17.03.2018.
Military skiers are the pride of the whole Armed Forces
Defence Minister Aleksandar Vulin visited members of the Ministry of Defence and the Serbian Armed Forces at Mt. Kopaonik as they were practicing in winter conditions, and participants in the "7th CISM Training Camp" preparing themselves for participation of the Serbian Armed Forces team in the upcoming World Alpine and Nordic Skiing Championship in Austria. Pointing out that the Serbian Armed Forces is paying great attention to the development of sports in its ranks, Minister Vulin said:
- For this reason, in the forthcoming period, we will strive to strengthen particularly top-notch, representative sports. We wish to enable members of the Armed Forces to compete among themselves and with other armies, but also to compete with civilians, to show how much they are part of our entire life, our society. That is why the formation of military sports associations, or former companies, is in the pipeline. The modalities are still under consideration, but these efforts show how much attention is paid to the physical training and physical fitness of our members. Our soldier may sometimes have weapons that are not the most modern in the world, certainly there are armies that are at a higher technological level than we are, but it is not possible that we have an army that is less trained or that is less physically prepared than any army in the world. Any soldier can measure themselves with any of their colleagues in a foreign army, and it is up to us to provide them with the conditions to show all their skills, Minister Vulin said.Unlike members of foreign military national teams, who are mainly professionally engaged in the sport in which they are competing, athletes of the Serbian Armed Forces are primarily soldiers, professional members of the SAF or the MoD, who perform their professional duties during their working hours, and then they are the athletes who are preparing themselves devotedly and strenuously during their free time, taking time devoted to their families or vacation for training, because they love it and pay sacrifice for their army and for all of us. That should be changed, the minister said.
- When they already sacrifice themselves so much, when we have a lot of reasons to be proud of them, because they are competing shoulder to shoulder with professional athletes, participants in the Olympics and world championships, it is up to us to do everything we can to make what they do with so much heart become also their professional duty, Minister Vulin emphasized during the visit of the 51st Ski Training Ground at Mt. Kopaonik
Major General Siniša Radović, Head of the Serbian Armed Forces' Delegation to CISM, reported to the minister about the realisation of the training at Mt. Kopaonik and the results of the best Serbian Armed Forces' skiers and Minister Vulin then held a short conversation with the best representatives who will no doubt show, already in the World Championship in Austria, in a very tough competition in giant slalom, again, how worthy they are.At Mt. Kopaonik, Minister Vulin also visited the members of the Special Brigade and pilots of the AF&AD who are practicing in winter conditions on that snowy beuty and are doing regular conditioning in skiing, and then he discussed with representatives of Raška Municipality and Raška county the assistance of local self-government in the implementation of certain infrastructure projects of the Ministry of Defence and the Armed Forces at the 51st Ski Training Ground.
