Sports facilities

One of the 9 universities that compete in the annual Voronezh Universiade, VSU has 33 teams in 25 kinds of sport (over 700 students in total). VSU University Olympics are held annually in 14 kinds of sport, with over 2000 students taking part.

The Department of Physical Education and Sports gives students of all faculties, an opportunity to develop their athletic skills, from amateur to master sportsman, or even those of a world-class athlete. Sports achievements enable athletes to get a higher scholarship and other material incentives.

There are evening classes in the following kinds of sport:

volleyball and basketball,
handball and badminton,
Russian lapta,
free-style and Greco-Roman wrestling,
unarmed self-defence and boxing,
track-and-field athletics,
football and indoor soccer,
table tennis,
cross-country skiing,
orienteering,
aerobics,
armwrestling,
shooting,
kettlebell lifting,
weightlifting and powerlifting,
swimming,
chess.

Also, VSU has groups and clubs in shaping, rock climbing, tourism, aikido, wushu, taekwondo, and lawn tennis, etc., involving a total of over 600 students.

Among the VSU students are master sportsmen and world-class athletes, champions and prize-winners of championships, competitions, national cups, as well as European and world championship contenders. Currently, among the students of the 1st–4th year, there are 109 third-class sportsmen (city champions), 179 second-class sportsmen (state champions), 203 first-class sportsmen (regional champions), 160 Candidates for Master of Sport (nationally ranked players), 18 Masters of Sport (national champions), and 2 International Champions.

Ivan Kolupaev (the Faculty of Geography, Geo-ecology, and Tourism) – National Champion in orienteering, Champion of Russia among students;
Dmitriy Gorbunov (the Faculty of Geography, Geo-ecology, and Tourism) – International Champion in free-style wrestling, the runner-up in the European Championship;
Evgeniy Kretov (the Faculty of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics) – FIDE Master in Chess;
Sergey Chekhov (the Faculty of Mathematics) – National Champion in Chess;
Anastasia Nebolsina (the Faculty of Pharmaceutics) – multiple National Champion in rowing and canoeing;
Natalia Schukina (the Faculty of Law) – National Champion in basketball, a participant in the European Championship.

VSU offers all the necessary conditions for the sportsmen to be able to upgrade their skills, or meet the required qualification criteria and standards. Furthermore, in 2015 a new physical education complex with a 25-metre swimming pool was opened.

At the Department of Physical Education and Sports, there are 45 members of staff, seven of whom are Masters of Sport of the USSR (A.E. Belanov, O.I. Guseva, N.G. Khoroshilova, V.V. Pankov, V.I. Karateeva, A.V. Masalov, Z.L. Zarochitseva), four Masters of Sport of the Russian Federation (S.V. Korchagin, A.V. Fedyukin, I.A. Tatarintseva, A.M. Dzyuba) and two International Champions (A.N. Trifonov, Ya.V. Gotovtseva). A.N. Tambovtsev – Honoured Master of Sports of the Russian Federation in freestyle wrestling and the bronze medallist of the 1988 Olympics in Seoul – also worked at the department. All these facts demonstrate the expertise of the staff.

From 1950 to 1969, Yuriy E. Stuckman – the USSR Master of Sports in competitive gymnastics – also worked at VSU. There is a gymnastics school of the Olympic reserve named in his honour. This outstanding coach became the founder of women's gymnastics in Voronezh. The graduates of his school still become winners of leading world competitions.

It was under his guidance that, in 1960 and in 1964, a graduate of the Faculty of Chemistry of VSU Tamara Lyukhina-Zamotailova, Honoured Master of Sports in competitive gymnastics, twice became an Olympic champion, while Irina Perfushina, Honoured Master of Sports in competitive gymnastics and also a graduate of the Faculty of Chemistry of VSU, took part in the 1960 Olympics and became the world champion in 1962.

Yet another Olympic athlete who graduated from the VSU is Viktor Modzolevskiy, a graduate of the Faculty of Physics and Honoured Master of Sports in fencing. He took part in three consecutive Olympic games, winning the silver medal in 1968 in Mexico, a bronze medal in 1972 in Munich, and coming fifth in the 1976 Montreal Olympics.

Apart from the clubs, during the summer, over 500 university students can enjoy the Venevitinovo sports and fitness complex.