There are just two days to go until the 29th Winter Universiade officially gets underway in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, with both the teams and hosts readying themselves for the highly-anticipated event.

Years of planning and preparation on the part of the hosts, and countless hours of training from the athletes have been put in ahead of the 11-day competition, which runs from 2-12 March in the central Russian city. Almost 3000 athletes from 58 different countries are set to compete at the event, with the largest delegations arriving from Canada, China, Switzerland, USA and host Russia, who topped the medal table at the previous Winter Universiade in Almaty, Kazakhstan with 29 gold medals, and 71 medals in total.



This year’s competition will see athletes competing in 76 medal events across 11 winter sports which include alpine skiing, biathlon, cross-country skiing, snowboard, freestyle skiing, curling, figure skating, ice hockey, short track speed skating, and, for the first time in Universiade history, ski orienteering and bandy, also known as “Russian ice hockey”.

Earlier this week, FISU’s technical committee met for the third and final time to discuss the status of the competitive fields of play, with an overwhelmingly positive response to the readiness of the hosts in all departments of the competition. “We have great teamwork, which is coming to an end, and at the same time a bright sporting event begins, for which we worked together for five years,” said FISU President Oleg Matytsin at the opening of the meeting. "I am sure that all the athletes and guests of the Winter Universiade 2019 will appreciate the result, and they will undoubtedly receive great pleasure from the warm welcome and the quality of the preparation of the competition.”



Athletes have begun arriving in numbers at the Athlete’s Village, situated at the Siberian University Federal University, which underwent a major upgrade to accommodate the announced 2729 accredited athletes, coaches and support staff that will make the village their base over the coming two weeks.

Coverage of this year’s Universiade will be made available on various platforms, with the Olympic Channel airing over 100 hours of live streaming coverage, starting with the event’s opening ceremony on Saturday, 2 March at 13:20 UTC.



For more information, please see www.fisu.net and www.krsk2019.ru.