Russian President Dmitry Medvedev (left) and captain of the Russian Olympic basketball team Andrey Kirilenko agreed that the feelings they experience when they hear the national anthem are inexpressible.
Photo: Dmitry Azarov
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Athletes Get Ready to Go to Beijing
The Russian Olympic team, gathered in Moscow before making its way to Beijing, assembled in Alexandrovsky Garden yesterday and then filed through Red Square and into the Georgievsky Hall in the Kremlin to meet Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. “We have every reason expect brilliant victories from you,” he told them. The president held up Russian soccer as an example to the athletes, saying that the Russian national team had reached a “patriotic height.”
Synchronic swimmer Svetlana Romashina and basketball player Andrey Kirilenko were selected to make the athlete’s response. “We are proud of our country,” Kirilenko stated. “And the feelings we experience standing on the rostrum while our national anthem is playing cannot be expresses with words.” He gave the president a stuffed Cheburashka figure, the symbol of the Russian Olympic team borrowed from Soviet animation.
“And the feelings we experience looking as you as the national anthem plays also cannot be expressed with words,” the president returned.
The president then went on to a meeting with the head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service, and the athletes went to the Kremlin’s Uspensky Cathedral for a celebratory liturgy. The female athletes were able to buy wrap-around skirts and scarves for their heads before the service began.
On the other side of Red Square, a reception was held in the team’s honor at Bosco Bar, under a tent on the square. It began to rain as the athletes came out of the Kremlin to go to the reception.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of July 30, 2008
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