Popular Voting Defines Best Athletes of 2017

Krasnodar, 9 February – Yug Times. The results of the regional contest “The Athlete of the Year” were announced in Krasnodar last week. The results proved quite unusual.

Last year, RBC Yug was on a monthly basis determining the best athletes of the Krasnodar region. Consequently, the twelve best athletes of the month entered the final of the competition.

The winner was determined by voting among the audience present — journalists of regional mass media, including The Yug Times, and sports fans. The voting decided on the winner — Alan Tyshchenko, a little-known track-and-field athlete from the Novopokrovsky rayon. He won three gold medals at the Surdolympic Games held last summer in Samsun, Turkey. Tyshchenko was narrowly followed by Sergei Shubenkov, who came second in the hurdles in the World Championship. The third best athlete was Stefania Yelfutina, a yachtswoman from Yeisk.

Apart from the title of the Athlete of the Year, the contest had several other nominations.

The Centre for Paralympic Training, whose athletes received 18 medals of the Surfolympic Games, got the title of the Breakthrough of the Year.

he title of the Team of the Year was given to the rugby club Kuban, the 2017 national champion and twice holder of the Cup of European Champions.

Altogether, about 2,000 people took part in the voting. An interesting fact was that most of them gave their votes not to the footballer Fedor Smolov (despite the huge popularity of football in the region) but to Viktoria Kalinina, an Olympic Champion in Rio de Janeiro and goalkeeper of the handball club Kuban and the Russian national team.

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