I would like to argue about Russia´s female team of volleyball in Beijing 2008

wel as caprara said, it's not eazy to motivate the girls, it was hard to motivate them during the last world championship too.
there are many problemes on this russian team, frstlly because of the federation who asked caprara not to qulify for the grand prix, so russia didn't play grand prix this year so the girls didnt have a lot of strong matches.
technical probleme with setters: i think that russia has the worst setters in all of top teams, they can't make tow succesive nice set outside.!!
gamova reaction on the court wasn't positive, she is a star and acts like that, she made a lot of mistakes and didn't focus on the game.
midlle blocker of russia also didn' make a greta job, a lot of mistakes and they don't go fast on their displacement to attack or block.
wel but the key was the motivation and russia were just there to be there not to win

It's hard to pinpoint what really happened to the Russian team, but a few things can help us to understand why they had their worst performance in the history of the OG:

1) Their preparation was poor, besides having great players, team play was not flowing at all.

2) The Russian setters are terrible. The majority of plays were compromised due to Sheshenina's and Akulova's lack of precision and regularity in setting the balls.

3) I have this feeling that Artamonova's coming back was not good for Russia either. Godina have trained and played for 4 years, and when the time for her to be rewarded for her dedication comes, Artamonova is chosen. I believe some problems of relationship might have happened too.

4) The debut of a 21-year-old libero in the OG does not seem to be a wise decision. I believe Kruychkova would be a better choice for the Russia's Team.

5) There were much better and much more prepared teams playing the OG. Russia only beat Serbia, Kazakhstan and Algeria. China was 3rd in Pool A and eliminated Russia with a straight-set victory. There is a strong likelihood that Russia would also have lost either to Cuba or the USA if, instead of playing the quarterfinals against China, they had met any of these two teams.

I agree that the problems of Russia were more due to choice problems... The biggest problem in my opinion was the lack of playing games against strong teams. This may have worked in 2004, but it didn't mean that would work now. Things were different, the situation was other, too.
I also think that the comeback of Artamonova wasn't good for the team, in my opinion it wasn't mainly due to her lack of performance, but it felt like she wasn't ok with the team. I don't know if Caprara picked Artamonova instead of Godina only for preference, maybe Godina had some physical problems or things like that.
And even though I think the setter duo is bad, bad, bad... they weren't among the main cause. In Athens, Sheshenina was playing and Russia was second. But in the other hand... what was Sokolova doing on court? At least in the games I saw, she disappeared. Sokolova and some of her teammates weren't motivated at all.

Anyway, I don't see only Russia as weaker than 2004, I think China and Cuba were weaker too to not mention that Serbia, Italy, Poland and Japan weren't playing very well. But I saw Russia was the weaker of the stronger teams. I saw the biggest problem as lack of motivation.
Maybe for the next olympic cycle they can take lessons from this one and not make the same mistakes again.

Clearly, I was devastated by what happened to the Russian Team as I was rooting for them to medal in the last OG. I think that my posts on the OG thread can confirm that. The success of the US team helped mitigate my grief and helped me to move on. I do not wish to go back on this topic but maybe by writing I can really let go of the bad memory.

I think that the Russians were motivated in a sense that they want to win. I guess everyone who competes in the Olympics would like to win so I say that they were motivated. But in part I also agree that they were not motivated. In a sense that they were not willing to adapt to Caprara's changes in the system. (This is just my theory). Maybe because of the years of playing under Karpol, most of the players - Gamova, Godina, Artomanova, Sokolova, Sheshenina etc. find it hard to adapt to a new system which was only implemented for a short period of time and wasn't tested in major tournaments. I know that you would argue that Sokolova had played in Italy under Caprara and she should have adapted well. But I think that even if she had, most of the team did not which took a toll on the collective performance. I have a feeling that if they had relied on their tried and tested strategy they may have the chance to win.

Theoretically, Artomanova's comeback would have helped made the team better. She had a lot of fire still in her and her reception could have stabilized the team. I guess Caprara should have let her joined the team in 2007 so that she could have a chance to reconnect with the team. I think her late entry could have caused problems because the leadership of the team was challenged.

I don't know who to blame. I liked Caprara as a coach when he mentored Bergamo so I can't really say that he was a bad coach. Maybe he had a bad working relationship with the Russian Federation and some miscommunication with the team (probably due to language difficulties) that may have led to bad decisions. I hope that the Russian NT will rebuild and be strong again after this.