A team from Vladivostok has won the St Petersburg University Sailing Regatta
The fourth St Petersburg University Sailing Cup has ended in St Petersburg. Teams from Russia and Belarus reached the finals of the sporting event, with representatives from Great Britain, the Netherlands and Germany finishing behind them.
Representatives of Far Eastern Federal University from Vladivostok won the race. For the second year in a row, the team of the Lesgaft National Sate University of Physical Education, Sport and Health (St Petersburg) won the silver. The bronze was won by the team of Belarusian State University (Minsk, Belarus).
The St Petersburg University Sailing Regatta is the largest student sailing race in Russia. This year, the sporting event was held for the first time in the Neva at Peter and Paul Fortress. Marina Lavrikova, Senior Vice-Rector for Academic Activities and Teaching Methods, noted the symbolism of the competition venue in her welcoming speech.
Peter and Paul Fortress is the place where Peter the Great laid the foundation stone of St Petersburg. And thanks to the founder of our city and St Petersburg University, everything that is connected with the sea, sails and the fleet gives rise to special emotions among Petersburgers. So, it is absolutely logical that it was the St Petersburg University Alumni Association that had a plan to organise such a project as a regatta, and has been successfully implementing it for more than a year.
Marina Lavrikova, Senior Vice-Rector for Academic Activities and Teaching Methods
Aleksandr Arkhipov, Director of the Alumni Association, joined Marina Lavrikova. He noted that the regatta is not just a sporting event. It also provides a great opportunity to meet new people and make social contacts as well as creative and academic ones.
The fact that the geography of participants expands annually makes it possible to establish strong academic ties. In 2019, 24 teams from 20 universities in eight countries came to compete for victory in the largest student sailing race. Among the participants are: Imperial College London (Great Britain); Qingdao University (China); Delft University (the Netherlands); Clausthal Technical University (Germany); Vilnius University (Lithuania); Graz Technical University (Austria); Moscow State University; Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT); and teams from eight regions of Russia.
The regatta lasted four days: qualification races took place on 15-16 August; the final of the student race was on 17 August; and on 18 August St Petersburg University alumni of different years and fields of study under the guidance of steersmen from among student teams went sailing to the Neva with the alma mater emblem. The best among the alumni was the team of Roman Volynskii, Viktor Mazurok and Viktor Dubrovskii, where the steersman was Artur Kotliarov (Pushkin Leningrad State University). The finalists were awarded glass figurines in the form of sailboats and medals, as well as memorable prizes from the event sponsors.
The traditional competition of yachting teams of the leading universities of the world was sponsored by patrons of the St Petersburg University Alumni Association and the Presidential Grants Fund.