500 Days to 2018 FIFA World Cup: Countdown Started

See photo gallery of the event

On January 30 the countdown of 500 days to 2018 FIFA World Cup was started. A day earlier, January 29, the city of Nizhny Novgorod had marked the milestone with the urban adventure game “Follow the Way of a Fan!”

At the end of the two-hour game the team with the Nizhny Novgodor Stadium constructors participating won in The Fastest Team nomination.

All in all over 100 participants entered the game forming 6 teams: representatives of the Ministry of Sports of the Nizhny Novgorod Region, known sportsmen, volunteer candidates, football fans, builders and others. One team had 12 members, 6 of them being the Stroytransgaz employees: Dmitriy Mishin, Daria Stolbun, Aleksander Okhapkin, Vitaliy Vavelkov, Ilya Lebedev and Elena Brazhnikova headed by FC Olimpiyets player Anton Khazov. Five other teams were led by the Russia National Football Team ex-player Dmitriy Bulykin, the Olympic gold medal rhythmic gymnast Daria Shkurikhina, the MATCH TV commentator and host Pavel Zanozin, and football players Artyom Abramov and Egor Evteev.

According to the rules of the game, three groups of locations, – sports, artistic and intellectual, – were set in the central streets of Nizhny Novgorod. All locations were united by the common topic of the future FIFA World Cup. The game suggested a number of tasks for participants to demonstrate their football playing skills by competing in speed and kicking accuracy relays, for example, taking free kicks into the special apertures in the goals. Dmitriy Mishin, an STG expert, proved to be the best kicker. He shared his expressions of the game, “Everything’s just great! Look, people are smiling and emanating positive vibes. The morale of the Nizhny Novgorod natives needs to be boosted. We, the Stroytransgaz team, are ready to hold any contest any time. And we are all positive-minded! Every participant has contributed to the team success. I kicked home two times out of three goal attempts. Well, I actually play football. Everybody on our team loves the sport!”

The adventure game participants got tested their knowledge of football, including the facts from the football world championships history. The artistic contest suggested the teams make original group photos which would get the most of likes on the Instagram. The STG photo - see above.

The game ended at the walls of the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin, where the participants joined to assemble huge pieces of a jigsaw puzzle featuring the organising city’s marks. Based on the game results, the team of JSC Stroytransgaz was announced the fastest one.

“High riding spirits, bright sunshine, and icy air, though nobody has noticed it’s 15 degrees below zero! The STG team is on the front line and at the heart of it all, as usual! The contests were many and various, and we came in full force.We have been announced the fastest team, so we will do our best to measure up to this honorary title in real life!”, said the STG Chief Expert Daria Stolbun when summing up the event.