What are the college sports in the USSR? How manv students are involved?
The sports society "Burevestnik" has nearly two million members; this covers about three-fourths of the country s students (excluding students enrolled in evening or correspondence schools, who usual- ly go in for sports at their place of work) and two- nrths of the teaching staff. Altogether 49 sports are practised at students' sports clubs. The most popular are: track-and-field athletics-162,000 devotees; skiing — 113,000; volleyball — 92,000; basketball — 91,000; gymnastics - 70,000; and swimming - 41,000.
The clubs have 2,700 coaches (besides the 15,000 PT instructors).
Each year more than 1,000 "Burevestnik" members earn the Master of Sport rating by showing world-calibre results. The society takes pride in having produced quite a number of world champions and record-holders. At the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, for instance, 24 Soviet students won Olympic titles. The one who did best of all was gymnast Nikolai Andrianov, a student from the Teachers' College in Vladimir, who took 7 medals, 4 of them gold. Two gold medals went to the track runner Tatyana Kazankina, a graduate student at Leningrad University.
Soviet students have also done well both at the summer and the winter World Student Games. In August 1977, for instance, the Soviet team won 32 gold, 35 silver and 29 bronze medals at the Games in Sofia, Bulgaria. That was more than double the number of medals won by the runner-up, the U.S. team.