Vasily Alekseev - Soviet weightlifter: biography, sporting achievements, records. Vasily Alekseev

Greatest Heavyweight Weightlifter

Vasily ALEKSEEV:"Do you hear, goat?!" A man from behind turned to me. I didn’t answer: as I ate, bending down, a hodgepodge, I continue to eat, as a wine glass flies into the back of my head - and it shatters on my head! Meanwhile, I still have zero attention: I continue to eat up the hodgepodge ... "

Exactly 30 years ago, the famous athlete, who was called the Russian Bear in the West, the author of 80 world records, one of which - 645 kg in triathlon - was dubbed eternal, left a great sport.

"I want to be the first!" - Vasily Alekseev wrote after the 1968 USSR Championship on the back of the photo, where he, the bronze medalist, was immortalized with Leonid Zhabotinsky and Stanislav Batishchev (I and II places, respectively). Nothing but a condescending smirk, this impudent application could then cause, because the 26-year-old weightlifter lifted half a centner less than the champion and no one believed in his stellar athletic future, nevertheless, just two years later, Vasily turned his ambitious “I want” into a loud “I can” - not only climbed to the highest step of the podium, but later became the strongest man on the planet, a two-time Olympic champion, an eight-time absolute world and European champion, and also set 80 world records, one of which is 645 kilograms in triathlon! - dubbed eternal.

It was like a miracle, which the Soviet materialistic consciousness denied the right to exist, however professional secrets Alekseev was in no hurry to disclose. To this day, connoisseurs and experts argue what the heavyweight owes his phenomenal results to: unique physical data, special techniques, or ... doping, the era of which began in 1969, but I personally think that this “doping” for Vasily Ivanovich was cheerful disposition and excellent sense of humor, which his folklore namesake Chapaev could envy. Even in between sets at competitions, the famous athlete allowed himself to joke and joke, in particular, he could listen with pleasure to how weightlifter Yevgeny Penkovsky depicts “Alekseev’s meeting with Stalin” in his faces, skillfully parodying their voices.

“The monotony suffocates, deprives of flight,” the champion complained. Maintaining equanimity, Vasily Ivanovich told reporters tales about his special training techniques: they say, he focuses on lifting the barbell in the river (he even showed a picture to the unbelievers) and eats half a glass of salt a day, and also, stroking a dimensionless waist, formulated his personal credo as follows: “ The larger the boiler, the more steam.

He did not betray himself, even crossing the border, which made him very different from the other “homo sovieticus, the image of morale” with their watchful looks and feeling of being in the camp of the enemy. Alekseev, for example, could easily slip his bag to a strict American customs officer, from which a rubber devil jumped out with a nasty squeak, and somehow, while giving an interview for a reputable Israeli magazine, he asked - to defuse tension! - Say hello to your aunt. "And who is your aunt?" - journalists became interested. “Don't you know? - Vasily Ivanovich was picturesquely amazed. - Golda Meir", after which the magazine came out with the sensational headline "Soviet champion - nephew of the Prime Minister of Israel", and the culprit of the commotion, hiding a satisfied smile, rhymed: "The strongest of the Jews is me, Vasily Alekseev."

Oddly enough, the reluctance to stand in a common line and get a haircut with the same brush got away with it: the character, they say, is quarrelsome, conflicting, but a nugget, and even when he, offended by the Ryazan authorities (they promised to build a sports complex "for him", and then safely “forgotten”, and he had to go to Moscow shops for food), burned the ribbon of an honorary citizen of Ryazan on the Eternal Flame, he had nothing. But everyone immediately remembered the famous weightlifter at the age of 38, when at the Moscow Olympics he “caught the steering wheel”, that is, he did not master the initial weight.

Alekseev still regularly shocks the public with outrageous statements like: “The barbell is better than Viagra. Don't believe? Ask Olimpiada Ivanovna! (His wives. - D. G.) ”or“ It is better to build one Sports Palace than a thousand apartments, ”and when they ask him why he changed his mind about defending an already written candidate’s dissertation, where he revealed all the cards, he laughs it off. However, once, in the mood, the legendary heavyweight opened up: “What to hide - an athlete, like an artist, needs recognition, and a good artist owns the public in full. The athlete first makes her wonder, then worry and love him in the end for his skill, strength and courage. I want to surprise the world with something incomprehensible, and then they will definitely recognize you: for this it was worth working hard, especially since it has become more difficult to surprise in our time.

It seems that this “Russian bear”, as it was called in the West, was ahead of its time not only in sports results, but also in understanding the nature of big sport, which is akin to show business and also needs competent PR. Maybe that's why Alekseev, although he has left the platform for 30 years, and lives in the provincial town of Shakhty, Rostov Region, far from television cameras, sports fans do not forget.

“AND I WALKED SO LONG TO THE PEDESTAL THAT I MADE DENTS IN THE STAGE...”

