First Pan-Armenian Winter Games Open in Tsakhkadzor

TSAKHKADZOR — President Serzh Sarkisian attended the opening ceremony of the First Pan-Armenian Winter Games in Tsaghkadzor.

The President welcomed the participants of the First Pan-Armenian Winter Games and the guests noting that throughout their 15-year-old history, the Panarmenian Games enlarging their geography and increasing the participants’ number tell us that they are demanded.

The President thanked all those who initiated and spared no effort to establish the Games during these 15 years.

“The Pan-Armenian Games are of great importance for us. It is obvious that those Games strengthen the Homeland-Diaspora bonds and that those Games give thousands of Armenian young men and the people professing a healthy lifestyle an opportunity to establish new contacts, and this fact is vital in now day’s world,” said Serzh Sarkisian wishing the participants a fair competition, a hot struggle and sports successes and announced the opening of the First Pan-Armenian Winter Games.

Some 400 ethnic Armenian athletes from 13 countries will compete in skiing, Alpine skiing, snowboard and ice-hockey (in Yerevan) in competitions that will go on for a week.