Page 137 - Olympism in Socialism

of residential areas are no longer approved if they
do not provide for sports facilities.
Soviet futurologists believe that there will be
more than 85 million people taking up physical
culture and sports in the country by 1990.
How real are these predictions? According to
Pyotr Sobolev, Assistant Chief of the Physical
Education Administration under the USSR
Sports Committee, “they certainly are real, and
scientifically substantiated. The same kind of
work was done at the Physical Culture Research
Institute before, and its conclusions were usually
correct. The latest job gives a picture of tomorrow
and also puts forward recommendations that
should help broaden still more the sports and
physical culture movement in the USSR. We,
naturally, take these recommendations into
consideration.”
The USSR Sports Committee has drawn up a
long-range programme. One of the items deals
with sports facilities. It is planned to provide for
the expected 85 million sports enthusiasts by
1990, 8,000 stadiums, 120,000 gymnasiums,
5,000 swimming pools (a large number of them
will be indoor pools), and also 470,000 multi-
sports facilities. Besides, educational institutions
have sports facilities of their own, and provision
of sports grounds and gymnasiums is
compulsory for new general educational schools.

CHILDREN’S SPORTS
Today, big-time sports, with the intensive
training it involves, calls riot only for considerable
physical effort, but also for much time. An
efficient and all-embracing system of physical
training for schoolchildren exists in the country.
This system is not geared to find future
champions or produce super-sportsmen. Its main
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