The Novgorod Region, in Russia's northwest, is hosting a Russian paraglider and hang-glider survival race, March 12, to cover a 50 kilometer distance-from Kholm township to the Rdeya Monastery and back, reports the organizing committee.
Close on a hundred athletes from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Pskov and the Novgorod Region have applied to compete. They are to take start from the Kholm airfield, eleven in the morning of Saturday next. There are two routes. One, 25 kilometers long, offers constant land monitoring, and the other, of 22 kilometers and the more complicated, is fully independent. Contestants without mobile communication devices will not be admitted to it to prevent accidents.
As the gliders land in Rdeya, a 17th-century monastery, amid a nature preserve of the same name, the monks will serve a liturgy for them. Then the athletes are to check their aircraft, and take off to repeat the routes in a reverse direction at about five in the afternoon, Moscow time. Sunday will be busy with demonstration flights in Kholm.
Gliding trips to the Rdeya Monastery are a long-established custom. This year's will be a fourth contest. Last year's was a formidable odyssey. The wind and the rain allowed only several of the most steeled athletes to cope with the entire route.
The contest aims to attract public attention to a dilapidating Christian shrine, one of the most precious gems of medieval Russian architecture. Organizing the race is the Skyrunner, an athletic club based in Pskov, not far from Novgorod.
