A promised shakeup after the county's poor showing at the Vancouver Olympics was thrown into confusion Wednesday amid conflicting reports about the resignation of Russian Olympic Committee head Leonid Tyagachyov.
"Leonid Vasilyevich [Tyagachyov] signed a letter of resignation. I do not know the details of his motivation, but it is most likely linked to the performance of Russia's athletes in Vancouver," committee spokesman Gennady Shvets was quoted by Interfax as saying.
But just two hours later Tyagachyov's personal spokeswoman Darya Chervonenko denied the statement as "premature." Shvets "was too fast to send his boss into retirement," Chervonenko told Itar-Tass.
Shvets later contested his reported remarks. "I was just asked to comment on [Tyagachyov's] resignation as if it was already a fact, but I never made such a statement," he was quoted as saying by the RBC.ru web site.
The AllSport.info web site reported that Tyagachyov held talks in the presidential administration about the Olympic team's future Wednesday. "After these talks, he said he was prepared to resign," the report said, citing no one.
Tyagachyov has faced heavy pressure to resign since it became clear in the games' second week that the Russians' performance was not improving. The Olympic team returned Tuesday from Canada with just three gold medals, the country's poorest result in decades.
President Dmitry Medvedev on Monday demanded that top sports bureaucrats resign, threatening to "help them" if they failed to act quickly.
Kremlin spokesman Alexei Pavlov said Wednesday that he was not ready to comment on the situation.
Tyagachyov himself has not appeared in public since returning from Vancouver on Tuesday, and he did not show up Wednesday for a discussion about the games in the Federation Council, where he is a senator for the Rostov region.
A woman who answered the phone at his Federation Council office Wednesday said he was hospitalized with pneumonia. "He arrived sick at the council this morning, saw a doctor and was rushed to a special clinic," the woman said, requesting anonymity because she was not authorized to speak with the media.
Izvestia reported Wednesday that Tyagachyov must have fallen ill suddenly the evening before.
When a reporter called him at 5 p.m. Tuesday, he picked up his cell phone and said with a clear voice that he was very busy and would answer questions in a few hours, the newspaper said. When the reporter called again at 8 p.m., a woman who identified herself as his wife said
Tyagachyov was sleeping after being diagnosed with pneumonia.
"He cannot speak — he is coughing up," she was quoted as saying.
Medvedev's rebuke prompted Sports, Tourism and Youth Policy Minister Vitaly Mutko to announce Tuesday that he was ready to resign, although he later said he wanted to discuss the matter first with the country's leadership.
Mutko was silent Wednesday, prompting Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov to raise the heat. "Tyagachyov is a fine man. He did the only morally right thing for him. Now sports minister Mutko must follow suit," Mironov said, Interfax reported.
The chairman of the Federation Council's Sports Committee, ice hockey legend Slava Fetisov, blamed the ministry's "lack of professionalism" for the poor showing.
"Our athletes were left helpless and without support by the leadership," he said during Wednesday's discussion.
Fetisov said that unlike at Mutko's ministry, the Federal Agency for Physical Culture and Sports, which he headed until 2008, consisted largely of professionals.
The agency was folded into the new Sports, Tourism and Youth Policy Ministry in 2008.
Nobody was available for comment at the ministry's press service Wednesday.
The only other official to offer his resignation is Cross Country Ski Federation President Vladimir Loginov. "If this solves the problem, I will leave my post in three minutes," Loginov told Kommersant. "But will the whole country then immediately win?" Loginov is also Tyagachyov's deputy at the Russian Olympics Committee.
Tyagachyov and Mutko have been summoned to brief the State Duma on the games April 7.
Analysts said both might resign soon, despite the fact that they are close to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Tyagachyov is regarded as Putin's friend and acts as his personal ski coach.
Sergei Mikheyev, a political analyst at the Center of Political Technologies, a think tank, said Tyagachyov had probably been overwhelmed by the sharp criticism at home and was not alone in feeling ill. "Now everybody is getting sick," Mikheyev told The Moscow Times.