Master of sports truck convoy 06.07.2010

Ten huge trucks tool along the night highway one after another. The picture is almost monumental. The trucks transport valuable cargo: there is a prefabricated 3,000-seat stadium.

Anatoly Muradov at work

Anatoly Muradov is a chief engineer of the prefabricated stadium functioning in the city of Kazan. He assembled and disassembled the beach volleyball stadium in many Russian cities. Anatoly told about the functioning of this unique sports court to the kazan2013.com correspondent.

-Anatoly, could you please tell us about the sports court that will stage the VII European Universities Beach Volleyball Championship. At the tournament opening press conference the stadium got a lot of positive feedback.

- It was praised for a reason. In short this sports complex was bought in Germany in 2005. First it was based in Belgorod but then it was moved to Moscow. At present the stadium belongs to the Federation of volleyball.

The unique stadium can be assembled anywhere

- How long does it take to assemble the stadium? The sports court where the tournament is staged is given credit for a good reason.

- The greatest advantage of the stadium is that it is easily assembled. By the way it’s also simple to disassemble it. Beach volleyball or for instance beach football competition can be staged absolutely anywhere – you can assemble the stadium on a parking area both in Kazan and at a usual beach. Actually any place. And this is its main amenity: within ten days it’s possible to assemble the stadium that seats 3,000 spectators and host an international tournament. A week after the event the place that held the largest competition will be clean from of any sand-grain.

A week after the event the place that held the largest competition will be clean from of any sand-grain

- It turns out that you’ve delivered only a part of the sports complex?

- Naturally we haven’t brought the whole stadium in Kazan. Its parts travel around Russia. Kaliningrad will stage the second part of the Russian Championship and some part of the stadium is there already.
When the stadium is fully assembled, it looks impressive. The picture is quite different! Just imagine: the stands are seven meters high, all the courts are located around the stands.
During the European Championship that was held in Moscow recently we increased the number of seats. However 2,000 supporters watched the matches outside the stadium.

-How long have you been working as the chief engineer of the prefabricated stadium?

-I’ve been working for five years. In 2005 the representatives of the German company that sells beach volleyball and football prefabricated stadiums arrived in Kazan. They conducted a supervised installation and at the same time I served my apprenticeship. I’ve been assembling-dissasembling the largest stadium in Russia for beach sports for five years already and travelling with it around the country.

-You’ve been staying in Kazan for a week already. Did you settle in?

- I sure did. We arrived in Kazan a week before the Russian Championship. We had enough time for assembling the stadium but it’s unbearable to work in 30 degree hot weather. Besides we came in Kazan immediately after the end of the Moscow Big Slam (on of the most prestigious world beach volleyball tournaments), we had been disassembling the stadium day and night. We were to clean the place and leave not a fleck of dust. And we made it. We didn’t have time to rest though as we had our tickets to Kazan booked already.

- As far as I understand the stadium can be brought to any Russian city. I think that this is a very labor-consuming activity as it’s not an easy task to deliver a 3,000-seat sports complex.

- We got used to it. Ten huge 10-ton trucks can deliver the whole stadium either to Sochi or to Belgorod. Broadly speaking anywhere.
Our team is not big, six people altogether. Plus we hire employees in the city where the competition is held. Not so many, we usually recruit about twenty people.
In Sochi we cooperated with the Preobrazhenie organization (the organization that helps drug-addicts and alcoholics to rehabilitate), we had guys who were taking the course of recovery working in the stadium assembling. So most of them broke away from their addictions and still work with us when we come to Sochi. As far as I know some of them even started to play amateur beach volleyball.

Alexey Sorokin, special correspondent of press center
VII European Universities Beach Volleyball Championship