Our region has sports genes

Residents of the Kuban region a hundred years ago included a variety of sports activities in their leisure time.

This year the Sochi Olympics celebrated its anniversary. Exactly ten years ago, in February 2014, the Winter Olympic Games started in Sochi – the first for Russia and the twenty-second for the whole world. It was not just a sports tournament, but rather a way to reveal to this very world a technological and modern power capable of hosting an international event at the highest level.

The best athletes from 88 countries competed for a record 98 sets of medals at the 2014 Games in Sochi. All the more impressive is the triumph of our team, which achieved medals even in sports that are not traditional for Russia. Among them is Olympic gold in the doubles of our bobsledders – Alexander Zubkov and Alexey Voevoda. By the way, the medal of the highest standard at the 2014 Olympic Games became the third Olympic award for Sochi resident Voevoda. Before her, there was silver in the fours at the 2006 Games in Turin and bronze at the 2010 Games in Vancouver, Canada, won by Voevoda together with pilot Zubkov.

And yet, the main result of the Winter Games in Sochi was that the Russians not only found new champions, but also thousands of young athletes across the country who wanted to emulate them and follow in their footsteps.

After the Olympics, a variety of winter sports began to actively develop in our country. Today it is absolutely clear that Sochi has become one of the sports capitals of Russia. And residents of the region are proud that it is located in Kuban. However, the residents of the Kuban region have always been friends with sports.

For health and more

According to historians, sport has become a favorite leisure activity for Russians since the second half of the 19th century. True, at that time it was customary to call sports not physical training itself, but “all sorts of general activities aimed at pleasure or amusement, but not at all profit.” In any case, this is exactly the definition of sports activities that we find in the encyclopedic dictionary of F. A. Brockhaus and I. A. Efron.

At the end of the 19th century, playing sports was a kind of form of social self-organization of townspeople who created sports societies and clubs on their own initiative. The state showed no interest in sports until 1912. “Only after the disastrous performance of Russian athletes at the Olympics in Stockholm did the authorities come to understand that sports competitions between nations are no less important than competition in markets,” we read in the book “Leisure and entertainment of citizens of the Kuban region and the Black Sea province (1861-1914) gg.)” by historian Anna Kryukova.

The same work says that at first sports entertainment was the lot of the wealthy part of society, but over time there were more and more lovers of active pastime, and the classification of sports activities became more and more extensive. These processes were most noticeable in the life of the capital St. Petersburg and Moscow, but gradually provincial cities were also drawn into the sports orbit. Such as Ekaterinodar, Yeisk or Novorossiysk. It is worth noting that similar trends at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries were characteristic of many Kuban and Black Sea cities, whose population was constantly growing. For example, in Ekaterinodar in 1867 there were about fourteen thousand inhabitants, in 1900 – already more than 67 thousand, and in 1913 – more than 107 thousand inhabitants. At the same time, there were not many places for walking and outdoor sports in the city. However, this fact did not upset active and active townspeople at all, forcing them to look for original solutions to this problem.

Where there is ice, there are skates

Today the list of Olympic winter sports is quite wide. It includes both curling, short track, bobsleigh and snowboarding, which are unusual for us, as well as cross-country skiing, biathlon, figure skating and speed skating, which are familiar to many Russians. As for the latter, a century and a half ago it was considered one of the favorite entertainments of the population of Russian cities. Especially cities with long snowy winters.

Interestingly, in the south of the country, where winters are short and not so frosty, winter skating was also held in high esteem by the townspeople. The residents of Yekaterinodar also liked this sport. However, the residents of Ekaterinodar could skate only for a short time during the winter, but at any time convenient for themselves and without special expenses.

At the beginning of the last century, as historians note, in St. Petersburg and Moscow there were specially equipped skating rinks, for visiting which the public was charged a small fee. Neither in Ekaterinodar, nor in other Kuban and Black Sea cities there were paid skating rinks owned by public associations or private individuals. Therefore, residents of the Kuban capital were forced to wait for the onset of frost. When city reservoirs froze, those wishing to ride were only required to have skates and free time.

