Sports in Belarus.

(People's Daily Online)

18: 29, September 19, 2012

Belarus always paid special attention to the professional sports. Over the last 50 years 68 Belarusians have become Olympic champions. The names of wrestler AlexandrMedved, gymnasts Olga Korbut and VitalyScherbo, and many other athletes are known worldwide. Belarusian ice-hockey and football teams participate in major international tournaments, and Belarusian tennis players boast first lines in prestigious international ratings.

With rapid development of sports infrastructure and advance of the concept of healthylifestyle, more and more Belarusians are getting involved in sports for leisure andphysical fitness.

Modern Belarus has a decent place in the world sports community. Among 132 sports that are practiced in the country the most popular are athletics, football, gymnastics, skiing, biathlon, ice-hockey, tennis, fencing, wrestling, volleyball, handball, swimming, chess and checkers (draughts).

Belarusians, as many other nations, especially admire ice-hockey, football and tennis. They are regularly following their national teams and athletes during international tournaments and the Olympic Games. The success of Belarusian professional sportsmen is the incentive for people to go in for amateur sports.

Ice-hockey in Belarus is among the priority sports. The national team repeatedly advanced to play off quarterfinals of 2006 and 2009 world championships. The best result of the national team is the semifinal at the Olympic games of 2002 in Salt Lake City.

National ice-hockey championship has started in 1993, and in 2004 it was transformed in-to the open (international) championship of Belarus. Today 14 Belarusian teams play in the Extraleague, while 10 are represented in the Premier League. In the first years of its independence Belarus had only three indoor ice-hockey rinks. By the end of 2011there were as many as 28 of them, including the " Minsk-Arena" with the capacity of 15 thousand people.

" Dynamo-Minsk" is the most successful Belarusian club that has played in the Kontinental Ice Hockey League since 2008. Year after year the club celebrates more and more victories. " Dynamo-Minsk" is the base for the national team of Belarus.

Belarusian players have made their names heard worldwide. Brothers Andrey and Sergey Kostitsyns are successful at the NHL " Montreal Canadians", and " NashvillePredators", while Mikhail Grabovsky is productive at " Toronto Maple Leafs". Over 900 games in the NHL tournaments were played by RuslanSalei, a Belarusian hockey-player whoperished in 2011 in the airplane crash near Yaroslavl together with the restof " Lokomotive" team.

The recently created modern infrastructure and high level of the Belarusian ice-hockey contributed to the decision to award to Belarus the right to host the 2014 IIHF IceHockey World Championship. The country was hosting such a high-class event for the first time ever.

In 2011 Belarusian football celebrated its 100th anniversary. The best result of thenational team was recorded in February 2011, when it ranked 36th in the FIFA rating.

“FC BATE” (Borisov) is the most known and supported by the fans Belarusian football team. Since 1999 it was the champion of Belarus for 8 times, and in 2011 it won its title be-fore the end of the championship. “FC BATE” is the only Belarusian football club to have played in group stage of the UEFA Champions League and the European League. In 2011/2012 season the club played in group H, with " Barcelona", " AC Milan", and" ViktoriaPlzeň ".

Belarusian tennis was noted for the first time at the Davis Cup in 1994. 2004 was the most successful year for the national team when it advanced to the world group and played in the semifinals where it lost to the US team.

Professional tennis players are trained at the Republican Centre of Olympic Training for Tennis in Minsk. The facility has 4 indoor courts and 16 open grounds with differentsurfaces. Suchprominent players as Natalya Zvereva, Sergey Leonyuk, VladimirVolchkov trained here. To make the first steps in sports here were Maxim Mirny andVictoria Azarenka, currently ranking No. 3 in the world rating.

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