On Wednesday, 2rd of December, the Russian national Taekwon-Do ITF team was invited to the awarding ceremony to State Duma of Russian Federation.

A banquet was organized to award all the medalists and champions, coaches and the leader of All Russian Taekwon-Do Federation Master L.K. Tsilfidis.

For our national team it is the first time the government invites us to congratulate with international success, so everybody was really excited with this wonderful opportunity. Many kind and inspiring words were said to the athletes, coaches and our President, so we all had a fantastic mood. Everybody got special diplomas. The awards were given by our famous 4-times olympic champion in biathlon Mr. A.I. Tikhonov, who had attended some world and European championships with our team.

Our patron Mr. A. Alekseev also came to congratulate us as well as deputies of State Duma I. Matkhanov and S.V. Medvedko.

The representative of the Russian Orthodox Church was also present and he blessed our team for future successes. It was a very emotional moment and we felt ourselves like a part of big unity, of big country. It was a very special day for us all, because non-olympic sports always have a lack of governmental attention.

We, sportsmen and coaches of Russian team, need to thank our Leader Master Lazaros Tsilfidis, who has been working very hard for the last years to make our federation exist and develop. We also hope that after this awarding ceremony Taekwon-do ITF will become more popular in Russia.

We also want to thank one of moscow coaches Andrey Makarov for the professional pictures from the event which can be found under the link:
https://www.facebook.com/makarov.kom/media_set?set=a.1695521617333244.1073741885.100006262658782&type=3

Best regards, K.Kozlachkova.