Triumph of fortitude: Soviet athletes at the Olympics-52

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The international Olympic movement, led by a former friend of V. Putin and holder of the Russian Order of Honor, Thomas Bach (“Bakhnash”), is finally mired in political squabbles. However, the sport of high achievements has always been woven into political struggle, so that the euphonious idealistic principles of Baron Pierre de Coubertin, let's tell the truth, exist only on paper.

In this brutal sports and political war there is a place for everything: both feat and the most base manifestations of human nature. Today, when some of the most scandalous Olympic Games in their history are opening in the Korean town of Pyeongchang, it will not be superfluous to remember how the Olympic history began for our country. The debut of the USSR, as you know, took place at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. This became possible after the National Olympic Committee of the USSR was unanimously (sic!) Admitted to the international Olympic family at the 45th session of the IOC on May 7, 1951 in Vienna. Note also that the allied USSR countries of Eastern Europe - Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland (plus Tito's Yugoslavia) - took part in the London Olympics four years earlier than us (in 1948), and Hungary took fourth place in the overall team classification.

In our time, about the 1952 Olympics, some domestic "democrats" say that, they say, the "Stalinist" Soviet Union failed it, outright losing to the Americans in the team event. Indeed, according to modern concepts, the USSR took “only” second place in Helsinki: our athletes won 22 gold medals against 40 from the Americans. True, then a completely different scoring system was adopted: a certain number of points were awarded for places from first to sixth, so that according to that system, the Soviet Union and the United States scored an absolutely equal number of points - 494, dividing the first and second places. The USSR was ahead of all competitors in silver (30 versus 19 for the United States) and bronze medals (19 versus 17 for the United States and Germany). Well, okay, given such a key additional indicator as the number of gold medals, we can admit that a little, just a little, we still lost to our principled opponents.

However, behind the dry statistics of the numbers summarized in the table, such incredible feats of Soviet athletes are hidden that many medals of any dignity won by them were worth several gold pieces. A significant part of the USSR Olympic team was made up of participants in the recently thundered Great Patriotic War, people who went through the hardest trials - through such trials that the overwhelming majority of their rivals at the Games “never dreamed of”.

Soviet athletes, in general, excelled in that war. A special military unit subordinate to the NKVD was formed from them: the Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade for Special Purpose (OMSBON), whose units carried out daring special operations behind enemy lines. Outstanding athletes have passed through it. For example, the four-time absolute champion of the USSR in boxing Nikolai Korolev, who fought as part of Dmitry Medvedev's partisan detachment in Volyn (this detachment also included scout Nikolai Kuznetsov). Or skier Lyubov Kulakova, a three-time champion of the USSR, who died in battle at the age of 22 (at the end of winter 1942) and was posthumously awarded the high title of Honored Master of Sports of the USSR.

There is no doubt that many promising athletes died and received injuries incompatible with their future sports career in the battles - and this could not but affect the "medal harvest" of the Soviet team at the 1952 Olympics. By the way, the female part of the team then performed better than the male part - and this speaks of the potential of Soviet sports at that time, laid down back in the 1930s. If not for the war, not for privations in the rear, not for the post-war devastation, not for the absence of a full-fledged childhood among those who entered adulthood by the beginning of the 50s - if not for all this, the result of the USSR national team at the first Olympics for it was would probably be much better, and our athletes would "tear" the Americans who did not really fight, did not starve, did not freeze. Although … on the other hand, perhaps, military tests gave our champions such fortitude that allowed them to win? And the strength of spirit among the front-line athletes was extraordinary.

The gymnast became one of the main heroes of the Olympics-52 Victor Chukarin- he won 4 gold (including the most prestigious and valuable: in the absolute championship) and 2 silver medals. At that time, he was already 32 years old - the age for a gymnast is practically retirement. And of these past years, three and a half were spent in German concentration camps, including the most terrible death camp in Buchenwald.

