He gets up every morning at 4 AM and sits down to work – he reads, he writes. Then he does his morning exercises, trains, and actively stretches his muscles. Afterwards he eats breakfast, packs up and goes to work.

As soon as he shows up in the building, everybody hears his thundering voice, and his boiling energy does not let anybody rest.

Only for one hour during lunch can his subordinates take a free breath, because then this passionate workaholic removes himself to his home, needing to fortify himself with a short nap. But afterwards – back into action: to attentively observe the teaching process, to tutor students, to encourage instructors, and to bring up the pupils.

Twice a week he plays reckless volleyball or basketball with his colleagues, veterans of sport. He remembers exactly where in his home library, which holds more than 3000 volumes, is any particular book located. He reads quickly, accurately, and then he replaces the book in its spot; he dislikes it indeed when somebody puts his books in the wrong place.

He loves to tell you the truth straight into your face. He acknowledges and respects a person’s competence, education and integrity, but not his official rank.

He is impulsive but persevering. He is very nice, but can be harsh. He can criticize someone mercilessly for some transgression, and then be very upset, thinking that maybe he had overdone it. He is not ashamed to admit that he cried.

He has been looking at one woman with adoration – his wife; he showers her with compliments and jokes about her and himself.

He knows four languages. He does not drink or smoke.

An extraordinary personality, he is a man who made himself, and who has beaten a wide road for his students and followers.

Kherel-ool Oorzhak – a teacher of physical education, Doctor of pedagogical sciences, professor, dean of the department of physical education and sport of Tuvan State University, Merited worker of physical education of Russian Federation, Merited educator of republic Tuva, distinguished instructor of physical education of Russia and Mongolia, and Member of Sankt-Peterburg Academy of Sciences and Arts.

You can’t do that!

We decide on a meeting for the interview. The professor caringly asks over the phone if I won’t object to a ride in a “UAZ”.

At the assigned time, he drives to my house entrance in his car, to pick me up and take to his residence. On the way he rings up his wife Svetlana Yanchapovna, asking her if she could postpone whatever she was doing at the time and to come home to organize some tea for his guest. Kherel-ool Dazhy-Namchalovich’s friends and colleagues say that one of his main traits is gallantry.

At the intersection, he brakes in front of the pedestrian crosswalk, and stares with extreme disapproval at a man who is slowly crossing the road on a green light, leading a little three-year-old boy by the hand.

“You can’t do that! – he exclaims and right away he explains to me. – One has to carry a child in his arms. You know the drivers here are so reckless, you never know when they’ll speed up.”

Indifference is not on the list of this temperamental professor’s qualities.

The most desired subject

-         Kherel-ool Dazhy-Namchalovich, how did you become interested in sport?

-         In these matters, very much depends on physical education teachers at school. I went to the village school in Aldan-Maadyr of the Sut-Khol district, where my family lived.

My father Dazhy-Namchal Chyrtai-oolovich Oorzhak was a prominent herder. My mother, Khuna Ilginovna had six children to bring up. Two are not with us anymore. Only four are left.

There was a remarkable gym teacher at the school, Suur-ool Khurgulekovich Ondar. He was two meters tall, weighed about a hundred kilograms – he was a wrestler, a sextuple champion of the republican Naadym. Strong and fast.  And how beautiful it was when he would get the ball in volleyball!

At that time, beside him, there were several other teachers of various subjects who were also inclined towards sports: Oorzhak Dudak, Kuular Eker-ool, Khovalyg Kozhai-ool. They liked to play, and the children became interested too. Skillful, agile, built like athletes, techniques in play – all of that was attractive, appealing.

In the village, we used to like to play team games: volleyball, basketball. We especially liked hockey with a ball. In those times we did not have ice skates, we simply ran around in the snow.  We cleaned the snow off a little bit, set up a goal, and went chasing around as we were. You can’t imagine the things we used instead of a hockey stick! Later the teachers started bringing us skates. We even became the district champions, and we defeated the teams of all the neighboring districts.

-         So physical education was your favorite subject?

-         Not simply my favorite, but the most desired one! But I did very well in other subjects, too.

People think that one becomes an athlete only because they can’t do anything else, science for example. That is a deeply mistaken opinion! Those who are good at sports also have a quick mind, think logically, and develop operative reasoning.

For schoolchildren, physical education classes are very important. The main thing in gym is movement. They need to run, leap, jump, exercise as much as possible, because in all other subjects the kids have to sit quietly.

So in physical education the organism recreates, recuperates from the mental stress, and charges up with fresh energy. That should give good results in subjects where mental abilities are demanded.

-         For me the phys. ed.  classes were exhausting, senseless harassment, especially during the 1 kilometer runs.

-         That is a very painful, very serious theme. Here also everything depends on the specialist, or, more exactly, on his professional competence. Now, here in the republic half of the gym teachers are not specialists.

