Fellows in arms Translated by Oleva Alisa from the Web site of Russian newspaper SovSport Russian Relay squad consisting of Ivan Tcherezov, Sergei Tchepikov, Pavel Rostovtsev and Nikolay Kruglov has won silver medals of the Olympic Games, while German team celebrated their victory. Ivan Tcherezov performed on the 1st leg. 1st leg. Ivan Tcherezov Ivan Tcherezov, whose leg is number one in this Olympic Relay, tries not to watch at the stadium. He is deeply concentrated on the race. A day before during the training 4-times Olympic champion Alexander Tikhonov had put his arm on Ivan`s shoulder and said: - You are going to perform on the 1st leg. We are sure you will manage. Athletes from Izhevsk have never let us down before. Just remember: don`t panic. If you are not in the leading group don`t give all your force to catch up with the leaders. Try to save enough strength for the last lap! I can`t even imagine what was Ivan thinking about when at the first prone shooting session he was able to close the 5th target only with the last spare round but I felt absolutely lost and really nervous. If even Ivan has failed. Half a minute deficit from the leader after the first shooting session. The only optimistic moment is that the leader is American Jay Hakkinen and not the German Ricco Gross. In the standing stance Ivan was undoubtedly the best shooting clean and fast! The final lap is not probably the fastest but at least not worse than that of the leaders. 29 seconds is the deficit from the American and 23 seconds from Gross. Honestly saying all of the competitors except Gross are all incidental and Russian coaches don`t even pay attention to their intermediate results. But they do notice the obvious failure of the Norwegian squad. Halvard Hanevold, who has already won two Olympic medals here, seems to be out of contention - he is already 52 seconds behind the leader and that`s really an awful result for the Norwegian team. If they continue like that there will be even no need for Bjoerndalen to start on his final leg. But that`s all going to happen in the near future, right now I`m running to Ivan. - Prone shooting was really awful, - says Ivan hardly breathing. - Three misses - that`s a real failure! I`m really disappointed+I suppose there was wind then. Every single blow influences the shooting result. I honestly feel ashamed that allowed my rivals to leave me so far behind. That`s why I had to work hard from the early beginning. Initially I had a bit different tactic - the bad shooting changed all the plans. - Isn`t that strange that it was only a year ago when you first run the Relay on the 1st leg (it was also here in San Sicario) and now it`s almost impossible to imagine you performing on the other leg. - Probably. On the other hand when coaches specially put me on the 1st leg at the preolympic week one could have guessed it wasn`t done by chance: they were preparing us for the Olympic Games. - And in case you were asked which leg would you prefer, what would you choose? - I would prefer to start the Relay anyway. I got used to it. - Did you face any difficulties at the early start in such a rat race? - On this track starting straight is not actually straight. I had to fight" a bit! If you only see a tiny spare space you boldly try to get there even if you have to step on skis and ski poles of your rivals. Here there is no place for politeness. Anyway I`ve already got some useful experience how to fight on the 1st leg so there was nothing unexpected and unpleasant on leg this time. STANDINGS AFTER THE FIRST LEG 1. USA - 20.40,8 (0+3). 2. Czech Republic +3,8 (0+1). 3. Germany - 6,3 (0+1)+ 6. Russia - 29,2 (0+3)+10. Norway - 52,3 (0+2). 11. France +53,0 (0+0).