Sporter Awards Ceremony 2018

On Tuesday, December 18, the third annual Sporter Awards Ceremony was held at the Tekwill center. Within this event, Sporter summed up the results for 2018 and shared statistics. The best athletes, the most active Sporter participants, partners, organizers and co-organizers received prizes and gifts.

This year, the ceremony was different, due to new nominations and nominees. For the first time in Sporter Awards history, the Triathlon Federation of the Republic of Moldova (FTRM) has awarded the young triathletes, who scored great results in all federation sports competitions in children’s category. In addition, FTRM announced that next year there will be organized 7 triathlon competitions: 3 in adult category and 4 in children’s category.

In near future, FTRM plans to build a triathlon school both for adults and children, to train coaches and to create a triathlon faculty within the State University of Physical Education and Sports of Moldova.

In addition, Sporter announced the projects schedule and changes for the upcoming year. The novelty of 2019 will be the updated Wine Run races. One of the Wine Run races will be held at a new venue: the underground city of Milestii Mici Winery.

Other 2019 changes affected the Sea Mile and Chisinau Criterium. Sea Mile will be included in a bigger program: the Oceanman, which will be held in Mamaia, Romania. The Chisinau Criterium cycling race will change the format of the children’s competition and will be held as Kids Duathlon.

Next year, Sporter calendar includes some sports events that have become traditional for Moldova: the third final Rubicon ultramarathon, Indoor Triathlon and Kids Indoor Triathlon, sports and music festival Hai Haiduci!, Triathlon Triumph and Kids Triathlon Triumph, Glodiator, Purcari Wine Run, Chisinau Marathon Kids Run Day, Hell Run. 2019 year will end with Maratonul de Crăciun charity race.

At the ceremony, Dmitri Voloshin - the president of the public sports organization Sporter - presented his book about the Marathon Des Sables: Run and Remember. All money from book sales will be transferred to Eva Pismenyuk, who is struggling with cerebral palsy. Dmitri also announced the new charity project “Unfrozen”, the main goal of which is to help Eva and raise funds for her rehabilitation. As part of this charity project, Dmitri will run a marathon in the coldest place on Earth - Oymyakon (Yakutia, Russia).

During Sporter Awards, the organizers also shared some historical facts about the first Moldovan athlete, who ran the Ironman distance, and when was the first marathon held in Chisinau. As it turned out, Dmitri Voloshin became the fifth Moldovan, who covered the Ironman distance. The first “Iron Man” was Dovlyaj Sergey, who ran this race in 1989 in Estonia. The first Moldovan marathon was held in 1984, and one of the organizers was V. Podrazhansky. About 400 people took part in this race, 200 of whom ran the 42 km distance.