The 5th All-Russian Adaptive Hockey Festival took place in Sochi

17/05/2023
Nikiforos Parfeniotis, the sports project manager of the CSS Foundation, became the guest of honor at the 5th All-Russian Adaptive Hockey Festival.

The organizer of this large-scale and vibrant event is the Adaptive Hockey Federation, our partner and winner of several foundation’s competitions.
The Federation team puts a lot of effort into making hockey accessible to children and youth with disabilities. And the results of their work are impressive!

In 2017, when the first festival was held, there were only 10 participating teams, in 2022 - 47 and now there are already 63 in several, different categories:

- sledge hockey for children with physical disabilities.

- special hockey for young sportsmen, with mental disabilities.

- hockey for the blind and visually impaired athletes.

The 5th All-Russian Adaptive Hockey Festival brought together more than 2,000 people. In just 4 days, 100+ hockey games were played in 4 ice arenas.

Among the guests were:

- Olympic champion and four-time world champion - Alexei Yagudin.

- Deputy of State Council, president of the All-Russian Society of Disabled, & Paralympic champion - Mikhail Terentyev.

- Soviet hockey legend, world champion, & Honored Master of Sports of the USSR - Nikolai Makarov.

- Record holder of the Guinness Book of Records for mountaineering - Rustam Nabiev.

- Team sport bloggers – The Hockey brothers.

Our foundation is inspired by projects related to the development of social sports in Russia. So Nikiforos Parfeniotis became acquainted & interested in the organization of such sports events. He had a great opportunity to take over the work of 66 volunteers; this experience will be very helpful to us in the future!

Congratulations to the Adaptive Hockey Federation on a successful festival, we will continue to follow the organization's progress with interest!