“Svetlana Konovalova won the silver of the Paralympics” - articles with that headline were published by many of the Russian newspapers and online publications when the biathlete, a native of Ryazan region, became the second in the “sitting” category at a 10-kilometer distance and brought the 25th medal to the national paralympic team . Her achievements and Olympic medals are the pride of two Russian regions at once, Ryazan and Penza. And this is all about a man who never stood on his own feet, moved only in a wheelchair.
So what made this girl, disabled since childhood, so persistent, so confident in overcoming all sorts of difficulties, able to achieve her goal? Indeed, from birth, life presented her with surprise after surprise. The test was just to live, but to achieve such heights ... this is not given to everyone.
We all come from childhood
Svetlana Konovalova, whose photo you see in the article, was born on February 10, 1990 in one of the hospitals in Ryazan. In childbirth, she suffered a fracture of the spine. This birth trauma could have crossed out her whole life. But fate decreed in its own way.
It was known that her parents lived in Shilovo, which is a hundred kilometers from the regional center. But because in March the baby’s mother refused her, not wanting to raise a disabled child who would never walk, and her father did not insist on the contrary, she had to live and be brought up in the Ryazan baby’s house until the five-year-old baby Sveta not transferred to the Nizhnelomovsky boarding school of the Penza region. So the girl was among the same children like her with physical disabilities.
New house
This sociable and kind girl never lost heart. This was noted by all employees of the boarding school. She studied well. She had to learn to live in a wheelchair. Here Sveta spent all her childhood until 17 years old.
And it was here that she began to play sports. At first it was table tennis, later skiing appeared in her life. Svetlana stubbornly cut circles around the building. Although it was not easy.
Another betrayal
Employees of the boarding school attempted to find Sveta's parents. Nevertheless, they really hoped that mom would finally change her mind and would like to take such a wonderful daughter home.
However, expectations did not materialize. Mom refused the girl a second time. It turned out that she had a new family, a daughter was born, healthy, unlike the first, that she could not bring a sick child to her second husband’s house, that Sveta’s father had died.
She only began to pay alimony to her daughter, completely agreeing with the court decision.
On the threshold of big sport
After boarding Konovalova, Svetlana returned to Ryazanshchina and entered the economic college of the city of Mikhailov.
There she studied and at the same time went in for sports. Her persistence could only be envied. Under the guidance of her first trainer, Galina Muravleva, the girl continued to play table tennis, became a member of the team of girls-volleyball players in wheelchairs. Participated in competitions and became a prize winner.
Here, the young athlete fully showed her solid character. She was persistent, even persistent. She did everything herself and did not allow anyone to help herself, although she moved exclusively in a wheelchair.
The boarding school taught her how to survive. Here Konovalova Svetlana learned to win and realized that she could do it.
I already had a college diploma in the specialty of "personnel manager." As a disabled person of the first group, she was not supposed to have a separate social housing, but she had to live somewhere. And then Moscow journalists came to the rescue, who created a video that told the story of an orphan girl.
With his release, housing appeared in Svetlana. In Mikhailov, she was given an apartment. But the girl chose the capital. Indeed, there, in Moscow, Irina Gromova, the head coach of the Russian Paralympic ski and biathlon team, who is waiting for her and is ready to become her coach.
New Horizons
Irina Alexandrovna found out about Svetlana from the same video. They met via the Internet when the girl was already in her last year. And Gromova offered to study with her, even to become a member of the team.
She registered a girl in her apartment, her and Alexei Bychenka, another of her pupils. And right before the 2010 Paralympic Games , young people received their own housing, allocated specifically for disabled athletes. They settled in this odnushka: Svetlana herself occupied the hall, and Alexei and his wife occupied the room.
The whole winter of 2011/12, after graduating from college, was spent in ski-bean training at the Moscow sports school of the Olympic reserve “Vorobyovy Gory”.
Nothing is impossible. Svetlana Konovalova: Paralympics
The biography of this girl is replete with victories. The success of this wonderful hardworking athlete is only admirable: she twice became the winner of the World Cup and a bronze medalist in the World Biathlon Championships, in skiing at the World Cup - in the long distance and in the sprint.
But Svetlana Konovalova, strong in spirit, did not stop there. The Paralympics in Sochi brought her great fame. The President of the country handed the order IV Art. "For Merit to the Fatherland." She became the "Honored Master of Sports of Russia", and also the owner of the commemorative sign "Gratitude from the Earth of Ryazan."
But this is not all the achievements of the Ryazan athlete. Konovalova Svetlana takes part in the Paralympic World Championship, where the strongest disabled athletes compete in the fall of 2015, becomes the silver medalist in the wheelchair relay race on the treadmill. And at some distances, she even set her personal records this season.
And in Cheboksary at the Russian Athletics Championship 2016, she again became a silver bronze medalist. Perhaps her name we will see in the national team for the game in Rio de Janeiro.
Information and sports agency "Ryazan Sport" constantly holds among its subscribers a vote for the right to be named the best athlete of the month. And there is nothing surprising that Konovalova Svetlana Igorevna repeatedly won the largest number of votes. Well deserved.
By the way, Sveta still found her mother, met her younger sister, who also took part in this victory for Konovalova Olympics as a volunteer.