Free travel on new high-speed trains should allay fans’ fears about the long journey to the most far-flung city on Russia’s list of proposed sites for the 2018 soccer World Cup, officials say.
Jet lag, though, could be a consideration for players going to Yekaterinburg, located at the foot of the Ural mountains near the Europe-Asia border about 1 800km from Moscow, one football doctor has warned.
When Russia won the right to host the World Cup some critics said that long-distance travel within the world’s largest country could be tiring for the players and costly for the fans.
Yekaterinburg is one of 13 proposed host cities. If it is included in the final plan, which must be approved by Fifa, soccer’s world governing body, fans could be travelling distances of more than 3 000km from the Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad to this most easterly location.
Yekaterinburg regional governor Alexander Misharin, however, was quick to dispel concerns about the distances.
“For the fans, we can offer something special,” he said. “They can take an overnight train and enjoy sightseeing the country in addition to soccer. And the best thing for them, it would be free of charge.”
The Russian government has guaranteed free railway travel for fans with valid tickets during the tournament.
It takes about 26 hours to travel by train from Moscow to Yekaterinburg but Russia plans to build high-speed railways by 2018 that would significantly reduce travel time.
“With high-speed trains it would take about seven to eight hours instead of 26,” said Misharin, a former railway engineer appointed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin last month to serve on the supervisory board of the 2018 World Cup.
Experts say jet lag and the time difference could affect players’ performances. Yekaterinburg is two time zones east of Moscow, four ahead of central Europe and six ahead of Greenwich mean time.
“We’ve always prepared ourselves if we had to travel to places like (Pacific Ocean port city) Vladivostok,” said Vyacheslav Beresnev, a doctor for local side Ural, which plays in Russia’s division one.
“Jet lag could be a negative factor in the team’s play unless you prepare yourself well in advance. Normally, players need at least five days to acclimatise themselves in a new environment.”
Yekaterinburg officials point to the 1994 World Cup in the US, where fans also had to travel up to 3 000km, flying from New York to Los Angeles.
“Brazil (2014 World Cup hosts) is not a small country either, so to say that in Russia fans and players would suffer from long travels like never before is not true,” said Misharin.
“In 2018, the teams would be travelling by plane anyway, so it should take them no more than just a couple of hours at most to fly here.
“It’s just a perception that we’re far away from Moscow, from central Russia. We need to try to change such a perception. “A flight to Moscow or St Petersburg takes just over two hours, about the same time it takes to fly from London to Lisbon or Rome, for example.”
The Russians originally picked a total of 16 venues in four geographical clusters for the 2018 edition but that number will likely be cut to 12, eliminating at least three smaller cities because Moscow alone will have three separate stadiums. The decision on the World Cup venues will be made in 2013.
Russian experts say Yekaterinburg, the only prospective 2018 venue located outside Russia’s European zone, has a good chance of being selected in the final list.
When Russia bid to host the sport’s biggest spectacle, the plan was for the whole country to be involved. Excluding Yekaterinburg would mean leaving the largest part of the country – the whole of Siberia and the far east – out in the cold.
Asked if he was optimistic that Yekaterinburg would make the final cut, a confident Misharin said: “Do I hope? No, I’m practically sure we would be in the final list.”
Yekaterinburg was hoping to attract tourists to the Urals, and hosting World Cup matches would greatly enhance its reputation abroad. The city changed its name to Sverdlovsk after the Bolshevik leader Yakov Sverdlov in 1924, before going back to the original after the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991. Like other prospective World Cup venues, Yekaterinburg is building a new stadium with the hope of being included in the 2018 plans. – Bloomberg