Victor's youth - a native of Donbass, a Don Cossack by his father, a Greek by his mother - was spent in Mariupol. He studied at the technical school of physical education, managed to become (at the age of 19) the champion of Ukraine and fulfill the standard of the master of sports of the USSR, dreamed of participating in the championship of the Union. But the war began, he was drafted into the army. In the fall of 1941, during the tragic battles on the Left-Bank Ukraine, the artillery driver Chukarin received a concussion and was taken prisoner. I went through 17 camps, tried to escape more than once. Despite the exhausting work in the quarries for 12 hours a day and malnutrition (Chukarin in captivity lost up to forty kilograms), even in a concentration camp he tried to somehow keep fit, did exercises, for which his comrades gave him the nickname Gymnast. In April 1945, the prisoners, including Chukarin, were herded by the Germans on a barge and taken out to the North Sea to be flooded. Fortunately, a British bomber swooped down here, sank the tug, and after a while the emaciated prisoners were picked up by an Allied patrol ship.

When Chukarin returned home, his own mother did not recognize him. It turned out that back in 1941 a funeral had come to him. Returning to a peaceful life, Victor entered the newly created Lviv Institute of Physical Culture, began to train hard. At the first post-war USSR championship in 1946, he became only 12th, the next year - the fifth. And finally, in 1948, success came - first place in the exercises on the uneven bars. In 1949-51, Chukarin won the absolute championship of the Union and asserted himself as the best gymnast in the USSR.

Viktor Chukarin went to the 1952 Olympics as the captain of the gymnastics squad. And in Helsinki, by the way, his exploits did not end: two years later he won the world championship, performing with a damaged finger, and in 1956 the 35-year-old (!) Gymnast won 3 more gold medals at the Games in Melbourne! His main rival, the Japanese Takashi Ono, who was 10 years younger and who was clearly sympathetic to the judges, had to admit: “It is impossible to win against this man. Failures act on him as a call for new victories. One of the first athletes, Viktor Ivanovich Chukarin, two-time absolute champion of the Olympic Games, world champion and five-time absolute champion of the USSR, was awarded the Order of Lenin in 1957. The award was presented to him by Kliment Voroshilov.

Having completed a brilliant career as an athlete, Chukarin was engaged in pedagogical activity: he trained our gymnasts at the 1972 Olympics, taught at the Lviv Institute of Physical Education for many years, and headed the department of gymnastics there. He died in 1984 and was buried at the Lychakiv cemetery. In Lviv, Viktor Chukarin is not forgotten: a street is named after him, a memorial plaque in honor of the great champion adorns the facade of the building of the main building of the Lviv infiz.

Chukarin's fellow gymnast Hrant Shahinyan was lame - the consequence of an injury in 1943. With such a disability, which seemed to leave no chance of winning in big-time sports, the Armenian athlete won 2 gold medals (in the team championship and individually on the rings) and 2 silver medals. He especially impressed with his performance on horseback (with his "Shahinyan's turntable").

Among the Soviet Olympians, not only Chukarin went through German captivity (and we will still be "rubbed in" that supposedly the captive put an indelible stigma on a person, and then "because of a bad profile" they were not allowed anywhere and released!). Weightlifter Ivan Udodov, originally from Rostov, also visited Buchenwald, after his release the young man weighed 29 (in words: twenty-nine!) kilograms and could not move independently. A recent dystrophic athlete took up the barbell on the advice of doctors - to improve health. A year later, he began to win medals in competitions, and in Helsinki "muhach" (weightlifter of the lightest weight) Ivan Udodov became the first Soviet weightlifter - the champion of the Olympic Games. The name of this man is almost unknown - he was eclipsed by the great champions Yuri Vlasov, Leonid Zhabotinsky, Vasily Alekseev - but his feat is truly unparalleled!

The 31-year-old Greco-Roman wrestler from Zaporozhye - the first Ukrainian representative in history to win the Olympiad - Yakov Punkina, who was captured by the Germans in an unconscious state, as a result of the concussion, his shoulder and face were constantly twitching. But this did not stop him from putting all his rivals on the shoulder blades. On the contrary, a nervous tic confused the opponents and helped Punkin to carry out his signature move - a throw with a deflection! "A man without nerves" - this is how Punkin was nicknamed by the Finnish newspapers. One of them wrote: "It is hard to believe that a person with such a perfect fighting technique, demonstrating the height of calmness and self-control, could endure such trials in his life."

