On September 13, Vitebsk / Sergey Kotovets - BELTA /. Chapters about Vitebsk Olympians Vadim Devyatovsky, Sergey Koplyakov, and Viktor Kurentsov have been added to the second edition of the book "Vitebsk Region Olympic". The book now contains information about all 21 Olympic medalists who were born in or whose sports careers are associated with the Vitebsk region. This was announced today at the presentation of the edition by Viktor Bynkov, Executive Director of the NOC representative office in the Vitebsk region, as reported by BELTA correspondent. After the release of the first edition in 2009, "Vitebsk Region Olympic" immediately became a bibliographic rarity. The need for a second, supplemented edition also arose because, during the work on the first book, the authoring team identified two more athletes, natives of the Vitebsk region, who had become Olympic champions. These were weightlifter Viktor Kurentsov and swimmer Sergey Koplyakov. Viktor Kurentsov was born in 1941 in the Senno district, lost his father early in the war, then his mother, and was raised in an orphanage. During his service in the army in the Far East, coaches from the army club noticed the young man, and he began to professionally engage in weightlifting. At the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo, Viktor Kurentsov won a silver medal, and at the next Games in Mexico City in 1968, the athlete added a gold medal to his collection. Today, he lives in Odintsovo, Moscow Oblast, and is an honorary citizen of this city. Sergey Koplyakov is from Orsha. He won two gold and one silver medal at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow and is a silver medalist of the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal. Furthermore, during the work on the second edition of the book, the silver medalist of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Vadim Devyatovsky, managed to defend his medal in a dramatic struggle at the Court of Arbitration for Sport. The chapter about the hammer thrower has taken its rightful place in "Vitebsk Region Olympic". Another significant reason for the release of the second edition of the book was its demand by educational institutions in the region. "In the preparation of the book, we received support from the education and sports departments of the regional executive committee, whose leadership is confident that the book should be in every educational institution for the development of Olympic education and the upbringing of the younger generation," noted Viktor Bynkov.