Over 250,000 people all across Russia will participate in the competition, Vyacheslav Fetisov, the Head of the Russian Federal Agency of Physical Culture and Sports, said at the press-conference. According to him, the Russia's Ski-Track competition is the mostly attended athletic event in Europe.
Tatyana Podorozhnaya, the director of the competition, noted that the Russia's Ski-Track was held for the first time in 1982 upon the initiative of Vitaly Smirnov, the current Vice-President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
According to her, the number of participants in the competition grows from year to year. The competition includes the following stages - three-kilometer distance for young women; five-kilometer distance for young men and women; and, ten-kilometer distance for men. Moreover, the participants will be proposed to compete on a 50-kilometer distance.
It will be for the second time, when the participants will cover a symbolic distance of 2012 kilometers in support of Moscow, which competes to host the 2012-Olympics.
According to Mrs. Podorozhnaya, each participant will compete for the main prize, which is a Mercedes car.
