NEWS AND MORE's video: Costume sledging and a giant pancake - a Russian winter festival

Costume sledging and a giant pancake - a Russian winter festival A good winter weekend consists of a lot of sledging and pancakes for one provincial Russian town. Mamadysh, a town in the Republic of Tatarstan, celebrated its annual Sunny Fest, which reads in Russian as 'Sleigh Festival' on Saturday (February 6). The festival, in it's fifth year, sees several dozen teams compete on an ice slope, wearing comical costumes and going downhill in decorated sledges for the award of most festive platform. Decorations included references to traditional Russian and Tatar fiction, as well as pirates and tanks. Ilnur Hananov, wearing a pirate skipper costume, said while there were no seas around, he still felt like a pirate on his river raft 'Black Pearl'. The 'winter variant' of his pirate vessel came rushing downhill at the festival and ended up in a pile of snow. Representatives of Turkish business in Tatarstan also took part in the festival, with the Turkish flag featuring in the contest. The students of a local polytechnic college prepared a giant pancake that was two and a half meters in diameter to mark the festival. (Production: Anton Derbenev)