Background
An ethnic Ossetian, Leri Khabelov was born in Tbilisi, then-Soviet Georgia in 1964.
An ethnic Ossetian, Leri Khabelov was born in Tbilisi, then-Soviet Georgia in 1964.
From 1993 to 1996, he contested for the Russian Federation. He has been a vice-president of the Georgian National Olympic Committee from 2000 to 2007 and deputy chairman of the Sports Department of Georgia from 1998 to 2004. Leri Khabelov became involved in the Georgian politics in 2008, when he ran, unsuccessfully, in the parliamentary election on a ticket of the opposition Republican Party of Georgia.
He was elected to the Parliament in the October 1, 2012 election and became a chairman of the parliamentary Committee for Sport and Youth Affairs on October 21, 2012.
In 2012, he was elected to the Parliament of Georgia on a ticket of the Georgian Dream party. In 2012, he joined the new opposition party Georgian Dream spearheaded by the tycoon Bidzina Ivanishvili.