Shavarsh Karapetyan, who is in the focus of today’s feature, is an 11–time world record holder and 17-time world underwater swimming champion. However, sporting achievements are not the only reason why this man was so admired by millions across the former Soviet Union.
“Each time we came to Moscow we usually moved around the city in taxicabs,” Shavarsh says. “One day I was making a brief trip on a trolleybus, when, all of a sudden, a woman I had never met before, came up and started to hug me, saying she had read about me in a newspaper. I will never  forget the admiration I saw in the eyes of the people standing around me… People’s love is the greatest reward one can hope for…”
…It happened on September 16, 1976 in Yerevan, the capital of the then Soviet republic of Armenia. A packed trolleybus moving along the local reservoir suddenly swerved off course and plunged into the water with dozens of terrified commuters trapped inside. 20 passengers would have surely died, if Shavarsh Karapetyan did not happen to be nearby... Immediately figuring out what was going on, Shavarsh, already an acclaimed underwater swimmer, jumped into the water, broke a glass window of the sunken trolley and started pulling out, one by one, 20 of the people trapped 10 meters below… Already losing conscience, Shavarsh pulled ashore the last passenger. Thirty years on, Shavarsh says:
“They say time is the best healer, but the wound is still there, both on my body and deep down in my soul. Many people died that day, this is something I  will never forget… I saw how they were dying. Or, rather, felt because the water was muddy and I could hardly see anything… I knew just how long you can stay underwater and how you can die there. Just like some underwater swimmers did running out of oxygen in their air tanks... When such a thing happens during a heat, chances are high you will never get out alive. Well, sometimes people did somehow manage to finish the distance, but by then they were already more dead than alive, really…”
The morning after the tragedy Shavarsh went down with general blood contamination, pneumonia and stress. His doctors doubted he would ever be able to resume his sports activities. The man had to go one better of himself to overcome the illness, and overcome he did! And even set still another world record - his eleventh…
“I spent a whole ten years on the Soviet national team, mainly swimming with the aqualung,” Shavarsh Karapetyan goes on to say. “After that accident I started having problems, however, even though I somehow managed to establish another world record. It looked as if, deep inside me, something started to give a way, I was having problems with my lungs, which was certainly no good for me as an underwater swimmer. In any case, I believe that quitting sports at 28 is normal. The time had simply come for me to go, and so I quit…”
Forgetting the sport and the hard-won medals has not been easy. In his dreams Shavarsh often sees himself taking part in a competition, waiting for the shot to jump into the water… “I guess this is something all athletes go through,” he says. “I have a lingering feeling that I must take part in competitions, show my skills and win. I guess this is the feeling I will always have…”
Shavarsh inherited his love for the sports from his father, Vladimir Karapetyan, who, in his day, was a fine athlete too…
“Parents always want their kids to be healthy and physically fit,” Shavarsh Karapetyan says. “My father was an athlete, a good gymnast and a football player… Then, in the 1940’s and 50’s people were going more for general sports like football, basketball and wrestling. Small wonder that he sent all his three sons to sports schools. My brothers Kamo, Anatoly, and I started off with gymnastics, then switched to swimming and, finally, to underwater swimming…”
“This guy has exactly the character one needs to work miracles,” Shavarsh’s coach once said. And very rightly so!
After the Soviet national daily Komsomolskaya Pravda wrote about what happened on that tragic day in Yerevan, the editors started getting heaps of letters people were sending in from all across the Soviet Union, eager to express their admiration for the hero who saved so many lives…
“They invited me to the newspaper’s office and showed me all those sacks full of letters,” Shavarsh Karapetyan recalls. “I wish I took them all with me…  Well, to be frank, I only answered a few such letters… There were many letters from school kids. Once I received one from a woman in Siberia who had lost her son. The boy was drowning and there was nobody around to help him out... I wrote back and later met her, just like many other people who were writing me…”
Years later a television network in Moscow invited Shavarsh Karapetyan and the people he once saved for a studio reunion. Some of those people also became his good friends, like, for example, Teresa Sogomonyan. “I learned the name of the man who saved us from the article in Komsomolskaya Pravda,” Teresa recalled. “Ever since then Shavarsh Karapetyan has been our beloved person… We come to see him on his birthdays, and we also celebrate September 16 – the anniversary of the tragedy - as my second birthday…”
Shavarsh is pretty tight-lipped whenever the matter of the 1976 tragedy comes up. “It was the only thing I could possibly do,” he says. “I was a seasoned underwater swimmer who just happened to be in the right place at the right time. I guess I was the only one who could do the job right and, if so, it means I simply had to do that. That’s my philosophy.” Shavarsh doesn’t think  saving 20 lives is something extraordinary. “There is always room for human relationship,” he says with conviction. “You can’t just walk away when someone needs your help…”
And still, what Shavarsh Karapetyan did that fateful morning has made him a national hero and the proud holder of the Order of Distinction. He recently became the hero of school compositions written as part of a competition recently held in Tatarstan, where Shavarsh himself was handing out the awards.
His sporting achievements are remembered too - they hold the annual Shavarsh Karapetyan national swimming tournament here in Russia…
There is a small planet in our solar system now bearing the name of this many times world and European champion, who has long quit sports and is now engaged in a business that is as far away from space, as it is from underwater swimming. Moving to Moscow in 1993, Shavarsh opened a shoe-repair shop in the southwest of the Russian capital. Starting a new business proved just about as hard as setting world records, but Shavarsh believes that nothing comes easy in this world. All you have to do is to be a professional and work hard and honestly. A successful businessman, Shavarsh is still kind, modest and responsive, always ready to help people around him.
“I have always tried to work thoroughly, in sports winning all the long distance runs and now in business,” Shavarsh Karapetyan says. “All you need is to be honest and have a sense of responsibility for the work you do, your family, your kids, even the flowers you buy for your wife…”
Asked what he would take with him on a flight to the planet bearing his name, Shavash laughed and said, “Nothing. Just a clean piece of paper… I love starting from scratch, you know…”
Shavarsh has a dream - to build a big and beautiful house for his family, relatives and friends. He hopes that some day this dream will come true… After all, his friends say Shavarsh is a pertinacious man, and achieving his goals is a natural thing for him.
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Illustrations: Vadim Leybovsky, “Twenty Lives of Shavarsh Karapetyan”, Fizkultura i Sport, Moscow, 1988
18/04/2006
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