Elimination games proceeded in several stages to involve several hundred thousand contestants in every part of Russia. Approximately 2,500 got it to the finals. 1,500 referees were engaged in the games, with 17 events, 15 of them Olympic.
The hosts, of the Sverdlovsk Region, won gold in the team count. The neighboring Chelyabinsk Region came second, and Bashkortostan third.
Muscovites won the federal district contest, as in the first games. The Urals got silver, and the Volga region bronze.
The games helped to stock up all Russian athletic developments, from the infrastructure, and the state sport facilities are in, to junior trainers' efficiency, says Vladimir Krutov, games chief referee and twice Olympic ice hockey champion.
"The games came as the immediate Olympic reserve's parade," says Vladimir Wagenleitner, sports board chief on the Sverdlovsk regional administration. "The strongest were contesting. They will defend Russia's honor in the winter Olympics of 2010 or 2014."
Many children who excelled in the games are sure soon to make first-magnitude stars-suffice it to name figure skaters Lilia Biktaghirova and Vladimir Uspensky, or ski racer Vitali Shilov. They won the games, and national team trainers sat up and took notice.
School student games are important not only to sports. They have a major social purport, says Seraphim Zorin of the Federal Agency for Physical Culture and Sports. He heads its Physical Culture and Sport Board. Mr. Zorin cited impressive statistics-it costs the government purse 10,000 rubles a year to teach one child in a sport school, and 120,000 to keep a juvenile delinquent in jail (R27.49/$1 is the Central Bank rate for today).
The school games idea has a wide acclaim not only in Russia, the sports boss said to Novosti. Thus, several towns in the Moscow environs will host maiden summer games next June to involve the CIS and post-Soviet Baltic countries, and China. More than four thousand juniors, in the 17-19 age bracket, will be contesting.
