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Office for Sports & Athletics Established at HSE University
© HSE UNIVERSITY
The Office for Sports & Athletics aims to unite existing sports initiatives, help them evolve, make participation in sports more accessible to students and employees, and establish interaction between departments for the joint organisation of mass sports events.
From initiatives to a systemic approach
For many years, HSE University’s corporate sports had been developing through the initiatives of activists: students, graduates, employees, and heads of individual units. During that time, sports clubs, teams, regular training sessions, competitions, and other projects emerged at the University, bringing together thousands of participants.
Over time, it became clear that further development requires not only enthusiasm, but also consistent organisational and managerial support. Coordination of events, infrastructure development, interaction with university units and external partners, information support, and long-term planning all demand a single internal administrative centre for existing and new initiatives. The Office for Sports & Athletics has been established to address these tasks. It is headed by Sergey Fedorovtsev, a highly decorated rower: a multiple Russian champion, World Cup winner and medallist, two-time European champion, and Olympic champion of the 2004 Athens Games.
Deputy Sports Director, Head of the HSE Running Club
— I joined HSE University in 2021, and at that time I couldn’t find any sports communities that offered both the chance to play sports and to connect with colleagues from different units. The HSE Running Club was the first step towards communication without borders or statuses. University students and staff, graduates and lyceum students, Nizhny Novgorod and Perm, St Petersburg and Moscow—all of us are HSE University, and sports help us unite.
The Office was created on the foundation of the HSE Sports Community Development Centre. In 2025–2026, the Office successfully audited HSE sports activities, met with club leaders and sports coordinators, launched pilot projects, and organised meetings with Olympic champions, and carried out other initiatives. We realised that university employees, regardless of their status, strive to participate in sports activities together.
Arina Krivenko (page in Russian)
Content Manager of the HSE Office for Sports & Athletics
— I really got to know HSE University’s sports side in 2025, when I went to the Kazan Marathon for the first time with the HSE Running Club. It seems that during that trip I met more people than during my previous three years of study. There were students, employees, and graduates on the same bus—people of completely different ages, professions, and units. People I probably would have never met in the course of my normal university life.
After that, I couldn’t even think about leaving HSE sports. I continued running with the club, started helping out at events as a volunteer, and then worked at the Sports Community Development Centre. Now I am a graduate of the Faculty of Economic Sciences and a content manager at the Office for Sports & Athletics. This is probably the most valuable thing for me: first, the university gave me knowledge and people who became an important part of my life, and now I can invest my knowledge and energy back into the university community. Thanks to HSE, I continue to develop in sports, and thanks to my work, I can now help develop sports at HSE.
Tasks of the Office for Sports & Athletics
The Office for Sports & Athletics will focus on developing the university's sports. One of the key tasks in this area is to create a unified strategy that brings together the educational, extracurricular, and corporate environment of the university. To this end, the Office plans to establish a unified calendar of races and competitions, common approaches to supporting sports clubs, and common visual standards for sports uniforms.
The Office will coordinate sports events, promote the development of sports infrastructure, interact with partners, help sports communities implement their projects, support the development of new initiatives, and assist in arranging off-site events.
The HSE Sports Development Committee, VyshKomSport, will meet in the nearest future and prepare proposals in these areas. Its tasks will also include working with the volunteer community and establishing inter-campus cooperation. HSE University's winter and summer sports festivals are planned to be held on a regular basis, and the University's 35th Anniversary race in 2027 will be the first sports event in the university's history to take place in all cities of HSE's presence on the same day.
HSE Sports Director
— HSE is a university with great potential, especially as it already boasts strong sports traditions and active sports communities. The emergence of the Office for Sports & Athletics will make it possible to combine these opportunities, to reinforce cooperation with the professional sports community, and to create new projects interesting not only inside the university but also beyond it.
