Russia cheating at Tank Biathlon 2015?

Just stumbled upon this gem at another forum:

The Chinese website Guancha.cn Russia did it's best to manipulate the Tank Biathlon 2015 for an outcome in favor of the Russian army. The following claims were made by the Chinese news website:

• The Chinese delegation was told that a 40 metres river had to be crossed. As a result the Chinese team went with a total of 50 metres of pontoon bridges to Russia. They were "speakless" when discovering that the river to be crossed had a width of 60 metres.
• Russian forces also had faulty bridge equipment, but simply ignored the normal rules of crossing a river; they aligned their bridges under sub-ideal conditions directly in the river - their tanks had to wade several meters into the river to enter the bridges.

Russian forces crossing their pontoon bridges

• During the IFV competition, there were problems with reloading. Not exactly sure what it says in the article (bad translation), but it seems that Russia didn't agree on accounting the higher rate of fire and the higher reload speed of the Chinese IFV.
• The rules of the NBC trials of the Tank Biathlon were changed, but the Chinese team wasn't informed of any changes. As a result a 45 second punishment was added to the team's time.
• The amphibious troop transport competition for which the Chinese team brought their ZBD-05 IFVs was canceled without explanation. The Chinese considered their ZBD-05 to be greatly superior to the Russian BTR-80 in this task.
• The Chinese PLL-05 self-propelled howitzer managed to beat the Russian counterparts, but for reasons of balancing the performance of crew to that of the equipment, a perfomance modifier was used, which resulted in the parity of the performance of both systems.
• Several "aggressive rule changes" were made during the infantry/paratrooper competitions to negate the poor performance of the Russian soliders.

There are many more claims in the article, but I don't speak Chinese and it's cumbersome to decode what Google Translator outputs...

Do I believe the Chinese claims? I am not sure. They are probably exaggerated, but there might be truth in them. Maybe the Chinese are simply "sore loosers" who are trying to find an excuse for their poor performance. However the Chinese claims are not hard to believe, based on what I have heard and read about Russian competitions and the protectionism of Russian defence industry and their army.
I think it's save to assume that the ZBD-05 has better amphibious performance than a BTR-80. The mix-up with the river width might have been a mistake however, just like it could have been a mistake to not inform the Chinese team about changed conditions.

This reminds me of the Canadian Army Trophy - in 1987 the US won with their M1A1 Abrams tanks, but they received heavy criticism from the other competitors? Were the European teams "sore loosers"? I don't think so. The US team did operate with open hatches - as only team. In the conditions of the Cold War, where every tank was expected to operated under full NBC protection (and CAT should simulate the crew and vehicle performance in Cold War) this is for sure bad behaviour.

Source: Guancha.cn (chinese)

Tank biathlon 2015

In Russia the "Tank Biathlon 2015" competition will be held this year. Participating are not less than 13 countries:

1. Angola
2. Armenia
3. China 
4. India
5. Kazakhstan 
6. Kuwait
7. Kyrgyzstan
8. Mongolia
9. Nicaragua
10. Russia
11. Serbia
12. Tajikistan 
13. Venezuela

 Tajikistan and Nicaragua are first time participants in the competition. Except for the Chinese, which will utilize the Norinco Type 96A, all countries will use the T-72. According to Russia Today, the tanks will be in the T-72B3 configuration - this however seems to be questionable, as countries other than Russia do not operate this tank and the crews hence will be less trained on the equipment.

T-72B3 and Type 96A tanks

Each country gets a total of four tanks - one spare vehicle and three for the competition. One run at the tank biathlon will take at least 28 minutes, an increase by 5 or more minutes of the previous year's 23 minute run.

Tank/tank crew competitions have a more than half a century long history. During the Cold War the Canadian Army Trophy was a competition between the NATO forces in West-Germany.
The "Tank Biathlon" is a rather recent competition hosted by Russia. The community of Leopard 2 user countries has the LEOBEN cup.

Source: Russia Today