The 4th international spearfishing competition Autumn Cup, held in Kaniv (Cherkasy oblast) and participated by over 140 sportsmen from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, showed an overwhelming advantage of the Ukrainians: seven and 17 firsts in the team and individual classifications, respectively.
The temperature of water is 12C, and that of air 14C. It is not an easy job to spend 9 hours on each of the two days in the Dnipro’s waters with a “swimming apparatus” consisting of the flippers, a mask and a snorkel only. In addition, one has to dive deep every now and then, control breathing, look for a fish, approach it fast, take aim, and strike. Rocket science of sorts — not for the uninitiated. This is why it is not a mass-scale sport, although an adrenaline junkie may even prefer it to other competitions.
For this reason, Kaniv and the adjacent Dnipro water area received for a fourth time sportsmen from Moscow, Yaroslavl, Brest, Minsk, Vinnytsia, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, Cherkasy, Kyiv, an other cities, to take part in the Autumn Cup held under the aegis of the Ukrainian Underwater Federation (UUF).
“Everybody can find his own here,” says Valerii Olius, the competition organizers. “Some like the gorgeous nature, others just want to relax far from a big-city bustle. But the majority come, of course, to vie for the trophy, a fish-shaped bronze cup. What proves the competition’s prestige is high skill of the participants: some of them are champions of various, including international competitions in spearfishing and the related sports.
The main intrigue was rivalry between Ukraine and Russia. Both sides fielded well-seasoned “fighters.” The Belarusians were also up to the mark. Suffice it to not the participation of Vladimir Nakoriakov, this year’s champion of Belarus. Yet, Oleh Liadenko, captain of Ukraine’s national spearfishing team, assured everybody that they would win. Which in fact happened. The three Ukrainian teams — Sigma Sub (Kyiv), Tornado 1 (Dnipropetrovsk), and Immersion (Kyiv- Zaporizhzhia) — took first, second and third places, respectively. While the Belarusian RB-1 team (eighth place) caught only 25.4 kg of fish in the Dnipro in two days and the Russian Bathyscaph team (ninth place) fished 20.6 kg, the boys from Kyiv’s Sigma Sub netted 58.8 kg, almost twice as much as the former. The “amphibious men” from Dnipropetrovsk’s Tornado-1 caught 53.1 kg. The Immersion team ran only 250 g short of 50 kilos — they netted 49.7 kg. Individual first prizes were won as follows: Oleksandr Halaktionov (Tornado-1, Dnipropetrovsk), Kostiantyn Kanin (Sigma Sub, Kyiv), and Andrii Piatakov (Murena-Yorzh, Kyiv).
A few words about the catch. Contrary to a widespread opinion that there is no fish in the Dnipro, Autumn Cup participants proved that this is not really so, to put it mildly. When the caught breams, pike-perches, catfishes, carps, and perches were densely strung and loaded onto a truck trailer, the latter just cracked up under the weight of the fish.
The competition also saw records: a 1.2-m-long pike that weighed 7.3 kg and a 10-kg catfish. On the whole, about 350 fishes weighing almost 700 kg were caught. Olius said that the sportsmen had not been spearing small fry — the judges would have awarded them penalty points as punishment.
The competition was drawing to a close. People were rushing to Kyiv-bound trains or to the buses and cars that were heading for Cherkasy. The Maksym and Anzhela Holovianko couple from Dnipropetrovsk set off home on their own minibus. Both of them are sportsmen and spearfishing buffs. They are also training their eight-year-old son Oleksii to be a sportsman.
“I can already dive 10 meters deep,” the little Oleksii said in conclusion. “When I grow up, I’ll win the Autumn Cup.”
Incidentally, his father’s team, Tornado-1, came off second best in this competition, as was said above. So the young underwater fisher has a role model to emulate.