The survival of Punkin, who was captured in the first days of the war, is an even greater miracle than the survival of Chukarin in captivity. The Jew Yakov Punkin managed to introduce himself as a Muslim Ossetian. Twice he attempted to escape, and suffered typhus in the camp. If the Nazis saw a sick prisoner lying down, they would certainly have shot him, but at the camp checks, Punkin was supported by his comrades.

Yakov's last escape was successful, he was picked up by Soviet tank crews. Despite the acute exhaustion, the future Olympic champion returned to duty, served as a scout and took "tongues", having met the Victory Day on the territory of the enemy.

According to eyewitnesses, when, after the final bout at the Olympics, the judge raised the champion's hand, the audience saw the camp number of the former prisoner on it. The referee also turned out to be a former prisoner of the Nazis and he, rolling up his shirt sleeve, showed his number, in solidarity with the heroic athlete.

Another of our weightlifters - Evgeny Lopatin - was wounded in September 1942 on the Stalingrad front, due to which the mobility of one of his hands became limited. In addition, one of his sons died in besieged Leningrad. In Helsinki, Evgeny Lopatin won a silver medal, which our renowned weightlifter Yakov Kutsenko called "a triumph of will."

The boxer also won silver - an OMSBONa fighter in the war - Sergey Shcherbakovwhose foot did not bend. The injury he received was so serious that there was even a question of amputation, but Shcherbakov begged the surgeon not to cut off his leg, saying: "Boxing is everything for me!" In the war, the boxer was awarded the medal "For Courage" for derailing a German train and carrying a wounded comrade across the front line. Barely leaving the hospital, Sergei Shcherbakov won the USSR championship in 1944, after which he won such competitions 10 times in a row!

Winner of gold in rowing in Helsinki Yuri Tyukalov most of all in life he is proud of his other award: the medal "For the Defense of Leningrad". A 12-year-old boy helped adults put out German lighters. He survived a hungry blockade winter, while his future rival - Australian, Olympic champion in 1948 Mervyn Wood - ate well, well. After the war, Yuri, restoring his health undermined by the war, came to play sports at the water station. Trained hard. At the 1952 Olympics, it was Tyukalov who brought our country the first gold in rowing, sensationally winning the single boat race. Almost the entire distance he had to chase the leader and only at the finish line did he manage to get around Wood. To the 1952 award, Tyukalov added gold in the doubles competition at the 1956 Olympics.

Yuri Sergeevich Tyukalov proved to be a versatile person: he graduated from the Leningrad Higher School of Industrial Art. V. I. Mukhina, he successfully works as a sculptor - his creations adorn the city on the Neva.

The blockade were also Olympic champions in 1952 Galina Zybina (athlete, shot put) and Maria Gorokhovskaya (gymnastics).

The list of our sports heroes can be endless. So, weightlifter, silver medalist of the 1952 Olympics Nikolai Samsonov served in intelligence, was wounded three times and awarded the Order of the Red Star for taking a valuable "language". And, for example, the front-line soldiers Alexander Uvarov, Yevgeny Babich and Nikolai Sologubov played for the hockey team that won the first Winter Olympics for the Soviet Union in 1956 in Cortina d'Ampezzo.

Soviet athletes of that generation did not receive prize money of tens of thousands of dollars and "cool" cars for their victories. They didn't need anabolic steroids and meldonia. And they won not at all for fear of reprisals in case of failure in international competitions - as some of today's "truth-seekers" sometimes "explain" the achievements of Soviet athletes of that time. Well, what else could intimidate a person who went through the meat grinder of Stalingrad or Buchenwald?

For that generation of champions, the honor of the country was really not an empty phrase, but the hardening of life served as the best "doping" for them. That was the generation of Victors who hoisted a banner over the defeated Reichstag, and not a single bastard in the world would dare to scoff at them, forcing them to appear under the white flag!