NUCLEAR POWER IN BELARUS AND WORLDWIDE
MINSK, 13 December (BelTA) – Politicking and commercialization are not always good for sport, Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko said at the meeting with students and teachers of medical universities on 13 December, BelTA has learned.
Sometime things are done to the benefit of one or another major power in elite sport, including the Olympic Games, the head of state noted. For example, new exotic sports, in which a particular country fares the best, are added to the Olympic program. At the same time, some traditional sport disciplines are reduced. The factor of attractiveness for advertisers also has a great influence.
“We have enough of sports on the Olympic program. What is worse: they have started to reduce some of the world's very popular sports and include new ones,” the head of state said, answering one of the questions.
“We have gone too far with these sports. Sometimes they include such exotic sports into the Olympic program that you feel bewildered,” Aleksandr Lukashenko noted.
The head of state said that sometimes they go after Russian athletes who are clean and have nothing to do with doping. “It was more difficult to do in the Soviet period. The Soviet Union was a powerful system that could fight back. Although they boycotted the 1980 Olympics. But we did well without them. Today we are disunited unfortunately,” the head of state said.
The president spoke against the recent moves to cut down on some popular sports in favor of exotic ones. “There are sports the program of which I would shorten a little, for example, swimming,” he said.
Aleksandr Lukashenko explained that there are different disciplines on the competition program. “Do we need all these 50m, 100m, 200m, 400m races? They are all the same discipline. Let us cut them down,” the Belarusian leader suggested.
The president also mentioned another trend. If some sport is long for broadcasting (commercials are the main source of revenues), they start cutting it short. “For example, there was a 10km cross-country skiing race. They opted for7.5km, 5km races to make them shorter because people are unlikely to watch long competitions and hence, there will be fewer commercials on TV,” Aleksandr Lukashenko said.
"This is the stupid, unnecessary politicking and commercialization that do not always play in favor of sport," summed up the head of state.
