MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ

MOSCOW - The Podolsk Olympic training center outside Moscow was built more than a half century ago to develop athletes who would transform the Soviet Union into an athletic superpower.
Today, the red rubber track is wellworn and the paint peeling. The newest structure, a dormitory, was built in 1986 .
The Russian athletes heading to the Beijing Olympics in a couple of weeks may be the last to train among the cracked facades of Soviet-era complexes like Podolsk. Hundreds of sleek athletic facilities are springing up , heralding an athletics revival in a country hungry for sporting prestige and wallowing in cash.
Russia has spent the last five years pumping billions of dollars from its oil-soaked coffers into rebuilding the athletic machine lost when the Soviet Union crumbled.
Vyacheslav A. Fetisov, the former National Hockey League star, is the head of Rossport, the government agency charged with overseeing Russia’s athletic development. He said his budget for building up the country’s athletic infrastructure had soared from a couple hundred thousand dollars in 2002 to $1 billion today.
The government plans to build 4,000 new athletic facilities in the coming years, Mr. Fetisov said. About 300 facilities were built last year, and another 400 are scheduled for completion this year. Athletes and coaches who once preferred to train abroad, he said, have begun to come back to Russia.
“Everything is going slowly and gradually,” said Aleksandr Vysotsky, deputy general director of the Podolsk facility. He said he was confident that by the next Olympics an overhaul of the training center would be underway. “Moving forward is necessary and possible.