Five amazing stories that break stereotypes

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

How sheep can help in a super marathon, is it possible to become a champion after a concentration camp, what yoga lessons from self-published books lead to, who will put things in order at home and on the planet - all this in life-affirming stories for the first day of the working week.

Marathon shepherd

The distance of the Australian marathon is 875 kilometers. The route runs from Sydney to Melbourne and usually takes more than 5 days from start to finish. This race features world-class track and field athletes who train specifically for the event. Most athletes are under 30 and sponsored by major sports brands that provide athletes with uniforms and running shoes.

In 1983, many were perplexed when, on the day of the race, 61-year-old Cliff Young appeared at the start. At first, everyone thought that he had come to see the start of the race, as he was not dressed like all athletes: in overalls and galoshes over boots. But when Cliff went to the table to get the race number, everyone knew that he intended to run with everyone. When Cliff got number 64 and got on the line with the other athletes, the film crew, making the report from the starting point, decided to interview him. The camera was pointed at Cliff and asked:

- Hey! Who are you and what are you doing here?

- I'm Cliff Young. We raise sheep on a large pasture near Melbourne.

- Are you really going to participate in this race?

- Yes.

- Do you have a sponsor?

- Not.

“Then you won't be able to run.

- No, I can. I grew up on a farm where we could not afford horses or a car until very recently: only 4 years ago I bought a car. When the storm was approaching, I went out to herd the sheep. We had 2,000 sheep grazing on 2,000 acres. Sometimes I caught sheep for 2-3 days - it was not easy, but I always caught them. I think I can take part in the race, because it is only 2 days longer and is only 5 days, whereas I run after the sheep for 3 days.

When the marathon began, the pros left Cliff in his galoshes far behind. Some spectators sympathized with him, and some laughed at him, since he could not even start correctly. On TV, people watched Cliff, many worried and prayed for him that he would not die on the way. Every professional knew that it would take about 5 days to complete the distance, and for this it would take 18 hours to run and 6 hours to sleep every day. Cliff Young didn't know this.

The morning after the start, people learned that Cliff did not sleep, but continued to run all night, reaching the town of Mittagong. But even without stopping to sleep, Cliff was far behind all the athletes, although he continued to run, while managing to greet the people standing along the race track. Every night he approached the leaders of the race, and on the last night, Cliff beat all the world class athletes. By the morning of the last day, he was far ahead of everyone.

Cliff not only ran a super marathon at the age of 61 without dying, but he won it, breaking the 9-hour race record and became a national hero. Cliff Young completed the 875 km race in 5 days, 15 hours and 4 minutes. Cliff Young did not take a single prize for himself. When Cliff was awarded the first prize of A $ 10,000, he said that he did not know about the existence of the prize, that he did not participate in the race for the money, and without hesitation decided to give the money to the first five athletes who came running after him for A $ 2,000. to each. Cliff didn’t keep a dime for himself, and the whole of Australia just fell in love with him.

Many trained athletes knew whole techniques about how to run and how long to rest at a distance. Moreover, they were convinced that it was impossible to run a super marathon at 61. Cliff Young didn't know all of this. He didn't even know that athletes can sleep. His mind was free of limiting beliefs. He just wanted to win, imagined a fleeing sheep in front of him and tried to catch up with her. Stereotypes fall in front of people like Cliff Young, and thanks to them, people are convinced that their possibilities are beyond the limits that they think of for themselves.

Concentration Camp Champion

Victor Chukarin. A man who went through seventeen Nazi concentration camps, prisoner number 10491, who survived both in Buchenwald and on the "death barge" in order to become a seven-time Olympic champion and one of the greatest athletes on the planet!

People love to indulge their weaknesses, feel sorry for themselves, and at any opportunity they are ready to declare: "I have no more strength." The life of Viktor Ivanovich Chukarin is a silent reproach to all who cherish the weakness of their own spirit.

Vitya Chukarin was born in November 1921 in the south of Donetsk region, in the village of Krasnoarmeyskoye, in the family of a Don Cossack and a Greek woman. The family soon after the birth of their son moved to Mariupol, where Vitya went to school.

At that school, Vitaly Polikarpovich Popovich worked as a teacher, sincerely in love with artistic gymnastics. He instilled his passion in his students, including little Vita Chukarin.

The hobby was gaining strength - after graduating from school, Chukarin studied at the Mariupol Metallurgical College, continuing to seriously engage in gymnastics. Then the young guy, who felt that hobby was becoming a matter of life, transferred to the Kiev College of Physical Education.

He continued to study and practice gymnastics, at the age of 19, having won the title of champion of Ukraine and received the title of "Master of Sports of the USSR".

The ambitious athlete dreamed of success at the USSR championship, but the black June 1941 changed the life of Viktor Chukarin, just like the lives of tens of millions of other Soviet people.

The war for 20-year-old volunteer Viktor Chukarin, a fighter in the 1044th Regiment of the 289th Infantry Division of the Southwestern Front, was short-lived. In the battle near Poltava, he was wounded and shell-shocked and was taken prisoner.

In the Zand-Bustel concentration camp, his name was changed to the number "10491". And hell began, stretching out for three and a half years.

He went through 17 German concentration camps, including Buchenwald, through backbreaking work, disease, hunger, when every day could be the last.

Someone, unable to withstand the torment, himself threw himself on the barbed wire under high voltage. And Vitya tried to do gymnastics at every opportunity, spied on exercises from the German warders - before the war, artistic gymnastics was a cult sport in Germany, and the athletes of this country were considered the strongest in the world.

