рус
Olympic witch hunt
It was the worst Russian Olympic performance in a century - with even the decidedly non-mountainous and largely snow-free Netherlands picking up more golds than Team Russia mustered in Vancouver.
The national tally of three golds - Nikita Kriyukov in the men's cross-country skiing sprint, Yevgeny Ustyugov in the biathlon 15km mass start and the women's 4 x 6-kilometre biathlon relay team - was augmented with five silvers and seven bronzes, but still fell far short of expectations.
From Yevgeny Plyushchenko's stumble to the hockey team's thrashing, via an astonishing range of nine fourth-placed finishes, Russia's sporting optimism was quickly chilled in Canada.
And Federation Council speaker Sergei Mironov was quick to direct an icy blast at sporting officials, mindful of the need to raise Russia's game before hosting the tournament in 2014.
Calling the results "a catastrophe", he called for the heads of Olympic Committee chairman Leonid Tyagachyov and Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko.
"If I were a sports official - and we have two, the Olympic committee chairman and the sports minister - I would hand in my resignation as soon as the Olympic Games end March 1. That is exactly what I expect them to do," Mironov told journalists in Yekaterinburg on Saturday. "Someone should be held responsible."
Audit chamber official Sergei Movchan pledged an investigation into how training funds were spent in the build-up to the games, but Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was more cautious in his call for action, RIA Novosti reported.
"Of course we expected more from our team, but this isn't a reason to [beat ourselves up]," he said. "It is cause for a serious analysis and organisational conclusions. We need to improve the situation and create [better] conditions for our performance at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi."
President Dmitry Medvedev said that those responsible should stand down, adding: "If they can't do it themselves, we will help them."
Almost immediately the sporting recriminations started: within minutes of his team's 7-3 drubbing against Canada in the quarter-finals, national hockey coach Vyacheslav Bykov was facing a barrage of questions about the back-to-back world champions' failure to bag the medal that matters most.
As well as fearing that the squad would be hit by a wave of scandal similar to that which engulfed Guus Hiddink's footballers after they missed out on qualifying for the World Cup.
"Let's put up the guillotine or the gallows on Red Square and decide what to do," he told journalists who questioned how the team had lost so heavily. "We have 35 people in the squad and we have no complaints - the guys tried. You should throw your rocks at me, not the team."
An angry fan opted to take matters into his own hands, threatening to blow up Russia's Olympic HQ to punish the "useless managers" who worked there.
Sergei Krutko, 39, phoned the offices on Friday evening to warn staff that the building would be blown up the following day. Police traced the call to his northern Moscow apartment block where he was found in a state of predictably advanced intoxication. Krutko could face up to three years in jail.
Another fan ordered a gravestone to be made to mark the hockey team's defeat, spending 10,000 roubles on the monument, to go in a patch of weeds in his back garden, LifeNews.ru reported.