Speech at Ceremony Presenting State Decorations to Medal Winners at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics March 15, 2010 The Kremlin, Moscow Выступление на церемонии вручения государственных наград чемпионам и призёрам XXI зимних Олимпийских игр 2010 года в Ванкувере 15 марта 2010 года Москва, Кремль PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA DMITRY MEDVEDEV: Dear friends, I wish you a warm welcome and congratulate you on your Olympic medals. It is a great pleasure to see you. Our teams overall results were modest and did not live up to the hopes we placed in these Olympics, but nevertheless, all of you present today put on excellent performances and your achievements are indisputable. Once again, I congratulate you on these achievements. Of course, the purpose of todays meeting is for me to present to you these state decorations, but this is not all. I would like to discuss with you, as our best athletes, what we can do to prepare for the Sochi Olympics, after all, who better to discuss this subject with than you? Of course, top-level sport is always a huge amount of hard work plus a little bit of luck. But clearly, without concrete and systematic effort, and without unflagging will to achieve results, you would not have succeeded in doing what you did, and you displayed precisely this kind of will in Vancouver. I want to address a separate thanks to your coaches. They are always there not only to help the athletes develop their physical capabilities but also maintain them in good mental shape …

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