June 11, 2003 300 Utah students headed to Russia SALT LAKE CITY -Approximately 300 Utah high school students will travel to Moscow, Russia, to the Moscow-Utah Youth Summer Games July 16-28. Youths and coaches throughout Utah will compete against Russian youths in 10 different sporting events. Moscow youths will visit Utah in February to compete in winter sporting events. Gov. Mike Leavitt said the exchange would foster cultural, business, and humanitarian partnerships between the two entities. - Standard-Examiner Two youths from our City, Billy Green and Kevin Slater, were part of the group at the Moscow Games. Team Utah celebrates, ready to compete Standard-Examiner staff More than 250 Utah athletes, including many from the Top of Utah, will compete in the Moscow-Utah Youth Games, which run through July 25 in the Russia capital. It is the first-even sports exchange program between a Russian city and U.S. state. The Utah contingent, more than 500 strong of athletes, family members, coaches and business leaders, left by chartered airplane Wednesday afternoon from the Salt Lake Airport. They'll return on July 28. On Friday, Team Utah helped distribute 100 wheelchairs to Russian World War II veterans at Moscow's No. 3 Veteran's Hospital. The wheelchairs were donated by the Wheelchair Foundation YOUTH SPORTS and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and distributed in a ceremony which included approximately 150 area doctors, nurses and patients. Volleyball players and wrestlers with Team Utah helped place the patients in their wheelchairs. The foundation will donate 900 more chairs in the coming months. "We wanted the Moscow-Utah Summer Games to be about more than just sport. ... We wanted them to be about heart," Gov. Mike Leavitt told Moscow Deputy Mayor Alexander Menn. Opening ceremonies were held Saturday. Jazz player Andrei Kirilenko, a native Russian, served as Utah's honorary ambassador in the opening ceremonies. "These Games are not a matter of who wins," Luzhkov said at the opening ceremony. "The most important this is that we bring people together." The athletes will compete in 10 sports: baseball, basketball, volleyball, wrestling, gymnastics, swimming, water polo, track and field, soft-ball and soccer. The competitors will play by international rules. As many as 12,000 fans are expected to attend the competition each day. The summer sporting events will be followed by winter sporting events in Utah next February. Olympic-style opening and closing ceremonies will kick-off and conclude the Games. IVAN SEKRETAREV/The Associated Press Utah Governor Mike Leavitt speaks at the opening ceremony of the Moscow-Utah Youth Games at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow on Saturday. The competition runs through July 27. June 20, 2003