OREANDA-NEWS. August 28, 2012. On the City day Yekaterinburg became host city for biathlon — one of the most popular winter sports — just for a day. MegaFon turned Central Square into a kilometer-long biathlon track and Yekaterinburg welcomed for the first time such a number of Olympic biathletes.

Russian Olympic Biathlon team came to the Festival of Innovations and Sports, "Big Games of MegaFon", in Yekaterinburg almost in full strength in order to compete in winter sport in summer. Anton Shipulin, Ivan Cherezov, Yevgeniy Ustyugov, Yana Romanova, Olga Vilukhina, Svetlana Sleptsova and others had a chance to try out a unique polymer coating of the track, most similar in its properties to the snow, for the first time. Sergey Chepikov and Albina Akhatova, memebers of the Olympic national team of the previous years, also came to the festival.

Great interest of the city residents to the upcoming Winter Olympic Games in Sochi2014 and a wish to see new victories and records were proved by the fact that more than 20 000 people came to support favourite athletes in the Big Games of MegaFon in Yekaterinburg’, Valeriy Velichko, Director of Ural Branch of MegaFon, noted.

Yana Romanova won in Women’s Mass start for 3,5 km. Anton Shipulin came first among men, worthy of note, that Anton at the start was number one and this number proved fateful to the biathlete.

"I am glad that I managed to win this competition in my hometown — Yekaterinburg. And what is especially pleasant is that my victory is a peculiar present to my city on its City Day. I got a lot of positive emotions, even though I was a little bit nervous before the start since it was the first time I competed on such track with coating. It turned out that it greatly reminds snow in its properties. However, everything went smoothly and great. I want to thank MegaFon for support of the idea and help in holding these competitions", Anton Shipulin shared his impressions.

Governor of the Sverdlov Region — Evgeniy Kuyvashev, Head of Yekaterinburg — Chairman of the City Duma — Evgeniy Porunov, Head of the Yekaterinburg Administration — Alexander Yakob and Member of the Council of the Federation of Sverdlov Region — Arkadiy Chernetskiy came to support our biathletes. The festival was a complete success. On the anniversary, 10th year of operation in the Urals, MegaFon presented to its residents not only a unique format of biathlon competitions, but also possibility to become direct participant of the Big Games of MegaFon, festival which gives opportunity to try your luck both on the track where champions used to ski and in summer biathlon. The ski was put on wheels, rifle was with laser-controlled aimer and here you are conquering virtual bends. Fans of slalom could try conquering wavy track on Segways or in interactive simulator Skytec.

All visitors took pictures in the real sports sleigh and then could find their pictures on the touchtable and send it to their email.

Each visitor of the festival could try and check out innovative interactive installations: sensor game consoles Kinect, musical instrument Reactable and latest developments in the telecom sector.