In Yekaterinodar, residents skated mainly on the ice of the Karasun ponds, since the Kuban River, due to its fast flow, “became” only in very severe frosts, which happened very rarely in our area. “As soon as the surface of Karasun was covered with sufficient thickness of ice, skaters from all over the city rushed to show their skills. An orchestra of military music was playing, many couples on skates waltzed to the music, and some skaters were pushing ladies in sled chairs,” notes the author of “Leisure and Entertainment for the Citizens of the Kuban Region.”

Historians point to another significant difference between provincial Yekaterinodar and Russian capitals, where skating enthusiasts created sports societies and tried to fit into the system of national and world competitions in this sports discipline. However, even in the capitals, skating for a long time was considered not a sport, but an entertainment, which is why there were few people willing to participate in the championships. What can we say about the Kuban cities! No speed skating competitions were held in the Kuban region. Moreover, our winters, warm and slushy for the most part, made the creation of sports societies for winter skating lovers pointless.

Rollers are our everything

At the beginning of the 20th century, fans of winter skating became interested in its summer alternative – skating, or roller skating. “Roller” fashion captured the inhabitants of various regions of the Russian Empire. But if in the capital cities, according to contemporaries, the craze for roller skates did not last long, then on the southern outskirts of the empire it lingered somewhat. Moreover, this sporting hobby attracted the attention of entrepreneurs who saw in it an opportunity to make good money. And businessmen are actively involved in arranging skating rinks for city residents.

Of course, compared to the capitals, the sports infrastructure in the Kuban region was poorly developed. There were not enough specialized sports facilities where a skating rink could be located. But this fact did not upset entrepreneurs, who began to use the alleys of city gardens and squares, playgrounds and even vacant lots for these purposes.

An area for roller skating with a special coating that reduces noise levels appeared in the Ekaterinodar city garden in 1910. And in February 1911, a new skating market was opened on Krasnaya Street, in a building specially built for this purpose with beautiful interiors. The new skating rink became a real sensation thanks to the local press. Newspapers vied with each other to praise the large hall with a track, the buffet, and the locker rooms – in short, all the attractions of the new sports facility. The newspapers also reported that in addition to roller skating, dance evenings and performances could be held here, and that the hall could accommodate up to three thousand people at a time. Although the skating rink charged a fairly high fee to visitors, there was no shortage of people willing to ride.

The city authorities also paid attention to the new hobby of the townspeople (and skating was mainly carried out by Ekaterinodar youth). Moreover, it would be difficult to call their assessment of this sport positive. Regarding the construction of a skating rink in the city garden, planned, as we remember, for 1910, the mayor Ivan Ditsman expressed himself as follows: “This sport is not so useful that it should be strongly promoted in our country. For children and students, skating on these skates is downright harmful. In addition to the immediate danger in the form of bruises and fractures, this sport greatly tires children, depletes their strength and has a detrimental effect on their mental abilities and academic success. The results are already starting to show.”

The mayor’s quote was published by the magazine of the Ekaterinodar City Duma in the May issue of the same year. And a little later, a resolution of the Duma regarding the skating rink was published in the Kuban Regional Gazette. The document established the responsibilities of skaters and internal regulations, the implementation of which was entrusted to the owners. And they promised to bring violators to justice.

Archival documents confirm that, not wanting to lose customers, the owners of the skating rink sent statements to the heads of city educational institutions, in which they announced their intention to “give more convenience to all students of Ekaterinodar when skating.” These “conveniences” mainly consisted of assigning separate hours for students to ride. For young townspeople, the owners of the skating rink set the time from four to six o’clock in the evening on weekdays, explaining that during these hours, “no one will be allowed into the skating hall except for them and private individuals can only visit the boxes, and then only as spectators.” ” And the market owners promised to give a free entrance ticket to the person whose duties included monitoring the behavior of students.