BeLSU wins GTO C’ship for the 5th time

The Belgorod State University’s team has won four previous GTO competitions, and once again passed the challenge with flying colours at the all-Russian level. Earlier hosted by Belgorod, Chelyabinsk, Grozny and Khanty-Mansiysk, this year’s GTO Festival took place in Volgograd.

The fifth student sports festival in Russia’s history unfolded on Volgograd Arena – a FIFA Football World Championships 2018 stadium in the hero city.

Every participant university was represented by a team of 8 talents with 4 boys and 4 girls in each. The BelSU team brought together Elizaveta Mosienko, Liubov Doroshchuk, Ekaterina Brazhnik, Aleksandr Alferov, Kirill Belskii – they are students from the Faculty of Physical Education of the BelSU Institute of Pedagogy, Abbas Ghaith Vathek Abbas from the Institute of Pharmacy, Chemistry and Biology, Ilia Ozhoganich from the University’s branch in Stary Oskol, and Ekaterina Popova from the BelSU Medical College.

The students competed in running, dead hang pull-ups, floor push-ups, standing forward bends from stool, lying pull-ups, standing broad jumps, electronic target shooting, 50 meter swimming, and GTO relay racing.

After several days of competition, the team of the Belgorod State University secured their leadership in the team scoring. The all-stars GTO team from the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug – Yugra took the second place, and athletes from the Ivanovo region made out to podium third.

Alexander Voronkov, the BSU team’s coach, Director of GTO Testing Centre and Head of the Department of Sports Disciplines said that GTO movement had been developed to a high standard and supported by the BelSU’s top management who create all the possibilities for those willing to perform.

Ekaterina Popova and Kirill Belskii won second place following the results of individual classification, and Elizaveta Mosienko took the third prize.

In her in her official Telegram channel, BelSU Rector Evgeniya Karlovskaya congratulated the team on winning. She wrote:

- Such a stability in achieving the best results in the country is an indicator of the systematic work on the development of sports at our university. I sincerely thank the students and their mentors for the worthy representation of the university at the festival in Volgograd. Thanks to our persistent athletes, the Challenge Cup has remained within the walls of Belgorod State University for the fifth year in a row! We are proud of you, our champions!

For the record: The Festival of the All-Russian complex for sports and physical training "Ready for Labor and Defense" (abbreviated as GTO) for students of higher education institutions is held within the framework of the federal project "Sport is the Norm of Life" which comes as a part of the national project "Demography". Its goal is to attract as many Russians as possible to sports and active physical training. This year, more than 22 thousand students from more than 250 universities from all over the country competed to get into the finals of the V GTO Festival.