People like to go in for sports in Bashkortostan and our champions are known throughout the world. Our teams play in the most elite divisions of the country – in the Russian Super-League: hockey club „Salavat Yulaev“, volley-ball club «Bashkortostan Neftyanik» and handball club „Alice“. Bashkir sportsmen are permanent participants of summer and winter Olympic and Paralympic Games and no doubt that this is the result of efficient and well-coordinated work on organization of comfortable conditions for going in for sports in Bashkortostan. For today, about 125 sports are cultivated in our republic.

Murtaza Rakhimov, the President of Bashkortostan announced Year of 2003 the Year of sports and healthy way of life. Along with performing the main task — the attraction of Bashkortostan population to the healthy way of life and development of mass sports and tourist movement in the republic the work on perfection of normative-legal basis concerning sports was activated that year. More than 20 decrees and resolutions of the head of the republic, the Government and State Council RB were passed. Thus, the law RB „Children-Teenagers Sports“ was approved by Bashkir parliament after twice repeated debates.

But the focus was laid on sports and physical culture not only in 2003. This work is running all the time. Every year more than 10 thousand sports actions with participation of more than one million people are held in the republic and holding such all-Russian mass competitions as «The Cross-Country Race of Nations», «The Ski-Track of Russia», «Russian Challenge» and «Russian Azimuth» became a good tradition. Thus, the summer biathlon world championship holding in Ufa was the main sports event in 2006.

The glory of Bashkortostan sportsmen rings far beyond the republic and it is of no secret that intensive training is necessary for achieving such success as well as corresponding conditions. Our sportsmen may be proud of our sports material and technical foundation being of quite high level. Erection of new stadiums, opening of alpine ski routes and horse-sport centres is going on up to the present.

The number of additional education institutions with sport orientation is growing up every year. More than 200 thousand children, teenagers and young people go in for sports at 500 sports schools, sports clubs and sports sections. The volume of sports services, rendered by the republican sports organizations and sport centres, also increases. For the last time several decrees and resolutions of the Presidents of Russia and RB and Russian and Bashkir Governments concerning establishment of the material-financial basis for development of sports for people with limited physical abilities were approved. Thus, the thirteen-fold Paralympic champion Rimma Batalova, four-fold Paralympic champion Sergey Sevastianov, five-fold Paralympic champion Andrey Strokin and many others are the pride of the republic and the whole country as well.

The sports life of Bashkortostan is in permanent progress and our sportsmen successfully conquer more and more steep peaks.