They can never offer healthy physical exercise load which develops the body physically, and which acts as prevention of disease, they simply do not know anything about it. That is the reason why many schoolchildren hate the gym classes. The instructor who makes them run for kilometers just to give them a grade is just a criminal! The kids can get sick from that, there even were cases of children dying in the gym classes.

The lessons have to be set up methodically and correctly. Also in two-three months you have to inform the kids about what they will be doing, what type of load they will be exposed to, so that the kids could prepare themselves morally, physically and psychologically.

Then physical education will become a desirable subject for all.

How do the muscles move?

-         And your interest in sports never turned into a wish to go into the big sports, to specialize in some type of sport?

-         The selection of a type of sport depends on the trainer or instructor. We did not have any professional trainers. We did not have a special gym hall, specialized equipment, or means.

But you chose a profession connected with sports. How did you select your higher education?

We with my relatives and friends looked at special programs in various colleges of the country. Among them we saw some openings in the department of physical education and sport at the Krasnoyarsk state pedagogical institute.

I was pretty good in ice hockey; I was even a multiple district champion. I started seriously preparing for that. I found what the norms were, and I trained at home – long jump, distance running.

The exams were in Kyzyl. Together with me, there were twenty people trying for four openings, and among them were some people who were well known in sports at the time. Four of us got in – Amyrda Nikolai, Oorzhak Chadamba, Soskal Nikolai and me. I was the only one of us who later went into science.

-         What or who led you to science?

-         Already in first year I became very interested in questions “why” and “how”. How do human muscles move? Why, with the same training, one person can get very high results, while another one can’t? very interesting physiology courses contributed to it; they were led by Natan Yakovlevich Volkin. I think that it was from him that I received my first push towards sciences.

As a matter of fact I was the first one of all the first year students and among all who studied there from Tuva, who got an “A” in anatomy. It was a very difficult subject! The anatomy instructor Vasilii Alexeyevich Pakulov remembers me to this day, he is still alive.

And the instructor of theory and methodics of physical education, Ivan Artemyevich Medvedev is also alive. I wrote very good term papers with him. He also inspired and encouraged me: “Go on, write some more!”

-         So you continued?

-         And how! To be advanced to aspiranture one has to write a paper on a concrete theme. So I used the materials of my instructors.

So the second push towards science came from Ivan Artemyevich. Later he received medal from republic Tuva “For valiant work” for his many years of work in education and teaching of Tuvan students. I personally brought this award for my teacher to Krasnoyarsk.

You give birth to your thoughts

-         So you started your aspiranture right after finishing the college?

-         No at first I went back to Tuva to work. I started in September of 1972 as physical education instructor at the Tuvan agricultural technical school, and I coached the kids in volleyball.

And how could I have been involved in science about physical education and sport, with whom could I have talked about these interests? But I got lucky again.

In 1975 I started working at the Kyzyl branch of the Krasnoyarsk Polytechnic Institute. That is where I met ethnographer Irgit Sambu, who was doing research on Tuvan national games. He was already a candidate of historical sciences at that time.

Irgit Ungulchekovich told me back then: “You are a smart guy. Why don’t you write a candidate dissertation in your specialty?” somebody who can notice the creative potential of a young specialist, and who will support him to complete his new work, is a very intelligent, very wise person. I dedicated my first monograph to him, “Pedagogical content of physical culture of peoples of South Siberia”, which was published in Kyzyl in 1995.

He gave me his report to read: “Read this, you will get ideas.” I carefully read the text and made an abstract. Then I started looking for a place to continue further studies. I learned about all the schools which might accept somebody as aspirant in my specialty, I wrote applications. I was accepted in Moscow. So I went to the Pan-Union science-research institute of physical education.

-         And were you also lucky with your preceptor of your candidate dissertation in this institute?

-         Yes, my work was supervises by Ivan Ivanovich Pereverzin. Remarkable person. But he remained a candidate of sciences; I “outgrew” him once he called me, and talked about it with a smile. I told my teacher: “It is only thanks to you.”

I had always been lucky with good teachers, they all helped me.

The sports archives

-         What was your first serious work in science dedicated to, I mean your dissertation?

-         Even in Kyzyl, with Irgit Ungulchekovich’s help, I formulated several variants of dissertation themes for research of Tuvan national types of sport. They approved it in Moscow, just corrected the direction of the work more towards the pedagogical aspect – “System of organization of physical-athletic work with population according to place of residence on the basis of use of national types of sport”.

-         How did you collect the material?

-         Oh, that was the most complicated kind of work! I worked in the state archive of Tuva. I searched the catalogs, documents; I read everything that was ever written in Old Tuvan, and in Russian languages. I collected everything that concerned sport in the republic.

I also worked in the militia archives I had to get a special permission, otherwise they would not let me in.

-         And what was interesting for you in the militia archives?

