LONDON, August 6 (Itar-Tass) —— The Russian Olympic Committee is seeking to make sambo (a martial art style and a hand-to-hand self-defence system) an Olympic sport, head to the Russian Olympic Committee Alexander Zhukov told reporters on Sunday.
“The project to make sambo an Olympic sport is promising. We are working constantly on this at all possible levels and are attracting to this work the countries, where sambo is popular. Now already many countries are cultivating this interesting kind of sport, which would doubtlessly enrich the Olympic sport program, but it is quite difficult to achieve,” he noted.
Zhukov also noted at a press conference that the Russian Olympic Committee will focus on Olympic football. “Unfortunately the Russian football team had not qualified for the Olympics for a long time. We need a coach, who would work actively with the team, would use other ways to form the team. I believe that we will concentrate on this issue in next Olympic cycle,” Zhukov noted.
Zhukov also answered the question what lessons the organizing committee Sochi-2014 could draw from the London Olympics. “The lessons for Sochi primarily concern logistic and transport services. We would like this aspect to be better at the Sochi Olympics, moreover, it will be easier to do it in Sochi than in London. We have a quite compact disposition of the Olympic sites that allows the spectators to move quicker between them and watch more competitions. This is probably the first and main lesson. The second lesson is the training of volunteers. In London they do not always have the full information and can help you. We will try to train our volunteers much stronger in terms of information,” Zhukov underlined.