Viktor Chukarin spent the last months of the war in a camp in the very north of Europe. In early May 1945, when Berlin had already fallen, the prisoners of the camp were herded onto a barge and taken out to sea. From prisoners, witnesses of Hitler's atrocities, the German command ordered to get rid of. But either the performers did not dare to take another grave sin on their souls, or they were simply in a hurry to save their own skins, but they did not drown the barge.

The ship, overcrowded with exhausted prisoners, rushing into the sea at the behest of the waves, was intercepted by an English guard, who saved them from death.

When Victor returned home, it was not a gallant athlete, but a human shadow. The skeleton, covered with skin, with the eyes of a deep old man, did not even recognize his own mother. Only the scar left on her head since childhood convinced the woman that she was really her son.

The 40-kilogram "goner" had to think not about sports, but about restoring health - everyone thought so, including Viktor's friends.

But Chukarin himself believed otherwise. He decided to continue his studies and, failing to enter the Kiev Institute of Physical Education, entered a similar university that had just opened in Lvov.

Gradually he was gaining shape. At the first post-war USSR championship in artistic gymnastics in 1946, he took 12th place. For a man who had been between life and death a year earlier, it was a huge success, but Chukarin had completely different goals.

A year later, at a similar tournament, he became the fifth, and in 1948, 27-year-old Viktor Chukarin became the champion of the USSR for the first time. A year later, the athlete wins the title of the absolute champion of the country and retains this title for another two years.

A dream come true, you are already 30, camp torments and grueling training behind you, is it time to find something quieter?

Nothing like this. Viktor Chukarin has a new goal - the Olympics.

In 1952, at the Games in Helsinki, the USSR national team joins the Olympic family for the first time. Newcomers are looked at with a mixture of curiosity and pickiness - can these guys and girls from Comrade Stalin's country compete with the best athletes in the world?

Viktor Chukarin, 31, was considered a veteran even by much milder post-war gymnastics standards than today. Of the domestic athletes, only gymnast Larisa Latynina (9 gold medals) managed to surpass Chukarin, and the gymnasts Boris Shakhlin and Nikolai Andrianov repeated.

But there is no longer an athlete in the history of world sports who managed to win seven Olympic gold medals, having 17 concentration camps and a fragile barge with people doomed to death behind him.

In 1957, Viktor Ivanovich Chukarin was awarded the Order of Lenin.

After the end of his sports career, he switched to coaching, but Chukarin's students could not achieve the successes that he himself had.

He was always laconic, did not like to remember what fell to his lot, did not seek sympathy, going through troubles and failures alone.

In recent years, his life has concentrated around the department of the Lvov Institute of Physical Education, where he taught.

Viktor Ivanovich Chukarin died on August 25, 1984, he was only 62. Friends, teammates, and students came to his funeral in Lviv.

The history of the most daring escape from the USSR

A little more than forty years ago, on December 14, 1974, one of the most daring escapes from the USSR was made. Oceanographer Stanislav Kurilov jumped overboard of a tourist liner and swam about a hundred kilometers to get to the nearest coast.

Stanislav Kurilov was educated as an oceanographer and got a job at the Institute of Oceanology of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Leningrad. He raved about abroad from his youth. Stanislav repeatedly sought permission to travel to a foreign business trip, but each time he was refused.

The fact is that Kurilov had relatives abroad. His own sister married an Indian. The young couple left to live first in India and then in Canada. Therefore, the authorities feared that Stanislav might run away to his sister. As it turned out, their fears were well founded.

Kurilov spent a long time hatching plans of escape. But the flight itself turned out to be rather spontaneous. Stanislav caught sight of the announcement of a cruise tour on the Sovetsky Soyuz liner. The motor ship left Vladivostok and followed to the equator and back. Since during its entire three-week voyage, the liner never entered ports, no visas were required for tourists.

Stanislav realized that this was his chance. He figured out the best route for his escape and purchased a ticket for the ship. On the night of December 13, he jumped overboard and swam towards the Philippine coast. Nobody believed that it was possible to escape from the liner at all. But Kurilov succeeded.

Having only a mask and fins from his equipment, he managed to swim about a hundred kilometers in total! The path turned out to be much longer than planned, because Kurilov was greatly interfered with by ocean currents, which knocked him off course.

As a result, the swim took more than two days. After an exhausting struggle with waves and currents, Kurilov eventually sailed to the Philippine island of Siargao.

According to the fugitive, regular yoga classes, which he studied from samizdat books, helped him survive for so long on the water.

After clarifying the circumstances of the case, the Philippine authorities deported Kurilov to Canada to his sister. And in the Soviet Union he was sentenced in absentia to 10 years in prison …

The Man Who Raised the Forest

Jadav Payeng- a forester from the Indian city of Jorhat. For several decades, he planted trees on the banks of the Brahmaputra River and tended them, turning the barren area into a forest that was named after him. The forest covers about 550 hectares.

The forest is already home to tigers, rhinos, over a hundred deer and countless rabbits, birds and monkeys. Every year, a herd of 115 elephants comes to the forest, which they spend in this man-made forest for 6 months.

In 2015, he was awarded the fourth highest civilian honor in India.

Ordinary people are changing the world for the better

One separate panel house in Nizhny Novgorod has attracted the attention not only of the city, but of the whole country. How did the local building manager manage to turn an ordinary high-rise building into an almost elite housing out of nothing, at the same time costing the same funds that any other housing offices, DEZs and management companies have?