Civil funeral for Aleksandr Yakovlevich Gomelsky who passed away on Tuesday morning was held at USK CSKA.
The start of ceremony was set to 11.00 AM but people started to gather in front of the hall a long before the time. There was no crowd; the playing court of the sports hall had enough space to accommodate everyone. Everyone had an opportunity to come close to the coffin of Aleksandr Yakovlevich and to say goodbye. After that some visitors stayed on the court, some of them decided to leave. The atmosphere in the hall clearly reminded of the church. It was calm and quiet.
The farewell ceremony started three hours later. Military minister Sergey Ivanov was the first who had the speech. He said that the time Gomelsky spent at CSKA was “the golden era of our national basketball”. Ivanov also mentioned that instead of the colonel Gomelsky worth to be marshal.
Ivanov was followed by the major of Moscow Yuri Luzhkov. He said that Gomelsky did so much to CSKA and the Russian basketball in general that it would be enough for a very long period. “But also Gomelsky was a great personality not only in sports, - Luzhkov mentioned. – He was the man who could give you a great piece of advice at any time”.
CSKA chief Olga Smorodskaya offered to give USK CSKA name of Aleksandr Gomelsky.
The head of Federal agency of physical culture, sports and tourism Vyacheslav Fetisov, IOC vice president Vitaly Smirnov, ROC president Leonid Tyagachev, RFB president Sergey Chernov and Valdemaras Chomicius also had speeches at the ceremony.
Just after the farewell all the crowd was lifted to the Vagankovskoe cemetery.
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