The Sport History and Statistics Fan Club has conducted a survey of journalists (primarily sports journalists) and press officers of sports federations. The aim was to identify which Russian sportspeople had been popular in 2014 – a minimum of seven athletes – and also the most popular coach, team and manager. This was the first time in the history of Russian journalism that such an extensive survey had been done, with almost 300 people taking part. These were journalists working on the leading daily sports papers Sport-Express and Sovetsky Sport, sports websites championat.com and sportbox.ru, general political publications Kommersant and Vedomosti, TV channels Rossiya, Rossiya 2 and NTV, internet resources Gazeta.ru and Lenta.ru, World News, Records in Sport (the latter two informed their readers during the survey) and other media, and also press officers of leading sports federations: for athletics, swimming, gymnastics, tennis, badminton etc.

The clear winner in the sports manager category was Andrei Filatov, FIDE Vice-President and President of the Russian Chess Federation, who finished ahead of Vitaly Mutko (Russian Minister of Sport), Dmitry Chernyshenko (Chairman of the organizing committee of Olympic Games in Sochi 2014), Sergei Galitsky (President of the football club “Krasnodar”), Yevgeny Giner (President of the football club “CSKA”), Valentin Balakhnichev (President of Athletics Federation), Oleg Tinkov (owner of the cycling team «Tinkoff Saxo») and other well-known sports officials.