Alma-Ata - Astana - Moscow - Saint Petersburg Super Marathon Begins

Alma-Ata - Astana - Moscow - Saint Petersburg super marathon starts on Monday within the framework of the year of Kazakhstan in Russia.

The marathon of 4,845 km total distance will be held under the aegis "In the name of eternal friendship between the Kazakhs and Russians" and involve the participation of Russian and Kazakh athletes.

"We will be covering 80 km daily," Captain of the Kazakh team, Marat Baltabayev, said. "The Kazakh team will carry three capsules with land from Kazakhstan. One of the capsules contains the land from the grave of the prominent Kazakh poet Jambul, who in the times of the Great Patriotic War wrote a poem for the hero city "Leningrad citizens, children of mine!" The second capsule contains the land, taken from the park of the 28 Panfilov-guardsmen nearby the monument of the Glory in Alma-Ata. This capsule would be left on the Volokolamsk highway at the Dubosekovo crossroad, where the monument had been erected in the name of General Panfilov' soldiers, who died defending Moscow.

The third capsule will be filled with the land from Kustanaisk region, where famous pilot Sultan Baimagambetov was born. This man in the course of the battles near Leningrad's Sinyavsky Gates repeated the feat of arms of Red Army private Aleksander Matrosov and covered with his body the enemy's machine gun firing from a trench, where later he was buried. The land from his mother country will be taken to his grave.

The team completes its marathon on May 28th in Saint Petersburg and then participates in the celebration of the 300th anniversary of the legendary city.