Sports hero - a hero in my life!

But about such feats have to tell in school!
 
One day, thirty-five years ago, a Soviet athlete ever left the sport. Seemingly unremarkable story of the sports world - thousands. But it - only at first glance. Because it is (Prepare count!) About 11 times the world record holder, 17-time world champion, 13-time European champion, seven-time champion of the USSR.

Athletes with such a "track record" in the history of sports can be counted on the fingers. And at his peak, at the zenith of fame and career, he suddenly leaves the big sports, in a few years to open in Moscow a small workshop making shoes. This man in the fullest sense of the word hid your talent in the ground - or rather, it drowned in the icy and muddy water Yerevan Lake. But reproached him for it hardly turn the language even in the hottest fans.

... On that day, 16 September 1976, in Yerevan fell into the water trolley rides on the dike. Ninety-two passengers were buried alive in the ten-depth. All of them were doomed to inevitable death, if not for one thing: it is the time along the lake made training run multiple world champion in diving Shavarsh Karapetyan. Consequently, experts admit that no one in the world just physically could not have done what he did then Shavarsh. Diving into the turbid water fall trolley, he smashed the rear window of his feet, and began to pull blacking passengers. More than twenty minutes in the icy water. Twenty lives saved. In fact, he pulled out of the trolley and more people, but not all were rescued. When Shavarsh once again come to the surface, crowding on the dam passersby saw that his body lacerated by shrapnel broken window.

Then, the question - what was then the worst? - Shavarsh said: "I knew that, despite all my training, I would last only for a certain number of dives. There at the bottom of the visibility was zero, so I snapped a human touch in his arms and swam with him upstairs. One time I surfaced and saw that in my hand ... leather cushion of the seat. I looked at her and realized that the price of my mistake - someone's life. This pillow is then not just at night I dreamed ».

Such a feat cost him severe bilateral pneumonia complicated by the general blood poisoning - dumped in the lake city sewers. Doctors with great difficulty saved his life, but the return to sport is not out of the question: Shavarsh Karapetyan was disabled.

He is forever ruined his outstanding talent swimmer. But the gift of love to the people, just as generously allotted to him by the Lord, he multiplied the terrible for these twenty minutes repeatedly.

That these people should be put in an example of today's youth! Here such children to educate! Let someone hears about this courageous act only now, after as many as 35 years, the country should know and remember its real heroes!