- •The doctor is online – and on webcam
- •Smoking cartoon characters to be cured of their bad habits
- •The Moscow news
- •Police seize large batch of fake flu medicine
- •Poisonous smoke in Moscow cafes
- •Health minister invents new medical treatment, again
- •Russia sanitary chief warns of anthrax epidemic
- •Vet’s jail-sentence over animal anesthetic upheld
- •Hiv activists protest over drug pricing policy
- •Demands to make drug use a criminal offence
- •Airlines permitted to ban the disabled if the plane is not properly equipped
- •Medvedev calls for nationwide smoking ban
- •Medics with a mission
- •It’s not easy living green
- •Skolkovo joins fight against cancer
- •Shops, companies fighting alcohol and tobacco bans
- •Biomedicine on the catwalk
- •Student job to career
- •Greenpeace looking to public
- •Altai pipeline stirs ecology fears
- •Modernization on the march
- •An obscure industry struggles for growth
- •Battling ignorance and saving lives
- •Blood lines The Moscow News
- •Russia’s medical tourism up, but domestic industry in need
- •The Moscow News
- •Israel a top location
- •Russia’s medical tourism up, but domestic industry in need
- •The Moscow News
- •Fines for smoking in public in Russia take effect
- •The Moscow News
- •Russians drink 25% less than before – health official
- •The Moscow News
- •143,000 Russians killed by hiv-related illnesses – official
- •The Moscow News
- •Hiv infection rate in Russia has grown 7% this year
- •The Moscow News
- •Russian cancer treatment centers: Where to go
- •The Moscow News
- •Health group fights fat with free salads on Moscow metro
- •The Moscow News
- •The Moscow News
- •Prisoners of the psyche: Forced psychiatry in today’s Russia
- •The Moscow News
- •New hiv strain in Russia spreading rapidly – scientists
- •The Moscow News
- •The Moscow News
- •Russian icUs: death behind closed doors
- •The Moscow News
- •Abortion: a matter of life and death
- •The Moscow News
- •"Problems of Regionalizing the Program "Drug Provision for High-Cost Diseases" and Civilian Control in Health Care"
- •Lower House passes bill on rights of disabled people
- •The Moscow News
- •Health Ministry defends adoptions by hiv-positive people
- •The Moscow News
- •Parents should not be barred from Russian children’s hospitals
- •The Moscow News
- •Russia ready to step up fight against China bird flu
- •The Moscow News
- •They’re right here: Autism in Russia
- •The Moscow News
- •Tuberculosis deaths down in Moscow, but infections increase
- •The Moscow News
- •Russian deputy proposes garlic ban
- •The Moscow News
- •The Moscow News
- •Russian watchdog digs up more horsemeat
- •The Moscow News
- •Russia vs. Fake drugs: an international threat
- •The Moscow News
- •Putin signs anti-smoking bill into law
- •The Moscow News
- •Russia bloggers slam kids drug test quiz as guide for addicts
- •The Moscow News
- •Puff, puff, pass a smoking ban
- •The Moscow News
- •Moscow airports face tightened flu control
- •The Moscow News
- •Moscow to foot bill for drug tests on youth
- •The Moscow News
- •St. Petersburg cancer center to stay: health minister
- •The Moscow News
- •Smoking room in Duma to close
- •The Moscow News
- •Russian doctors troubled by growing tb infection rate
- •The Moscow News
- •Migrants to undergo drug tests - Russia's Chief Narcologist
- •The Moscow News
- •Paid ambulances in state hospitals illegal – activist
- •The Moscow News
- •New Year holidays are a week of horror – chief doctor
- •The Moscow News
- •Report hits Russia’s lapses in counterfeit drugs fight
- •The Moscow News
- •Lawmakers to ban doctors from ads
- •The Moscow News
- •Russian health folklore and ‘cure’ for the common cold
- •The Moscow News
- •Rugby at Luzhniki: Russia’s new love
- •The Moscow News
- •Duma deputy wants permanent winter time for Russia
- •The Moscow News
- •Russia says Latvia sprats contain high levels of carcinogens
- •The Moscow News
- •Russian male smokers complain of impotence warnings
- •The Moscow News
- •143,000 Russians killed by hiv-related illnesses – official
- •The Moscow News
Rugby at Luzhniki: Russia’s new love
by James Ellingworth at 24/06/2013 15:17
The Moscow News
Move over Usain Bolt, there's a new sheriff in town.
Russians are going mad for - of all things - rugby, with more than 100,000 tickets sold for the three-day World Cup Sevens at Luzhniki next weekend.
That compares to a meager 44,000 tickets sold so far for the World Athletics Championships, which run for a whole eight days in August.
Rugby union has quietly become one of Russia's most popular sports, unnoticed by many and certainly without the help of TV.
At pre-tournament training for New Zealand's sevens side on Sunday, the All Blacks were stunned by the crowd of locals, most of them young, who flocked to the Slava Stadium at Novoslobodskaya to see them.
The autograph hunters were mostly young and hugely knowledgeable, and many of them were female.
"It's such a big event for Russian rugby. It should be a real breakthrough for its development," said one of the fans there, Mikhail. "It's a great chance to interest people in rugby, to increase the number of spectators."
New Zealand's men come into the World Cup as favorites and reigning champions in the annual tournament series for sevens teams. But the Kiwis have been favorites before and have not won the World Cup since 2001, prompting the sportswriter's cliche of a "jinx" on the team.
© RIA Novosti. / Sergey Guneev
Russian rugby players in Monino
The other contenders for the title in Moscow include teams as diverse as England, Fiji and Kenya, while the Russians are outsiders but feared for their power and strength.
Russia's hopes may be stronger in the women's tournament, also at Luzhniki, where their stars include feared former goatherd Baizat Khamidova and ex-volleyball player Nadia Yarmotskaya.
Mikhail, the fan from the training session, typifies how rugby has grown from the ground up here. Now in his mid-20s, he says: "I have been playing since my first year at school ... It's almost like a way of life."
Russia's rugby clubs are just that - clubs. With their shared identity and culture, they are uniting players and fans from the youngest kids' teams to the senior sides that play in the 10-team national professional league.
Most of Russia's top rugby clubs date from the late 1960s and 1970s, not long after the Stalin-era ban on the "bourgeois" sport ended. They had to start from scratch and have done an admirable job.
Outside Moscow, rugby has captured whole cities neglected by traditional Russian sports.
Monino in the Moscow Region is building a 12,500-seat rugby stadium, enough to accommodate most of the town. In Siberia, Krasnoyarsk's million-plus population have never had a decent football or hockey team, but they have two pro rugby sides and regularly pack out the city's main stadium to see them play each other.
Rugby's future in Russia looks bright, helped by an infusion of government money since its return to the Olympics was confirmed in 2009. The World Cup could be the spark for nationwide popularity, turning the sport's decades of under-the-radar growth into a broader phenomenon.
Head to Luzhniki next weekend and you could see history in the making - and not just on the pitch.