Sport stars who won the total of 28 gold Olympic medals took part in making a recording of Aleksander Tvardovsky’s poem ‘Killed me under the Rzhev’. The project was organized by the Roscongress Foundation and Telesport Media, with the support of Odnoklassniki social network.
The battles for Rzhev were one of the most deadly, heroic and at the same time untold chapters of the Great Patriotic War. Appalling losses at this strategically important part of the front refer to a painful page in the history of that time that is still unclosed and lives in our memory — those unaccounted for. In this poem, Aleksander Tvardovsky strikingly described the dread of the war, the strong spirit, and the stern grandeur of people’s heroic act.
The first lines are read by three-times winner of the Olympic Games in Greco-Roman wrestling Alexander Karelin. Other participants include:
— five-times Olympic champion Natalia Ishchenko (synchronized swimming);
— three-times Olympic champions Yelena Vyalbe (cross-country skiing) and Buvaisar Saitiev (freestyle wrestling);
— two-times Olympic champions Svetlana Khorkina (artistic gymnastics), Ilgar Mamedov (fencing), Arsen Fadzayev (freestyle wrestling) and Roman Vlasov (Greco-Roman wrestling);
— Olympic champions Mikhail Mamiashvili, Varteres Samurgashev, Murat Kardanov, Kamandar Madzhidov (all — Greco-Roman wrestling), Abdulrashid Sadulayev, Pavel Pinigin (both — freestyle wrestling), Arsen Galstyan (judo) and Oxana Chusovitina (artistic gymnastics);
— Olympic medalists Ilona Korstin (basketball), Alexey Morozov (hockey), Anton Chupkov (swimming), Ivan Shtyl (canoeing), Denis Dmitriyev (cycling), Nikita Tregubov (skeleton), Arsen Dzhulfalakyan (Greco-Roman wrestling);
— four-times world champion Alexandra Soldatova (artistic gymnastics), two-times world champions Roman Repilov (luge) and Zaurbek Sidakov (freestyle wrestling), and world champion Vyacheslav Krasilnikov (beach volleyball).
«This project is dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Great Patriotic War, it is a tribute by sportsmen to the generation of winners who protected our motherland, overcame all hardships of the war and then raised the country from the ruins. It was this generation of winners who established the good traditions of our sport in the postwar era. Today, despite current problems, sport remains one of the areas that unites representatives of all regions, ethnic groups and religions who join efforts for the benefit of Russia. The geography of regions represented by the participating sport stars proves that — from Vladivostok to Kaliningrad, from North Caucasus to Yakutia. Among those who took part in the recording of ‘Killed me under the Rzhev’ were also well-known sportsmen from Uzbekistan, Belarus and Armenia,» noted Deputy CEO of the Roscongress Foundation Georgy Bryusov.
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