He saved people all his life: at first he rescued a team in the rank of multiple world champion, then he pulled passengers out of a trolleybus that went under water, after which he took people out of the fire. In real life, this man accomplished feats worthy of Superman and Heracles. Kerzhakov and Ovechkin, Kovalchuk and Arshavin, even in their most rainbow-colored dreams, cannot dream of such achievements. Nevertheless, today the name of Shavarsh Karapetyan says nothing to many.
Evil joke
A middle-aged, overweight man ran through the territory of the Kremlin with an Olympic torch in his hand. It was noticeable that hundreds of meters of distance were incredibly difficult for him. Suddenly the torch went out. Hurriedly, a member of the Federal Security Service from his lighter again lit a flame. The man continued to run the allotted meters, and then passed the baton. At this time, the global network had already exploded with gloating, saying that some official wanted to take part in the Olympic torch relay and became disgraced. Bloggers went into discussion about the symbolism of the flame ignited from a portable device, and did not even bother to figure out with what kind of person the Moscow wind played a cruel joke, and why in general he was among the torchbearers of Sochi-2014.
Vanadzor guy
Karapetyan Shavarsh Vladimirovich was born in the Armenian city of Vanadzor on May 19, 1953. He was the firstborn in the family of Asmik and Vladimir Karapetyanov. The boy was named after a relative who died in the Great Patriotic War. Shavarsh was introduced to the sport from early childhood, and he seriously took up it in 1964, when he moved to Yerevan with his parents. The father wanted to give his son to gymnastics, but the coaches said that he would not go further than a master of sports, because he was too small in growth. Then Shavarsh Karapetyan decided to set records in classic swimming. And I must say, he soon succeeded. At the All-Union Olympics for schoolchildren at the age of sixteen, he occupied only places in the third ten, but a year later he won the championship of the republic.
Sports achivments
Who knows, maybe swimmer Shavarsh Karapetyan would have shone very soon at the Olympic Games, but unsportsmanlike circumstances intervened. The disagreements of the coaches led to the fact that the young man from the republican team was expelled as "unpromising." The seventeen-year-old was helped by a mentor of swimmers, divers, Liparit Almasakyan. So Shavarsh left classical swimming in scuba diving. Technically, this sport is more complicated (you need to dive in fins with holding your breath or scuba diving), but visually for uninitiated spectators this discipline is not so interesting. This is probably why scuba diving is still not included in the Olympic program. These circumstances led to the fact that only experts remember the great sporting achievements of Karapetyan.
Big wins
In a new discipline a year later, a young man won silver and bronze at the championship of the Soviet Union. It was a significant success, given that Soviet submariners were considered one of the strongest in the world. However, Shavarsh Karapetyan did not stop there. The guy’s photos graced the pages of all sports publications in August 1972, when he set two world records at the first European Championship for himself and received two gold medals.
From this moment until the actual completion of an athlete’s career, only four years will pass. During this time he will become a seventeen-time world champion, an eleven-time world champion, and a thirteen-time European champion. By the age of twenty-three, Shavarsh Karapetyan had become a legend in his sport. However, he preferred to use sports talent to save people.
Courage is not random
For the first time, he saved dozens of lives in January 1974. Together with coaches and teammates, Shavarsh was returning from Tsaghkadzor, from a high-mountain sports base, to Yerevan. A bus started on a mountain road, and the driver had to stop for repairs. While he was busy with the motor, the vehicle suddenly rolled to the edge of the road, and below the gorge gaped. Shavarsh, who was closest to the driver's cab, was the first to orient. Having broken the glass wall of the cabin, he sharply turned the steering wheel towards the mountain. Then experts said that this decision was the only right one in that situation. So the young man survived himself and saved three dozen people. However, the main feat of Shavarsh Karapetyan was still ahead.
Torn From Death
It was an ordinary morning on September 16, 1976. The athlete, along with coach Liparit Almasakyan and his brother Kamo, jogged along the shore of Lake Yerevan. Suddenly, before their eyes, a trolleybus crowded with passengers flew directly from the road into the water and sank to the bottom in a matter of seconds. The accident, according to the official version, occurred due to a heart attack of the driver. The real reason was revealed much later: it turns out that the driver entered into a bicker with a passenger who wanted to get off in the wrong place. Showdown of two too temperamental southern men ended tragically.
The trolley bus went to a depth of ten meters. Shavarsh Karapetyan made the decision with lightning speed - he will dive and get people, and the coach and brother will pull them ashore. The task was extremely difficult. Yerevan Lake has very cold water, and visibility is almost zero. The guy dived ten meters, kicked the rear window of the trolley and kicked out the dying passengers. He knew how they would sink, how they would die - he was crushed by this sensation. But when Shavarsh raised two, there was confidence that people could be saved. Every twenty-five seconds, a new person was upstairs. Inhale-exhale, inhale-exhale ... dive - catch - get on the trolley - push off - raise - transmit ... inhale-exhale, inhale-exhale ... And so - more than forty times.
Non-olympic legend
Subsequently, rescuers and doctors, who examined the situation in detail, came to the conclusion that what even Shavarsh Karapetyan did, even one more person on the planet could hardly have done. His feat is akin to the exploits of the heroes of ancient Greek myths. Even if he pulled one, two, three people out of the water, taking into account the conditions in which he had to work, this could already be called fiction. And Shavarsh returned from the other world - you just imagine! - twenty people! At the same time, he pulled out many more victims from the trolleybus, however, unfortunately, doctors could not save many.
