Univer.cam: Russia’s largest sports university as seen by its students

Alexander Ovechkin, Pavel Bure, Aliya Mustafina, Yevgenia Medvedeva and Irina Rodnina have at least one thing in common. It is their alma mater, the Russian State University of Physical Education, Sport, Youth and Tourism (SCOLIPE), where future champions and organisers of international sports events study and train. The university faculty knows everything about sports.

Correspondents from the First Student Agency visited Russia’s largest sports university as part of a new project, Univer.cam. SCOLIPE students took them on a tour of the Research Institute of Sports Medicine, the Legend canteen and the track facility.

Only athletes and university personnel can enter the research institute, where a huge hall is filled with exercise equipment and office tables with heaps of documents piled up on them. Athletes exercise there, while researchers analyse their achievements using load indicators and measuring the athletes’ strength when they use treadmills.

Top class athletes from the national football team, track and field athletes and figure skaters come to the institute to undergo studies that help them adjust their training process, monitor their progress and even help them to avoid serious injuries.

Everyone committed to a healthy lifestyle, and there are many of them at the university, knows that sensible eating is part of sports training, such as those scored by sports legends Valery Kharlamov and Lev Yashin, whose photographs you can see in the Legend canteen. Many think that healthy eating consists of things like salads, boiled beef and beans but this isn’t the case at all: you can also have doner kebab with fresh vegetables here.

The track facility in the country’s main sports university is a huge building lit by soft green lamps with a smell of competition all around. Athletes are running and speed walking on the track, but the centre of the hall is taken by student desks and a small table for the teacher. A lesson in track and field athletics is underway amid running, jumping and training in the throwing categories.

Pole vault champion Anzhelika Sidorova, who is training here, has graduated from the university’s department of management. “Swimming was the most difficult discipline for me,” Anzhelika explained. “I trained too hard to be able to attend lessons, so I was required to make drawings of various swimming styles at the examination. You can say that I had a theoretical course in swimming,” she said.