Early Life
Smirnov was born in Shuchinsk (formerly of Kokshetau Oblast, now Akmola Oblast, Kazakh SSR. During the Soviet period, he trained at the Armed Forces sports society in Alma-Ata.
In 1994, he received the Holmenkollen Medal (shared with Lyubov Yegorova and Espen Bredesen).
Read more about this topic: Vladimir Smirnov (skier)
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man’s training begins, its probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“When it’s over I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”
—Mary Oliver (b. 1935)