First, Vasily Ivanovich, I must admit that the most vivid memory of my childhood is connected precisely with you: it so happened that for several years in a row my parents and I went to rest in Feodosia, where the Soviet Union weightlifting team, headed by even not a hero, but a super-hero Vasily Alekseev, and, watching you, I firmly decided, when I grow up, to become a world barbell champion - to lift this colossus over my head as easily and naturally as you do. Well, now with pleasure I will remind our readers of the titles of my outstanding interlocutor. So, Vasily Alekseev: the strongest man on the planet, named the greatest athlete of the twentieth century, two-time Olympic champion, eight-time world and European champion, seven-time champion of the USSR ... By the way, do you remember how many world records you set?

At one time, I was regularly reminded of this - 80.

It's a terrible thing, but it's true that some of your records are still decades later! - remains unsurpassed?

In the total of triathlon, I think it will be difficult to break the record of records - not the conditions, and there are no athletes who were born during the war and survived all these misfortunes that have fallen on our heads.

- Did it really matter?

But how! Difficulties forge character. Now weightlifters come to the gyms, and I trained in the basements in the winter, on the street in the summer, and all this tempered, gave purposefulness. Look, now the guys are like a selection: talented, healthy, they feed them to satiety, but there are no records ... It would seem, well, what's stopping them, but they ... just don't train. A loafer on a loafer - it amazes and offends me.

- Once upon a time, Vladimir Vysotsky dedicated the Weightlifter's Song to you with these words:

Such an unbearable bulk
I don't wish it on my enemy.
I step up to the heavy projectile
with a heavy feeling
suddenly I won't pick it up.
We are both with him as if made of metal,
but it's really metal.
And I walked so long to the pedestal,
that he trodden dents in the platform ...

The only thing I don't agree with is the chorus.

- Not marked by the grace of a mustang,
I am constrained, I am not fast in my movements.
Rod, overloaded rod -
my eternal rival and partner...

These are the words I'm dissatisfied with. How is it “constrained”, how is it “not fast in movements”? - yes, I played volleyball according to the masters and table tennis in 40 games in a row: everyone still remembers this.

Vladimir Semenovich, as I understand it, when he wrote this song, the text did not agree with you, but did you know that he dedicated it to you?

I found out later, later. Vysotsky, by the way, was here, in Mines, - he lived in the country for three days on the Don. At that time, in my opinion, I was performing in America - I was just flying from the World Championships, and, unfortunately, I didn’t catch him.

Did you meet with him later?

Alas. In the 80th at the training camp in preparation for the Olympics, I asked through the Central Committee of the Komsomol to find him and invite him. Other artists of the Taganka Theater came more than once: Zolotukhin, Farada, Filatov - I’m calling from memory now, but he’s not: they said that he was on tour somewhere, he was busy, he couldn’t. Well, then the news came - he died. Of course, it hurt us a lot.

When I came into your living room, I immediately drew attention to the astronomical number of sports medals and cups. True, there are no government awards on this iconostasis, and you were one of the few athletes in the Soviet Union who were awarded the highest order - Lenin ...

I have five government orders and a certain number of medals, but I don’t wear them.

- Did you at least estimate how many kilograms all your awards weigh?

You know, as a rule, they are not weighed, although it is difficult to lift them all at once.

- Even you?

Not for me, but for my wife - Olimpiada Ivanovna is in charge of all this household.

“AT LESPROMKHOZ I REGULARLY UNLOADED TROLLEYS, WHICH CAUSED CONSIDERABLE DAMAGE TO THE STATE”

- You, according to your biographers, were the fourth child in the family ...

No, not the fourth: two older brothers, born on the 27th and 33rd, died of starvation (we also suffered from the Holodomor, like Ukraine). Two brothers survived, my sister and I - sixth in a row.

Where did your family live then?

in the Ryazan region.

Was there famine there too?

And he was everywhere, and, by the way, another brother, the seventh, died after the war.

- Were you brought up in strictness or spoiled?

I did not see any rigidity or kindness of the parent as such - the family was normal. They didn’t drive us from the yard to the house, and oh school success did not ask for Besides that in the post-war period, everyone lived like that - we did not stand out in anything special.

- Poverty was terrible?

No - I was born at the distillery. My father was a stoker there, so he was even recalled from the front, because without cartridges you can still go on the attack, but not without alcohol. He worked throughout the war in two or three shifts and disappeared at the plant for days.

- Is it true that when you grew up, you helped your father prepare and melt logs?

Yes, all the holidays: both winter and summer - spent with him.

- Were you already a hero in childhood? When did you feel your power?

As soon as he got on his feet - even earlier than Ilya Muromets.

- Guys - peers and older - how did they treat this?

For as long as I can remember, I have been a leader and have always been in charge, although I did not stand out for my height. He stretched out catastrophically quickly: in the seventh grade, he stood in the middle in the line at physical education, and when he moved to the eighth, he became the first: can you believe this? He was strong, busty, and after the summer holidays he came to school slender.

- What weight could you, for example, lift, squeeze in the fifth, sixth grades?

