Team Russia Manager Turns 80!
Yuri Charkovsky most likely is the busiest man in the international cross-country skiing world. [caption id="attachment_15861" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Yelena Vyalbe and Yuri Charkovsky form a rock-solid team. Charkovsky is used to be Vyalbe's coach in 1990s and for the last decade is Vyalbe's closest partner and confidant [/caption] As a manager of the world largest team (the Russians have 40 skiers in the national squad plus roughly equal amount of coaches & support personel) he is in charge of all the logistics. As the de-facto team captain he's present on most of the race-related meetings with the FIS & local organizers. As a coach with decades on international experience ,he is involved in mentoring athletes. And when all of the above is said and done, he's doing media interviews (Charkovsky's…