MOSCOW -- Russian wrestler Alexander Karelin faced a tricky problem Monday--how to fit in training for the next Olympics with his new life as a member of parliament.
The 32-year-old, three-time Olympic champion and nine-time world champion won a seat in the State Duma lower house in Sunday's election, according to provisional results."He plans to continue his career and go for another Olympic medal," said a spokeswoman for the Unity (Yedinstvo) party, of which he was one of the leading candidates.
Asked how he would find time to train, she said: "I can't answer that."
His victory in a constituency in the Novosibirsk region of Siberia was achieved despite a lack of any political experience, and highlighted Unity's surprise election success.
Karelin was one of a host of prominent figures who won single-mandate contests to fill half the 450 Duma seats, while several experienced politicians plunged to defeat.
There were contests in which some candidates were purported to be seeking parliamentary immunity from prosecution. In some, big money, fame and mudslinging mattered more than policies, and many prominent candidates chose to run far from Moscow.
WINNERS
Crooner Iosif Kobzon, who has denied having links with the Russian mafia and often is called his country's answer to Frank Sinatra, continued to do it "his way" by regaining his seat in the mainly Buddhist region of Buryatia, which is in Siberia.
Boris Berezovsky, a businessman who often has been painted as influential in President Boris Yeltsin's inner circle, won a seat in the North Caucasus region of Karachayevo-Cherkessia.
Roman Abramovich, who controls the Sibneft oil company and also has political friends in high places, won in the Chukotka peninsula opposite Alaska.
Former Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin chose Siberia to make his comeback. He won a seat in the sparsely populated Yamalo-Nenets region which contains the bulk of the natural gas reserves of Gazprom, the huge company he once headed.
He was one of four former premiers who will be in the Duma.
Liberal Sergei Stepashin won in a district of St Petersburg. Centrists Sergei Kiriyenko and Yevgeny Primakov won places on party lists, under which parties that win more than 5 percent of votes divide 225 seats in the Duma between them.
Joining them in the Duma will be Boris Nemtsov and Irina Khakamada, leading lights of Kiriyenko's Union of Right-Wing Forces (SPS) and former members of his government team.
Former Tax Minister Georgy Boos won a seat for the centrist Fatherland-All Russia (OVR) bloc, and Vladimir Ryzhkov held on in Barnaul in southern Siberia, bucking a trend that saw his Our Home is Russia party sink almost without trace.
Yuri Maslyukov, a moderate Communist in charge of the economy under Primakov, made it back into the Duma.
So did former Soviet Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov, Communist Anatoly Lukyanov, a former chairman of the Soviet parliament, and former Soviet Politburo member Yegor Ligachov.
LOSERS
Losers included some of Yeltsin's once-close allies, as well as some of his arch-foes.
Nationalities Minister Vyacheslav Mikhailov, a first deputy prime minister, was on course to win less than 1 percent of votes, according to Russian television.
Deputy Duma speaker Sergei Baburin, a nationalist, lost in Omsk in Siberia. Ruslan Khasbulatov, a former parliamentary speaker who was one of the leaders of a hard-line rebellion against Yeltsin in 1993, lost in the far east.
Alexander Korzhakov, Yeltsin's close confidant and bodyguard before his dismissal prompted him to denounce his former boss, lost his seat in the central city of Tula.
The wives of former St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak and Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov both failed to win seats.