7th grade. Unit 5. Lesson 5. The top five

1. Would you like to be a professional athlete?

2. Have you ever broken a record? 

3. Have you won a gold, silver or bronze medal in competitions? 

4. Are you competitive? 

5. Do you support any sports team? 

6. Are you a fan of any athlete? 

7. Can you name any famous athletes? 

8. Do you know any Belarusian athletes?

Read about one of the athletes in the photographs and fill in the  table below the text. Prepare to speak about this athlete.

Vladislav Goncharov is an outstanding young athlete, a trampoline gymnast who won the Olympic gold medal for Belarus at the Olympics in Rio. Vladislav was born in Vitebsk. There at the age of six, he started doing gymnastics. Later Vladislav tried jumping on the trampoline. Any child would like the excitement and the feeling of flying! The most notable results came in 2014 when he won the bronze medal at the World Championship, and one silver and two gold medals in 2018 and 2019.

Andrei Arlovski, nicknamed The Pit Bull, is a former UFC* champion and an actor. Andrei Arlovski was born in Babruisk. At school, Andrei was often bullied by older students. When he turned 14, he had finally had enough. Andrei gave up soccer and started lifting weights in a gym to put on muscles and become stronger and more confident. Arlovski took up Sambo at the age of 16, later he studied Karate, Judo and Kickboxing. He joined the professional sport at the age of 20, took part in the World Sambo Cup and Championship winning two silver medals. 6 years later Arlovski became a UFC heavyweight champion.

Victoria Azarenka is a Belarusian professional tennis player from Minsk. At the age of 15 she moved to the USA to train there. Victoria was the first Belarusian tennis player to become the world No.1. She has won two Australian Open tennis tournaments and has two Olympic medals from London – the gold and the bronze. The story of Victoria’s competition with her friend Serena Williams has been developing for years. In 2016, they played in the final of the Indian Wells Open. Victoria won, becoming the first player to outplay Serena four times in a final. Many have said that Azarenka is the only player with the ability to regularly challenge Serena Williams. In 2018 Victoria returned to tennis after giving birth to her son Leo.

Alexander Hleb grew up in Minsk. Before taking up football, Alexander was a keen swimmer and gymnast. At the age of 17, he started playing for BATE Borisov, a Belarusian Premier League team. Alexander Hleb became the best football player of Belarus 6 times, being the nation’s best player ever. Hleb was a key player at Arsenal, London and was named Arsenal’s best player of the year 3 times. At the age of 26 Hleb joined Barcelona football club. In an interview to The Guardian*, Hleb once said that the biggest mistake of his life was leaving Arsenal for Barcelona.

Darya Domracheva is one of the best biathletes of the world, the leader of the national team and a Hero of Belarus. She is a two-time world champion and a four-time Olympic champion, winning three gold medals in Sochi in 2014 and gold and silver medals in 2018. Darya was born in Minsk, but when she was four her family moved to a small town in Siberia, Russia. There, at the age of 6 she took up skiing following the example of her brother. 13 years later, Darya won her first medal for Belarus in the Youth World Championship in Finland. In 2018 Darya became the first biathlete to win four Golds at the Olympic Games. “It’s unbelievable,” Domracheva said “It means that the day when I chose to do sport was the right day and it was the right decision to start with biathlon.”

*UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship)

* a newspaper in the UK

Use the table to answer the questions

about the Belarusian athletes.

1. Who has won at least one Olympic medal?

2. Who has become a world champion? 

3. Who has lived outside Belarus for a long time? 

4. Who used to do a different kind of sport in childhood? 

5. Who took up the sport to change their life? 

6. Who is a friend of Serena Williams?  

7. Who is the Hero of Belarus?

8. Who has made a great mistake in their professional career? 

9. Which athletes do you admire? 

10. Why are their results in sport important for Belarus?