IZHEVSK, May 04 /ITAR-TASS/. An international student race has started at the Eternal Flame square in the Russian Ural Udmurtia capital city of Izhevsk to run through Cheboksary, Nizhny Novgorod to the Belarusian capital of Minsk on the occasion of the 69th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 on Sunday.
Students of technical universities of Izhevsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Cheboksary, Kazan, Minsk will be joined in the race by their friends who study in the Russian Volga River city of Volgograd and the National Technical University in the Russian federal city Sevastopol.
“This is already the 11th race dedicated to the Great Victory. This year the sport marathon is dedicated to one more memorable date of the 70th anniversary of liberation of the Republic of Belarus from Nazi invaders,” chairman of the Batkovshchina society of Belarusian culture in Udmurtia which is one of the action organisers Nikolay Ukrainets told Itar-Tass.
Medics, road police cars and two buses will be escorting running students, Ukrainets said, adding that participants of the running marathon will pass by bus sections of international highways unsafe due to an intensive traffic. Although the streets of the cities where the race will run will be open for students. Festive rallies on the occasion of the Great Victory anniversary will be held in all these cities.
The race will finish on the Glory Hill in the city of Minsk on May 8.
The first spring race of students and employees of the then Izhevsk Mechanical Institute was staged in April 1977 at the initiative of the institute rector [now Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences] Aleksey Lipanov. The institute rector, a perfect athlete with a high ranking in field-and-track athletics, has picked up an idea of races dedicated to the Great Victory at Bauman Technical University and he liked it.
From 1977 to 2002 a team of student racers from Izhevsk Mechanical Institute [now Kalashnikov Technical University] have staged a race from a Russian hero city every year finishing at the monuments of military glory on May 9. Students visited a legendary Brest fortress, finished in the cities of Odessa, Kiev, Kerch, Sevastopol, Novorossiysk, Smolensk and Moscow.
In 2003 rectors of Izhevsk State Technical University and Belarusian National Technical University proposed to organise a first international race from Izhevsk to Minsk on the occasion of the Great Victory anniversary. In 2013 the tenth student race from Izhevsk through Cheboksary, Nizhny Novgorod to Minsk was held on the occasion of the 68th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War and the 70th anniversary of the Victory in the Battle of Stalingrad.