Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan attended the award ceremony of the amateur swimming tournament "Prime Minister's Cup of the Republic of Armenia".

The tournament was held in Lake Sevan, in the beach area adjacent to Shoghakat (former Shorzha) settlement of Chambarak community, Gegharkunik Province, with two age groups. 1st age group: women and men aged 18 to 40, 2nd age group: women and men over 41 years old. Women competed in 1000 meters and men in 1500 meters of swimming distance.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sport Zhanna Andreasyan, First Deputy Minister of Health Lena Nanushyan, Governor of Gegharkunik Karen Sargsyan handed over the prizes to the winners. Nikol Pashinyan also handed over souvenirs and diplomas to the oldest participants.

The Prime Minister welcomed the attendees, tournament participants and prize winners.

"Dear attendees,

Dear representatives of the executive and legislative branches,

Dear participants of the "Prime Minister's Cup" swimming tournament,

First I want to thank you all for participating. One of the important goals of this tournament is to make this beautiful coast of Shoghakat more visible to our tourists, especially since we now have a pretty good road from both Vardenis and Sevan sides. Of course, improvement works are still ongoing and will continue.

I think this coast is very attractive for tourists, we also want to make it attractive for investments in order to create a new format, a new investment culture on the shore of Lake Sevan.

You have certainly noticed that usually the geography of our prize winners in other tournaments is wider, although it must be admitted that it does not cover the entire republic, but in the case of swimming, our geography is narrower. During the awards ceremony, me and the minister were talking about it, that this is proof of one thing: the lack of appropriate infrastructure, swimming pools, in the country.

And I also want to remind everyone from this podium that we have started a very important project to create sports centers in the the enlarged communities of the country, which will include a sports school, a fitness center for adults and definitely a swimming pool. We promised the first to Yeghegnadzor enlarged community, the second to Berd enlarged community. I instructed the chairman of the Urban Development Committee to have a model design and build these sports centers one by one, first in all enlarged communities, and later in large communities. I think this is very important from all perspectives: to promote a healthy lifestyle in Armenia, to develop physical culture and sports, to have a healthy generation, and in general to have more entertainments for the youth.

This tournament is also important in that we draw some conclusions. It may seem that we just come here, give a short speech and leave, but certain conclusions, including about the geography of the prize winners, emerge as a result of such contacts. And decisions follow those conclusions.

I want to thank all the participants again. I especially want to applaud those participants who, yes, showed that courage and came to participate, it doesn't matter that they didn't reach the finish line, they will reach it next year. I would like to give a very warm and hearty round of applause to all the non-prize winning participants.

I thank everyone for their participation, I thank the organizers, the partners from the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, all regional administrations, all departments, the enlarged community of Chambarak, Shoghakat settlement, all our partners who had some type of participation. And also, of course, a big thank to those fans who came to cheer on the participants of the "Prime Minister's Cup" swimming tournamnet.

Thank you all and I wish you success."

Cash prizes were awarded to the participants who took the 1st to 10th places in both age groups. 1st place: 1,000,000 AMD, 2nd place: 500,000 AMD, 3rd place: 300,000 AMD, 4th place: 100,000 AMD, 5-10th place: 50,000 AMD each.

More than 130 participants applied for participation this year. The tournament has also been internationalized, both Armenian and foreign citizens had the right to participate. the only limitation was that the participant must not be professional swimmer and must not have participated in Armenian championships and international tournaments in the last 5 years.