Belarus President Aliaksandr Lukashenka went as far as to claim that he was coaching four-time Olympic champion Darya Domracheva to ski when she was still a little girl.
“Domracheva started here when she was a little girl. There are photos. I was teaching her to run and told her: You will become a great biathlete if you do this and that.’ And she did it,” STV quotes Lukashenka as saying.
Darya Domracheva (born in 1986) left Belarus for Russia with her parents at the age of 4. It was in Russia where she started her sporting career. Domracheva returned to Belarus only in 2003 when she was already an adult biathlete.