President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev: Boris Vsevolodovich, we have been here before as your guests to look at how physical education and sport is developing in the Moscow Region.
I want to say that things are developing very well, a lot of facilities are being replaced by different kinds of major facilities, both bigger and smaller ones. Please give us the details about what you have recently been able to do.
Governor of The Moscow Region Boris Gromov: Thank you very much, Dmitry Anatolyevich, for having already come to see many of our facilities, including facilities that we are very proud of such as Kolomna and the sleigh and bobsleigh track that you opened. In fact, generally over the past few years, over the past 5 to 6 years, we have built and established a very strong material basis for physical culture and sport.
Almost all of the region's cities – medium and small – have their own indoor sports venue that includes a playing field with stands for a thousand spectators, a 25-metre pool and three large rooms, including training rooms and generally a range of facilities. In the region in small towns such as Protvino, Pushchino, Taldom, Troitsk, Zvenigorod and so on we have 18 such sports palaces.
And we also have major facilities including stadiums, the most modern indoor stadiums. We have built 16 ice stadiums and sports palaces including, as I said, in Kolomna which has already hosted the European Championships and World Cup in skating.
And now perhaps the most important thing is a huge number of children's playgrounds: normal ones as well as small, medium and larger ones.
Dmitry Medvedev: How many have been built? Or are they already innumberable?
Boris Gromov: I cannot answer precisely but a lot, very many. We also have a programme associated with improving cities. In the Moscow Region almost all cities now look quite differently – they look beautiful, like Odintsovo, for example. And the grounds inside the neighbourhoods that we are working on must contain a sports area which has basketball and volleyball facilities and places for children's games in the summer, and in the winter we absolutely need hockey and hockey facilities.
Dmitry Medvedev: A lot is being done in the Moscow Region. I want to say that we now have to discuss at the meeting of the State Council Presidium and the Council for Sport how we can ensure that the pace of construction of physical education facilities, recreational facilities and sports facilities develops just as well in the other regions of our country.