-         When Tuva was a separate state, the champions of the republic in various kinds of sport were always the army people. They had their teams, they trained, competed. I needed the data of the athletes, of the khuresh wrestlers, of the military multi-sport competitions, of index horse performances.

I worked even in the party archive in the House of Political Enlightenment, which is now the House of People’s Arts. They had everything in excellent order, documents were very well systematized and filed by year, by type of science, farming, by districts.

Beside the archives, I also visited the athletes – those who became famous during the time of Tuvan People’s Republic: Belek-Bair Alexei, Brazhnikov Nikolai, Chanzan-ool, Salchak Toka, Artas, Sat Aldyn-ool, Aldyn-Kherel, Khoilakaa, Khuren-ool.

I went to the veterans’ homes, talked with them, and wrote down everything they told me. I have kept all those notes, and I use them to this day.

I also had questionnaires. That was completely new stuff for me.

Million of Tuvan residents

-         Whom did you question and about what?

-         I had to ask people about the sports they did, what type, how much, where; motives of exercises, what physical culture or sport gives them, what place it takes in their personal life.

It started with my preceptor saying to me: “Go and do questioning in all the districts!”

In all of them? I was horrified!

My experienced older friend Irgit Sambu came to the rescue. He took me to the districts in his car, and took me on business trips for the association “Knowledge”. We gave lectures in schools, and to the population. At the same time we did not forget to question the young people.

As to the methods of the questionnaires, Sergei Korenevskiy helped me. He advanced to aspiranture a year earlier. He is now the Rector  of Smolensk State university of physical education and sport. He explained to me how to do the questioning, and about samples.

There were some amusing incidents during the planning. For example, he asked me: “How many people live in Tuva?”

I did not really know, so I guessed: “About a million people.”

Sergei: “The sample can consist of 10% of the population, then it is significant.”

Even with the percentage, it was still too many. I went to get more accurate numbers, and it turned out that there were only about 300 thousand people.

Then my friend advised me to limit myself to the three most typical districts of Tuva, and to question 10% of students from the districts who were studying in Kyzyl. So that is what I did.

To confess to a deadly sin

-         And how did you go about doing all the calculation of the results?

-         By hand, of course. Now it is very simple. You hand the questionnaires to a computer guy, he plugs in the numbers and the machine calculates everything back and forth and crosswise.

But I had to spread the piles of questionnaires all over my dormitory room, on the bed, the dresser, on the window-sill.  I checked off the numbers in a table, I added the answers, all the different variants, including the population groups. It took two months.

-         Enviable perseverance.

-         I would like to say a few words on this painful theme. Now I send my aspirants to Moscow for a month, especially to work in the libraries. Then I ask every one of them: “In which library did you work?” and it becomes clear that the guy never went to the Lenin library, to the Russian State Library. For me it is like confessing to a deadly sin. How can you collect material for a dissertation without spending some time at the Lenin library?

I used to literally disappear in there. I would go in at nine in the morning, and I would come out at nine or ten at night. I read, wrote summaries and abstracts so much that my fingers hurt, and I had calluses. Even though I was writing about sport in Tuva, I read all the dissertations about our republic, about history, culture, philology.

Thirty-nine national games

-         So you researched in depth all the Tuvan national games which were at the core of the physical culture of the nation. And how many games are there?

-         Many researchers made classifications of Tuvan games, including my tutor Irgit Sambu.

Much depends on specialization. You can classify them by age groups: children’s games or adult.

You can use other criteria. Historians count in their own way. Educators, including myself, have also their own classification.

I think that the classification I introduced is worked out in more detail. For example, historians did not note table games, and they also did not count water procedures, which I classify with the elements of physical culture of Tuvans. After me, other scholars also produced classifications and brought in some additions.

-         Were they substantial additions?

-         Not so far. But, for example, my colleague Elena Mikhailovna Ak-ool recently defended her dissertation, and she added elements of dance to the other described types. And she is right.

-         Is there an exact number of national games?

-         Yes, there are 39 active games. And there are 4 types of sport.

Basically, everybody names three: khuresh, horse race and archery. I added tevek to that.

Tevek was one of the most popular kinds of game in pre-revolutionary Tuva. It is played by two or several people. They kick and juggle with their feet a lead disc covered with goat hair, without dropping it for a long time. With time, tevek became a national type of sport.

Other Siberian peoples have a similar game, but it seems to me that our, Tuvan type is more original. At the same time our lead is stronger and heavier, that means that a bit of ordinary wind does not interfere with the game. There are several ways of juggling.

The other games are just as interesting  in both their content and objectives.

For example, in the game panchyk of south Tuvans a special shell kauri is used, about 1 to 1.5 cm. the interesting part is that this shell is native only to the Maldives and Laccadive Islands in the Indian Ocean.

They are very rare and expensive objects, which were used as attributes of shamans’ attire. In some countries these shells were used as currency.

How these sea shells showed up in Tuva is a mystery.

To be continued.