Norilsk first swimming pool worked 17 hours a day
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Norilsk first swimming pool worked 17 hours a day

January 31, 2022

In 1959, a swimming pool was opened in Norilsk. At that time, it was considered a real miracle - a summer corner beyond the Arctic Circle.

#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. In the northernmost basin, Norilsk residents and visitors went on excursions. Tourists were met by the basin first director Iskander Fayzullin. He took them around the balcony, the technical rooms and told them that the bathtub was designed for a million liters of water, and the filtration system provided cleaning from harmful impurities.

The pool worked 17 hours a day, every month eight thousand people passed through it.

Faizullin himself taught thousands of boys and girls to swim. But his goal was even more ambitious: all Norilsk children should have learnt to float freely on the water.

Iskander Fayzullin was a coach, a doctor and at the same time an USSR honored master of sports.

A swimming enthusiast, he promoted cold training and winter swimming, was a world record holder in open water swimming, a national record holder in distance diving, and a famous marathon swimmer.

Fayzullin participated in 24 long-distance swims, for example, along the Danube, the Volga and in a 200-kilometer swim along the Amur – this achievement has not yet been beaten. During the years of marathon swimming, he covered 1276 kilometers.

At the age of 57, Iskander Faizullin won the 50-kilometer swim in the Ob. To achieve that he trained in the Norilsk pool: for four hours at night – at the only time when the tracks were free.

In the last issue of the History Spot photo project, we told about the Happiness salon, which worked for Norilsk newlyweds in the 1980s: in order to get scarce goods, some young people specially applied marriage.

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Text: Svetlana Samohina, Photo: Nornickel Polar Division archive

January 31, 2022

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