When Krasnoyarsk 2019 organisers said, “welcome to real winter” there was a meaning behind that motto. Situated in the heart of Siberia, it is a place with great snow, chilly temperatures, and deep sporting roots. The weather was favourable over the event’s 11 days, making for excellent competition.
As the capital of the Krasnoyarsk territory in Russia, the city was ideally suited to cement its position as a top-level winter sports venue. The city along the Yenisei River began its work to host the 2019 Winter Universiade when FISU attributed the event to Krasnoyarsk on 9 November 2013.
Fitting the FISU motto of “today’s stars, tomorrow’s leaders,” Krasnoyarsk not only showed itself as a world sporting city, but also an academic hub with more than 120 thousand university studentsat nine institutions of higher education, including the State University of Siberia.
Krasnoyarsk was not new to the game of staging winter sports competitions having been a regular host to national competitions in alpine skiing, bandy, biathlon, snowboarding and freestyle skiing. For the first time as part of the Winter Universiade, bandy, known as “Russian hockey” in the host country, appeared on the competition programme.
Russia’s gold medal in men’s bandy was but one of the 41 gold medals the country won in Krasnoyarsk. The Russians would go on to win 111 overall medals, pacing it well ahead of the Republic of Korea which finished second both in gold medals with six, and overall medals with 14.
Key Facts
68 Countries participating
1,692 Athletes participating
11 Sports