Connecting hearts

The third season of the Vytoki sports and cultural festival continues its march across Belarus — it was hosted by Baranovichi on June 2nd-3rd

Aleksandr Kushner


  According to an established tradition, the first day of the holiday was more educational and creative. Several thematic seminars were held for sports specialists, and a children’s art interactive and a performance by the Gorky National Academic Drama Theatre were presented to the attention of the townspeople.
The beginning of the second day of the festival was given by an athletics race, which was attended by almost 500 boys and girls up to nine years old. The Olympic champion in kayaking and canoeing Aliaksandr Bahdanovich gave the guys instruction to start. After that, the solemn opening ceremony of the festival was held on Lenina Square with the participation of the President of the National Olympic Committee (NOC) of Belarus Viktor Lukashenko. Addressing the audience, he emphasised that Vytoki is a holiday that brings together many people and is done by common efforts, “We are making this holiday together! So let’s have a good time. And maybe one of your children, participating in these locations, will find their favourite sport and devote their whole life to it, go to professional sports and one day we will see it on world sports arenas.” 
In conclusion, Viktor Lukashenko traditionally handed a cash certificate to the Chairman of the Baranovichi City Executive Committee Mikhail Batsenko for Br100,000, which will be spent on the development of sports in the city.

Aleksandr Kushner

After the opening ceremony, one of the most anticipated activities of the holiday began — the Olympic quest. Any child under the age of 14 could test their strength in various sports, complete tasks and receive valuable prizes. The choice of competitions was varied: karate and taekwondo, biathlon, hockey, tennis, football, mini-golf, boxing — and many other sports. Those of the guys who went through 15 locations received a prize — wireless headphones. According to the organisers, they were handed over to almost 5,500 winners of the Olympic quest, which eloquently speaks of the scale of the holiday. 
Also, a new interesting location was presented at Vytoki in Baranovichi — Games of our Yard, in which there were five stages — ‘jump rope’, ‘hopscotch’, ‘hot potato’, shooting from a slingshot and others. In parallel with sports, a number of creative competitions were held, trading floors with products of Belarusian manufacturers and catering facilities were open.

BELTA

In general, each participant of the festival could find an interesting location on it. Residents and guests of the city, especially children, did not hide their delight from the holiday. So, the spouses Nikolai and Alena Artyukh, with their children Ivan, Rostislav and Miroslava, specially came to Vytoki from Novogrudok and were very impressed.
“This is the second Vytoki for us. Last year the festival was held in our hometown, and we were very excited about it. So we decided to re-experience these emotions. And we were right — we had a great rest and got a lot of positive emotions!” the head of the family says.

ALEKSANDR KUSHNER

Alena continued after her husband, “I believe that Vytoki should be held as often as possible and capture more corners of our Belarus. It is clearly seen how the festival is growing and developing, many new venues and prizes have been added. All this was appreciated by the children. They participated in almost every sport that was on the grounds and received cool prizes.”

BELTA

Together, two friends Yegor Ivashko and Yegor Levy from gymnasium No. 5 in Baranovichi also came to the competition.
“Vytoki is great! We took part in the Olympic race. I became the fourth, and Yegor — the sixth. Of course, for this I had to give my all!” Yegor Levy is sure.
“We also liked the boxing area. Therefore, we firmly decided: in September we will definitely sign up for the boxing section!” the second Yegor follows his friend.
Vytoki in Baranovichi ended with a bright gala concert and colourful fireworks. Slonim will take over the next festival from June 16th to June 17th, and then Glubokoye (from June 23rd to June 24th), Kostyukovichi (from August 18th to August 19th) and Borisov (from August 25th to August 26th).

The organizers of the Vytoki festival are the National Olympic Committee of Belarus,
the Federation of Trade Unions of Belarus,
the ArtHaos and BelBrandAudit companies

 By Gennady Poplavsky