run for them, but walk?

The problem is deeper than it seems, because it is not material, but mental. Natalia, without knowing it herself, laid bare her attitude to what actually constitutes the essence of sport. People go to the start to win. At the same time, Russians are fed, clothed, provided with medicine, infrastructure, logistics and salaries that are much higher than the minimum wage.

The pride of the country should not be allowed to crowdfund, setting up piggy banks for donations in bars, like some British skeletonist. Or that ours pay for participation in the World Cup out of their own pocket, like worthless Canadian biathletes.

Russian athletes do not have enough income at the level of the middle class? In that case, maybe they can do something else?

Motherland, I am sure, would continue to pay super prizes with pleasure. But for what? There are no more elite competitions. It is impossible to compensate for the lack of activity in the same volumes as its presence?!

Let’s see how the organizers of the competitions will react to the words of Nepryaeva, the prizes of which she called “medals”. I think they are not the first time. The appetites of our sports avant-garde have already surfaced in the public field. Then Uliana Nigmatullina will say that the Udmurts are saving on it, not wanting to pay more than 900 thousand rubles for an Olympic medal (and at the same second half of Udmurtia will burst into tears at the entrance to Pyaterochka). Then synchronized swimmer Svetlana Kolesnichenko bitterly complains: “What can you buy for 4 million prize money ?!”

The situation, however, can easily be reversed. If the medals are ashes, is the delightful racer Nepryaeva ready to run for money at the championship of the pumping station? Okay, golden water pumps, nevertheless, considerable sums are required. A dozen spectators, wooden dressing rooms, a toilet around the corner. And the most powerful “message” to the map right after the finish line. Ready?

Now we are, of course, a little trolling. The skier just wanted to say that it was better, but it will be worse, and is it possible to return the way it was? But this does not change the template break that Russian athletes will have to live with in the near, if not foreseeable, future. The fatherland will not leave them hungry, but the people’s love will have to be monetized personally. Go to sponsors, bargain with the organizers.

Natalia Nepryaeva / Photo: © RIA Novosti / Pavel Bednyakov

Friends, you are cool, fast and agile. But you are outside the brackets of world competition at the moment. Whether the adrenaline of internal victories and the endorphins of hard training is enough for you is up to you to decide. British skeletonist and Canadian biathletes have enough. They see it as a sport. You have a difficult choice to make.

And life, as usual, will put everything in its place. Sooner or later, those who are “inspired by the very fact of the attacks” will erupt, as Vysotsky did. Who is ready to run for medals or even diplomas, because they like it. Whether they find support is their problem, but it will be difficult to compete with such. The championship of the water pump will have an exfoliating effect, and its awards will perhaps be called medals.