Last weekend, the 6th Festival of Culture and Sports of the Caucasus Peoples took place in Makhachkala. Teams of Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay-Cherkessia, Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia, North Ossetia and Stavropol Territory took part in the championships. First place was taken by the Dagestan team, second place by KBR, third place by Chechnya. The deputy head of the Department of Physical Culture and Sports of the Ministry of Sports of Russia, Georgy Kabanov, told Vestnik Kavkaza that the event was supported by the Ministry of Sports and the Ministry of Culture, as well as with the direct support of the Plenipotentiary Representative of the President in the North Caucasus Federal District and the Ministry for the North Caucasus and the Government of the Republic of Dagestan.
12 national and Olympic sports such as tug of war, belt wrestling, armwrestling, hopping, and lifting weights were represented at the event. Meanwhile, today the North Caucasus is developing not only national sports, but also unusual kinds of sport for this region, including hockey.
In the past, separate groups of hockey fans, who rented rinks from time to time and played with pleasure, were united into the Night Hockey League (NHL). It was called the “Night” league because amateur hockey players always train and play at night, after the working day.
Alexander Tretiak, Executive Director of the NHL, told Vestnik Kavkaza that the Southern and North Caucasus Federal Districts are one of the most represented in the Night Hockey League. “We have teams in the Rostov region, Krasnodar Territory, Stavropol Territory, the Chechen Republic, the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania, and now Ingush teams will appear, because a palace was built there. Our board members went there and opened this ice palace. Qualifying stages are held in all those regions.”
According to Tretiak, most importantly, children are engaged in hockey in the Caucasus, especially in the Chechen Republic: “They have already travelled to several competitions in Europe, where they won prize places. Chechen boy hockey players are represented in the Krasnodar boarding school, in the team where there is a children's sports school.”
“Hockey is a game for real men. And when I first saw little boys from the North Caucasus at the tournament in Vladikavkaz, it was really interesting to see how Ossetian boys and Chechen boys battled in a match between each other, and fell. It was fun hockey, because they were 7-8-years old. But with every year their skills grew. Today, I am telling you, there are results, fruits of the fact that they are engaged in hockey, and go to real children's hockey schools in other regions, they go to play. Hockey is really a sport for the Caucasus region,” Tretiak is sure.
