Page 141 - Olympism in Socialism

teams of various voluntary sports societies, such
as the Stadium of Young Pioneers, Spartak,
Dynamo, Lokomotive and others. Teams of the
soccer school often take part in international
tournaments. For instance, the 16-17-year-old
boys won the Sofia Cup and a tournament in
Budapest in the 1979 summer season.
For Moscow, Luzhniki is not simply the main
arena of the 1980 Olympics — it is also a major
centre for day-to-day sports for the young
generation of Soviet people and an important
centre for recouping health.

SPARTAKIADS
The People’s Games of the USSR — popularly
known as spartakiada — are the biggest complex
tournaments not only in the history of the Soviet
Union, but also of world sports. In the diversity of
sports events included in the programme, the
spartakiada rival the Olympics, and in the
number of participants in the finals, they even
surpass the Olympics. They are among the most
significant events and in reality, are mass
festivals of physical culture and sports. The
spartakiad held once in four years, as a rule,
precedes the Olympic Games by a year and is a
major test both for athletes and coaches. The
entire cycle of the games, which includes mass
competitions, championships of the republics,
and lastly, the finals at the level of national
championships in various sports events, lasts
approximately four years. The spartakiad
includes all the Olympic sports items, as well as
a number of events which are very popular in the
country.
The preliminary selection of the national team
for the next Olympics is based on the athletes’
performance in the finals of the USSR Games. As
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