Getting a Work Out

Friday, Feb.8, 2002
Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin convened the State Council, his consultative body of regional governors, to discuss how an emphasis on sports could restore the crumbling health of the nation. Russia's mortality rate has jumped by 37% over the last decade, exceeding the birth rate. Life expectancy dropped from 66 years in 1998 to 65 years in 2000. Over half of all children and teenagers are in poor health, according to medical authorities. Over one million school children are not fit enough for even simple physical exercises. The two-day session concluded that people are much better off rich and healthy than poor and sick. But Russians would rather drink than jog and smoke rather than work out. "Only sports can save Russia," summed up one of the speakers.

I thought in my naiveté that the roots of our ills lay in mass poverty and a growing feeling of despondency. I thought that only real freedom to earn money, and spend one's money at one's own discretion, could give people an incentive to start taking part in sports--to live longer or just for the fun of it. Now, the State Council--and personally President Putin--has opened my eyes. The real issue is our failure to play tennis under Yeltsin or to practice judo under Putin. Sports, says Putin, will keep the citizens fit enough not to need all those costly drugs they can't afford. Sports will also save the state the 3% of the federal budget that now goes to pay sick leave.

The State Council suggested setting up a new Presidential Sports Council. A new program on developing mass sports will be soon prepared. It is amazing, how firmly our rulers believe in the magic force of their programs. I recall Brezhnev mumbling in May 1982 that we would not have any more food problems because the Party had come up with the Food Program. "We are out of meat," went a joke of the time, "but we can offer you choice Food Program cuts."

The State Council ruled that some 20% of the Soviet-era sport facilities, now converted into markets, must be restored to their original purpose, thus enabling the poor to exercise. Good idea. Except these markets are the only place where the poor can afford to shop. Most likely, the poor will end up with neither stadiums nor markets. "Kids don't need to know where Acapulco or Honduras are," said Vyacheslav Pozgalev, governor of the Vologda region. "Physical culture classes will do their health more good." Pozgalev believes that, "You don't have to build expensive sport facilities. Jogging and general exercises will do."

Putin and the State Council recognize the need for a special national TV sports channel. Isn't it a marvelous coincidence: they just shut down TV-6, the last national channel independent of the state. What better way to dispose of the frequency than to turn it into a national sports channel? What cleaner way of life could there be than mindlessly watching sports on TV with a can of beer in hand? If you can afford a beer, that is.