President Vladimir Putin: I would like to note straight away that the new economic possibilities we have and the concerted work by the ministries and the regions have resulted in some positive change. I say this very cautiously, because this change still has to gain ground, but we are beginning to see some positive trends emerging. We are gradually building up our sports infrastructure. More than 23,000 sports facilities have been built over the last five years and we now have more than 220,000 sports facilities around the country as a whole. More than 6,000 new swimming pools, gymnasiums and stadiums have been built over the last two years alone.
In accordance with the federal targeted programme, there are plans to build 1,000 sports and health centres by 2015. Work has begun on the construction of 74 such centres in 36 different regions this year. But even at this opening phase of the project we are already seeing a tendency for work to lag behind. What’s more, the pace of construction differs considerably from one region to another. Analysis shows that it is not so much budget constraints that are to blame as insufficient will in these regions to actively address these issues and to make maximum use of their own resources and potential.
I remind you that 17 million people regularly play sport in our country and thus keep themselves fit, and this is 3.5 million more than three years ago. If the number of people playing sport increases by 1 million every year, this will have a real impact on the situation. At the moment what we are seeing is just a trend. As things stand, the number of people playing sport in our country comes to a little over 12 percent of the total population.
<…>
We need the Russian business community to become more involved in developing mass sport and building up the sports infrastructure. This is especially true for children’s and young people’s sport and for building sports facilities for disabled people. I can mention one programme, “Gazprom — for Children”, but I know that other companies are also working in this area. We need to give this kind of work our every support.
<…>
I think that the Council should also pay attention to work to support the promotion of Sochi as the host city for the 2014 Winter Olympics. Of course, Sochi should become a modern national development centre, and not just a leisure centre but also a sports centre catering for both professionals and the general public. It is no exaggeration to say that we need a health and sports centre like Sochi above all for our own people. From a climate and infrastructure point of view there is no other such place in Russia. Of course we need to compete to promote Sochi as the 2014 Olympics city, but let’s make it clear that this is not just a battle to host the Olympics, it is also a battle to develop sport and recreation for Russian citizens at home and to develop this unique location in our country.
Of course, we also need to lobby the inclusion of our traditional sports in the Olympics programme. And finally, we still need to work on the problem of financial support for our sportspeople. Regional and local budgets have been allocating more money for these ends over recent years and a support fund for Olympic athletes has been set up. I think that we should continue and develop this work and not forget, too, about sports veterans and about those who help our sportspeople achieve their results, namely, the trainers, the specialists I mentioned, and also the physical education teachers in schools.
<…>