The year 2020 has finally ended, putting sports life around the world on pause. Following professional athletes, amateurs are also returning to stadiums. The first starts of the work teams took place in the lush January snow.
The holiday on January 13 was called: “The opening prize of the season in Bitsa.” It is symbolic that for the first time the Metrostroy Sports Club team competed without its permanent leader Nikolai Aleksandrovich Akimov in cross-country skiing, his favorite sport. Nikolai Alexandrovich, who died untimely at the beginning of 2021, began his sports career in biathlon, participated in many All-Union competitions, and carried this fiery love throughout his life. The leadership of the Metrostroy trade union organization decided to honor the memory of Nikolai Alexandrovich by establishing the Nikolai Akimov Cup for the best Metrostroy skier. Andrey Ryabchenko (Inzhproekt) showed the best result in these competitions, and he became the owner of a new award.
And on February 7, all-around events awaited the metro builders. The “Trade Union Winter” holiday invited football players, strongmen, and family groups to participate. But the highlight of the program was still skiing! After all, all this took place at the Olympic ski base “Planernaya”. The approaching frosts did not frighten either children or adults, because Terkom provided a comfortable bus for all competitions, in which participants could not only relax and change clothes, but also drink tea and traditional pies.
On February 13, the “Ski Track of Russia – 2021” competition took place at the ski base in Molzhaninovo. This competition is considered the largest in the world. In 2019, for example, about 1.5 million people took part in it in 73 regions of Russia. This year there were not many participants: the athletes had to fight not only with the track and opponents, but also with frost and heavy snow. Athletes of different ages start at different distances (from 500 meters to 10 km) in the “Russian Ski Track”. Our “young metro builder” Mark Kashin distinguished himself (his dad Timur works at Tunnel-2001). At 4 years old, he took 3rd place among the youngest skiers.
The final event of the ski season was the sports festival “Builders’ Ski Track – 2021”, held on February 21 at Planernaya. Here the metro builders mobilized all their strength, putting out a close-knit and trained team (there were more than 60 participants!). Therefore, the result was not long in coming: in two disciplines our skiers have already risen to the top of the podium. The family relay led to victory for the Lunochkin family (mother Yulia works at SMU-8), and in the women's 3 km race the best was Daria Kozlova (Inzhproekt employee). Our veterans showed a decent result: Alexey Polivach, Sergey Razin and Nikolay Migunov, they took 4th, 5th and 6th place at the 5 km distance.
Nikolai Aleksandrovich Akimov would be pleased with this result. He has assembled a team to be proud of!
