To start with how many people can find Armenia on a map? Secondly how many people know what finswimming is? Finally, how many people have heard of Shavarsh Karapetyan?
Shavarsh Karapetyan was born in May 1953 in Armenia’s third largest city of Kirovakan which was then part of the Soviet Union.The city is now known Vanadzor.
Karapetyan’s father, Vladimir, was determined to make athletes out of Shavarsh and his younger brothers Kamo and Anatoly. He enrolled Shavarsh in a gymnastics academy run by former Olympian Albert Azaryan. Karapetyan impressed the gymnastics coaches but they said he that he had started the sport too late to become a champion. As an alternative one coach suggested Karapetyan take up swimming.
It was a wise choice as over the next few years he excelled in the backstroke and freestyle events. At the age of 17 he was devastated to be dropped from the Armenian swimming team. Then he had a chance meeting with a lifeguard named Liparit Almasakyan who was pioneering Armenia’s underwater swimming program. After this meeting that he took up finswimming.
There are four techniques to finswimming. You can either swim with the use of fins on the water’s surface using a snorkel with either monofins or bifins, or can swim underwater with a monofin, either by holding one’s breath or using open circuit scuba diving equipment.The sport was developed in Europe in the 1930’s with the first international competition being hosted by the Soviet Union in 1958. In 1967 it was a contested event in Italy at the European Championships. The first World Championships were held in Hanover, Germany in 1976.
Liparit Almasakyan’s training techniques sound like something out of a Rocky movie. They are the stuff of legend today in Armenia. He would make his athletes run over and above 20km with a sand-filled backpack strapped to their backs. They would have to endure rowing workouts on the cold waters of Lake Yerevan. The coach who was always ready to improvise at one stage connected planks of wood to cross-country ski boots and made Karapetyan jog in them. The aim of this was to improve his foot strength. Karapetyan would also carry a fellow swimmer on his shoulders while running up the hills that surrounded Lake Yerevan, or would be ‘the wheelbarrow’ while his team mate held his legs and climb the hill that way.
It clearly paid dividends as Karapetyan became a ten-time World Record-breaker in finswimming. By 1976 he had captured eight European swimming titles for the USSR. At the 1972 European championship in Moscow, Karapetyan, then 19 years old, had captured gold medals in the 50m and 100m sprints. Four years on from that triumph he was surprisingly dropped from the National Swimming squad. This made him more determined to train harder so that they could not overlook him.
Armenia gained its independence in 1991 but today just like in the 1970’s the country only has a handful of public swimming pools. There are few Armenian lakes and rivers that are suitable for swimming. It is claimed that only 30 percent of the population can swim. So Shavarsh Karapetyan was part of a rare breed
He was 23 years old and at his peak as an athlete when in September 1976 while in the defence forces he was jogging around Yerevan Lake with his brother Kamo, also a finswimmer. The pair had just completed their usual run which covered a distance of 20km, or 12 miles. Karapetyan had covered the distance with a pack of sand weighing 20kg on his back. Suddenly they heard a loud crashing sound and saw a trolleybus which had gone out of control and fallen from a dam wall sinking beneath the surface of the lake.
The trolleybus sank like a rock and soon stopped at the bottom of the lake. Despite the icy temperature of the lake and the bus having disappeared from the surface some 25 metres from where he was, Karapetyan dived into help. He swam to where the bus had disappeared aided by the poles from the top of the bus sticking up above the level of the water. He dived down to find it, visibility was almost zero, with silt rising from the floor of the lake, but somehow Karapetyan managed to break the back window with his legs.
He had no idea how many people were on board, but one by one started bringing people to the surface where his brother would then guide them to safety. For twenty minutes he went down to the bottom of the lake and returned to the surface with a passenger. Only then did the medics on the dam tell him that there was no need to go again, no one else would have survived.
In a classified report by the Armenian Communist Party, which the Yerevan news agency Mediamax obtained from Soviet-era archives and gave to ESPN’s Grantland, they reported that it claimed 46 people died while 20 others were saved and received medical attention. The brothers did not agree with the report. They felt sure that they had saved more than 20 lives. They felt that a number of passengers after being brought ashore simply left the scene and headed home.
Smashing the rear window had led to multiple lacerations on his legs., These and the temperature of the water led to him being confined to a hospital bed for 45 days. He developed pneumonia and sepsis. The doctor that treated him was surprised that they were able to save his life, so ill was he. He suffered subsequent lung problems which ultimately brought the curtain down on his sporting career.
Incredibly three weeks after he came out of hospital he was back in the pool. He struggled, mucus would come up from his lungs constantly and leave him coughing.
In the Spring of 1977 the USSR Swimming Championships were being held in Baku. Karapetyan’s entire family traveled to watch his return. He was in the 400m event and was down to race in the last heat. In the first heat one of his opponents set a world record. That record was beaten by another swimmer in the second heat.
In his heat he touched the wall a long way ahead of everyone. His brother Kamo who was poolside saw that he was too weak to climb out of the pool by himself. He jumped into the water and hugged his brother. Then his time was announced. It was 3:06.2 and Shavarsh Karapetyan had his 11th and final world record.
Later that same year he captured three silver medals and a gold at the European championship in Hungary. A remarkable return for a man who nearly lost his own life saving the lives of others.
It was two years before he received any recognition for his courageous and selfless act. He was eventually awarded the Medal “For the Salvation of the Drowning” and the Order of the Badge of Honor. In 1982 an article on his deed was published in Russia’s daily tabloid newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda and overnight he became a household name.
In 1985 Shavarsh Karapetyan happened to be passing near to a burning building that had people trapped inside. Once again without hesitation he rushed in and started pulling people out, without a second thought for his own safety.
He suffered severe burns and once again was confined to a hospital bed for a long period of time.
Once out of hospital he was later awarded a UNESCO “Fair Play” award for his heroism.
In 2014 the organizers of the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi had him to carry the Olympic torch into the Kremlin. Once again he saved the day, as the torch went out. Without missing a beat he had a security guard rekindle it, and hardly anyone noticed.
He had moved to Moscow and opened a cobblers, and following success with that store opened a restaurant and grocery store.
Shavarsh Karapetyan has never sought the limelight for his heroics. By all accounts He would rather be remembered for his swimming. He met his wife Nelli in 1981 but never mentioned his role in the rescue. The first she knew about it was when the story appeared in the Russian press. “She asked me why I never told her,” Karapetyan was quoted as telling Grantland. “I said, ‘We need to make babies, not tell stories.’”
He modestly told journalist Carl Schreck in 2014 when looking back on that fateful day, “There was no other choice, I knew that it wouldn’t be right if the world’s fastest underwater swimmer was there and didn’t even try to help. Nature and humanity would have judged me. God probably would have judged me.”
Hopefully the name Shavarsh Karapetyan will now be one that you remember, if not whenever you hear of Armenian athletes or finswimming his story springs to mind.
