The Sport and Adaptive School for Children and Teenagers is a unique facility for providing further education for children.
The main objective of the school is to engage children and teenagers with special needs, as well as physically impaired people of all ages, into regular adaptive sports practice. In addition, the school trains athletes and provides physical rehabilitation and social adaptation support for people with physical disabilities.
Tambov's regional sports organisation of further education, the Centre for the Rehabilitation of the Disabled Through Physical Education and Sport, "Invasportcentre," along with the Sport and Adaptive School for Children and Teenagers have established an alpine ski centre for physically disabled athletes. The project was initiated by the Directors of Invasportcentre Raisa Oleynikova and Mikhail Oleynikov.
Mikhail Oleynikov, Paisa Oleynikova and Alexander Shevchenko are currently training visually impaired athletes at the ski centre. There are 80 athletes, including 23 physically disabled athletes (four first-year beginners groups, one first-year training group, one first-year group for sports development, and one group of advanced sports development).
In 2011, skiing for visually impaired athletes was included in the list of core sports that are being developed for building up a pool of athletes for the national team. This sport has a successful history in the region: since 2006 visually impaired athletes have been participating in the Russian Alpine Skiing Championships for visually impaired athletes. From 2006 to 2011, the department trained one master of sports and 12 candidate masters of sport.