‘When I was a kid, I practiced judo. Later I started doing karate because my cousin was a karate coach. I learned how to defend myself. Besides, thanks to this sport I met some interesting and useful people. When I realized that martial arts weren’t really my sport, I started playing team games. I played basketball, and even now we sometimes gather in different teams to play, of course at the amateur level. Also, I always loved playing volleyball, especially beach volleyball — it’s always a real pleasure.
As for the cups – I have one for a basketball tournament held in St. Petersburg by the Central Bank. Corporate Teams of the City Government, the State Property Fund, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs took part in this competition. Our team represented business community in this tournament. There were a few of my colleagues and our movers in the team. We rented a basketball hall before the competition to train and get ready. I must admit that we were an amateur team. When we came to the competition, we realized there was no way we could win when we saw who played for our rivals: Mikhail Silantyev, a famous basketball player, played for one of the teams, and the Central Bank had a professional team.
Of course, we took the last place in the tournament table. We lost, but we were still given a cup ‘For the will to win’. I must say, we really played not bad, sometimes we even managed to circle the ball between the opponent’s legs and slip between them, because we were so small comparing to the professional basketball ‘giants’ who played for the other teams.’