Swimmer Popov Stabbed During Fight on Street

Olympic gold-medal swimmer Alexander Popov was in intensive care in a Moscow hospital Sunday after being stabbed in the stomach during a street fight with a group of watermelon vendors.

After emergency surgery overnight, doctors at Clinical Hospital No. 31 said the Russian swimmer’s condition was still “grave and unstable” but added that his lung--pierced along with a kidney--was functioning almost as well as before the attack.

Popov regained consciousness soon after the operation.

“First of all, I want to thank the doctors who did the operation. There’s no need to worry. I’m going to be walking soon--and swimming,” the 24-year-old told NTV television from his hospital bed. Popov looked weak and had a bandage around his head, but he was smiling.

Russia’s Itar-Tass news agency said Popov was attacked in southwestern Moscow at 11 p.m. on Saturday while escorting a woman. The agency said police did not know why he got into the fight.

The swimmer, who won two gold and two silver medals at the Atlanta Olympics, was stabbed in the torso. The knife pierced his stomach, grazing his lungs and kidney, according to Gennady Alyoshin, president of the Russian Swimming Federation.

No arrests have been made, and his attackers have not been identified.

Violent crime has skyrocketed in Moscow since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the birth of a market economy, and the detection rate is low.

Vendors from out of town selling fruits and vegetables line the streets in Moscow now that the harvest season is beginning in private plots and gardens. Watermelons went on sale about a week ago.

Russian Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin was outraged by the attack, Tass said, and told law enforcement agencies to take “all possible measures to thoroughly investigate the incident.”

In Atlanta, Popov won the 50-meter and 100-meter freestyle races for a second consecutive Olympics and helped Russia finish second in the 400-meter freestyle and 400-medley relays.