The link might not be immediately apparent.

But this week's move by US businessman Stan Kroenke to take his stake in Arsenal, the underachieving English Premier League football club, to 63 per cent while agreeing a mandatory offer for the rest of the shares could turn out to be good news for Russia's underachieving Olympic athletes.

Why? Because Arsenal minority shareholder Alisher Usmanov may sooner or later be in line to receive a very large cheque.

And, while the Uzbekistan-born businessman has a finger in so many pies that his windfall could be invested in all manner of places, Russian Olympians have grounds for hoping that some of it might be deployed in their direction.

Usmanov, after all, is President of the international federation of one Olympic sport – fencing – and is married to a leading figure in another, Irina Viner, chief coach of the Russian Rhythmic Gymnastics Federation.

He is also one of the founders of a special fund to finance Russian athletes preparing for the London 2012 Olympics.

And he has ties to not one but two sponsors of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics - MegaFon, the mobile telephone operator, and Kommersant, the publishing house.

Russia is investing heavily in sport, in a drive triggered partly by its disappointing showing in the last two Olympic Games.

In Beijing in 2008, it looked for a time as though it could lose third place in the medals table to Great Britain and was left trailing far behind the top two, China and the United States.

But this was nothing compared to last year's disaster in Vancouver, where Russia could finish only 11th.

Since then, Alexander Zhukov, President of the Russian Olympic Committee has warned that Russia must finish top of the medals table at Sochi 2014, while Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has announced plans for the country to spend a massive 90 billion roubles on developing sports in the build-up to those Games.

In this context, any move by Usmanov to channel a portion of the close to £200 million ($326 million) he could expect to receive by accepting Kroenke's £11,750 ($19,140) a share Arsenal offer would be likely to be greatly appreciated by the country's chief power-brokers.

Not that the money is necessarily to be expected any time soon.

Usmanov, it has been reported by the BBC, is angry about what has happened and has no intention of selling his stake.

In the longer term, though, it is hard to see what is to be gained by sitting on even such a big minority shareholding if majority control is clearly in Kroenke's hands.

And if Usmanov does decide in the end to sell, some of Kroenke's dollars just might end up, in effect, helping to bolster performance levels in one of the US's main Olympic rivals.

David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2010 World Cup. Owen's Twitter feed can be accessed at www.twitter.com/dodo938