The guy who did the impossible, for a long time dreamed of a seat cushion, which he grabbed during one of the dives, mistaking for a man. The swimmer understood the error only on the surface, and for a long time later worried that this deprived someone of a chance for salvation.
Shavarsh Karapetyan - national hero
He stopped diving when all moral and physical strengths were over. But before that, he still managed to hook the cable for a drowned trolley bus - the rescuers who arrived at the scene had no scuba gear, and they could not afford to repeat what the athlete did.
After his feat, Shavarsh was in the hospital. When he hit the glass, he cut his leg very hard, in addition he received blood poisoning and bilateral pneumonia. The young man spent forty-five days in a hospital bed. After discharge, he was literally sick of water. Returning to sport seemed unrealistic. And yet he returned, again amazing everyone. He returned to leave beautifully in 1977, setting his final, eleventh world record.
A feat not for reward
The big country did not immediately find out about the heroic deed of Shavarsh Karapetyan - in those days they did not like to write about disasters. And when the story nevertheless received publicity, tens of thousands of letters from ordinary Soviet citizens from all over the Union went to Yerevan with thanks. A simple inscription appeared on all envelopes: "Armenia, Yerevan, Karapetyan Shavarsh." But what is clear to ordinary people, officials are not always clear. The great man and great athlete did not become a Hero of the Soviet Union , he was only awarded the Order of the Badge of Honor. But on August 8, 1978, the Soviet astronomer Nikolai Chernykh named the asteroid discovered by him in honor of the hero swimmer.
Many of the passengers saved by Shavarsh Karapetyan have already died of old age by now. And he is still worried about the leather seat cushion that cost someone his life. Now some of the survivors live in America, some in Moscow, some in St. Petersburg. Shavarsh says that with some people he still maintains a relationship, but is not imposed. At the meeting, people try to thank him, give some gifts, but he is not comfortable accepting them.
Moving to Moscow
On February 19, 1985, a fire broke out in Yerevan at the Sports and Concert Complex, the pride of the city. The whole world fought with fire! Later, a volunteer was brought to the hospital, who was one of the first to rush to pull people out of the danger zone, a volunteer who himself was burned, but saved several lives. They again turned out to be our hero - Karapetyan Shavarsh Vladimirovich.
The situation was such that in 1993, the former athlete was forced to move from Yerevan to Moscow. He had no residence permit, no money, no apartment. However, the man tried hard to survive. Got married. Spouse Nellie learned about his exploit on Lake Yerevan only from newspapers. Like the saved ones, like the whole country. Then, when suddenly it became possible to speak out loud that trolleybuses were falling from dams.
Shavarsh Karapetyan, regarding his move to Moscow, explains that he never distinguished between Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia ... He was a Soviet citizen, so for him all these republics are one motherland. Eighty times the Soviet anthem sounded in his honor, and he is proud of it, treasures. “Russia is ours, Armenia is mine!” - says Shavarsh Vladimirovich.
Shoemaker
By education, our hero is an economist. Now he has his own business - a shoe shop in the south-west of the capital, where six craftsmen work, repairing up to a hundred pairs of shoes a day. Many Muscovites know that the Armenians are excellent shoemakers, and they greatly appreciate Uncle Shavarsh. Standing behind the counter, he personally repairs his shoes, and if there is a lot of work, then he himself sits at the machine. The workshop has a symbolic name - "Second Wind". He was invented by friends who work together with Karapetyan from the very start of the business to this day. They say that Shavarsh has not changed at all - he is still fighting. But only now for his job. Exactions, rent increases, taxes - the workshop owner has to solve the usual problems of a small enterprise. Chavarsh smiles: nothing comes easy. To create his own business in Moscow, he needed no less courage and energy than when he pulled people out of a sunken trolleybus in Yerevan. But the multiple diving champion continues to welcome each visitor with a shoe workshop with joy in his eyes.
And yet the hero is not forgotten! More recently, the Logos Film Company decided to remove the feature film about the feat accomplished by Shavarsh Karapetyan. The film, already dubbed “20 Lives,” is being produced by Svetlana Dali and Olga Sinelshchikova. There is no information about who will play the role of the human legend, the date of the premiere is also not indicated.
Happy family
Shavarsh recalls that when he was little, his father told him that a man should choose a profession that would allow him to support children and his wife. He did everything according to his father’s testament. He has a business, a wife and three children: a son and two daughters. The eldest daughter graduated with honors from MGIMO, works at the Central Bank. The youngest studied at RUDN University, today she works at Russia Today, by the way, and she has a red diploma. But the son followed in the footsteps of his father, is engaged in swimming and has good prospects in sports. Despite the not yet very high rank, he has already been taken to the reserve of the national team.
Shavarsh Karapetyan. Olympic flame
Self-sacrifice could not but affect the health of our hero. Hundreds of meters of the Olympic relay for a sixty-year-old man turned out to be a difficult test. However, as always, he managed to overcome all difficulties. But something happened that Shavarsh Karapetyan did not expect. The Olympic flame went out. He went out in the hands of the man who least deserved such a fate.
Or maybe we just got it all wrong? Maybe the torch did not go out, but bowed before the greatness and courage of Shavarsh Karapetyan? After all, this heroic athlete and real man disinterestedly gives people the fire of his soul, a fire that will never go out.