The Saint-Petersburg Vedomosti | Basketball holiday and recollection days

21.09.2009 B. KOROL’KOV

The International basketball tournament “Kondrashin & Belov Cup” which is to take place on September 26 - 27, – is a special kind of competition. This is both a tribute to the memory of Vladimir Petrovich Kondrashin, an eminent coach, and Aleksandr Belov, a great player, as well as a demonstration of different teams’ skills and abilities.

The 16th tournament will be attended by four clubs – Saint-Petersburg “Spartak”, Kazan “UNICS”, “Montepaschi” from Siena, Italy and the national team of the Republic of Angola.

This competition is a part of the International Basketball Federation calendar. The traditional tournament is recognized as the best non-official tournament conducted under the FIBA aegis.

– This «Kondrashin & Belov Cup» is held in the eighty-year anniversary of Vladimir Petrovich Kondrashin’s birthday – says Igor Onokov, one of the founders of the Kondrashin and Belov Basketball development fund. – We will try to make this tournament a real basketball holiday. There will be games for two cups among junior teams and a final game of students’ cup. As for the international tournament, we conduct it together with “Spartak”. We have granted 1500 free tickets to the children playing basketball in order to give them an opportunity to see how real masters play.
Many Leningrad basketball veterans think that this is the first time over the past seven years that “Spartak” can win the international tournament. The team has managed to keep the core players and it is on the up-grade after the successful last season.

Traditionally, all the people coming to the “Yubileyny” Sports Palace to watch the tournament, will be shown scenes of Kondrashin’s and Belov’s lives and Sasha’s historical olympic shot that won the gold medals for the USSR national team. It happened long ago, in 1972 and it was the first time that we defeated the American team.

And, of course, in “Yubileyny” visitors will see legendary Edeshko, Myshkin, Tikhonenko, Tarakanov, Bolyshev and all the other “Spartak” veterans.

On the last day of the tournament (September,27 from 11.00 till 13.00) at the Northern Cemetery the wreaths will be laid to the Kondrashin and Belov memorial. Relatives, friends and colleagues of these great coach and player will recall different episodes of lives of our eminent contemporaries.