Somehow, a neighbor got hold of the axle of a trolley - there were 30 kilograms in it - and shook it about 10-12 times, and I pushed 14 (I still could not press, there was no strength). Therefore, since childhood, I have had a confident push, but over time, the strength increased, and accordingly I walked and looked out for where the axle was harder to find. Then, at the timber industry enterprise in the North (in 1953, the family moved to the Arkhangelsk region), he regularly wrecked the trolleys, which caused considerable damage to the state. Only at the institute I saw a real barbell ...

- Excuse me, but did you not see her at all before the institute?

Of course not.

- How old were you already?

19, probably - now at this age no one would have let me into the hall.

Until the age of 19, not seeing the barbell and becoming the greatest weightlifter in history is fantastic! You, by and large, can call yourself a nugget?

I can't - it's immodest. Yes, I agree, such things are now surprising, but then ... Well, I came to the institute and at the same time to the section: I took a 28-mm neck, and it seemed to me that it was sharp, like a knife, it cuts. What were the axes in-o-from (shows by connecting large and index fingers hands) - 90 millimeters in diameter. I left after the very first training - I didn’t like the barbell, and then they persuaded me to speak for the course, for the faculty, for the entire forestry institute, and by spring I was already the champion of the course, the institute, and the region.

I watch you gesticulate, and I think: “These same hands lifted such terrible weights” ... Does a weightlifter especially need to be handy?

Yes, of course, but I had a problem - short fingers. If only they were a few inches longer...

- ...That?..

I'll tell you: there would be much more records - over 100. In the snatch, I wide grip did not take - there was not enough length of the brush. The little fingers did not reach, but here, on right hand there isn't one at all...

- How is it not?

Well, he's injured, he can't bend, so I set four snatch world records with those two fingers.(shows the middle and index).

In other words, the famous Russian expression: “Yes, I have them with one finger!” - in your case, it needs to be adjusted: two ...

I simply envied many weightlifters who have long fingers - here, for example, David Rigert: he wrapped them around the neck, and also thumb pinched the nameless (in addition to the index and middle) - and there are no problems! It's like with safety straps, but I had to rebuild the entire training methodology - work out the grip, grip and grip again.

“I AM ON MYSELF, AS PAVLOV IS ON DOGS, DOZENS, IF NOT MORE, I TRIED THE METHODS”

Before lifting the barbell, you worked as a shift foreman at the Kotlas Pulp and Paper Mill in the biological treatment shop...

Sewage - was the shift supervisor there.

Even so? That is, they could well say to themselves that life, in general, was a success. A stable job, a good salary, respect for a proletarian bone - what kind of sport is there?

Nevertheless, I stubbornly lifted the bar. They persuaded me to quit sports, they said: “You are talented, and our technologist is just leaving ...”, they predicted to take his place. He then, by the way, became the governor of the Arkhangelsk region.

- An enviable prospect before you, I look, opened ...

Well, yes (laughs)- maybe I would follow in his footsteps over time to this position.

You, how few people, probably, made yourself, but at first you trained under the guidance of Rudolf Plukfelder, the champion of the Tokyo Olympics ...

Never!

- That's how?

Yes, only so. I moved here, to Shakhty, - Moscow sent me! - because in the 71st the local team (it was at the Yuzhnoy-1 mine) performed at the Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR. She had to fight with the weightlifters of the Voroshilovgrad Diesel Locomotive Plant, and, as luck would have it, there were not enough two athletes - a hole appeared ...

- ...and found you...

They sent me because I had to leave Koryazhma, where I worked. There was not even a hall there - they trained in the basement on an ordinary floor, pierced through and through. I couldn’t even lift the barbell, because the ceiling in the basement didn’t allow it, but by that time I had already fulfilled the master’s standard. Someone, in a word, liked it, someone noticed ... Actually, I had two options - Ufa and Shakhty ...

- ...but Ufa is far away...

It is the same from Koryazhma - except perhaps further from Paris.

- Under the leadership of Plyukfelder, you didn’t train?

The thing is that classes in the institute section helped me. There were no masters, no record holders - only first-class players, but what virtuosos! In terms of the technique of performing movements, I did not see them anywhere equal, and when I arrived here, there were just blockheads in comparison with them.

In short, I had something to compare with, and stupidly I went to Plyukfelder to advise something ... He once reined in me, and then I see: what he offers is generally nonsense. Again he got in with advice, but the result was not so hot, I only came as a master of sports ...

- Have you tried hitting him?

Well, no, we haven't practiced such things yet. That’s all, we immediately found a “common language” with him ... Everyone stood his ground, but he didn’t need me, because he was used to seeing muscular, pumped up athletes, and the comparison was not in my favor: Zhabotinsky has 170 kilograms , and I have - 102-105.

- Such a difference?

Of course - but what? Height - 188, weight - 105.

- You once said: “No one knows weightlifting better than me” ...

Add: I still don't know.

- What did you mean?

You see, I myself, like Pavlov on dogs, have tried dozens, if not more, methods. Of course, I understood a lot and learned a lot, plus I looked everywhere, compared, analyzed from athletes who are somehow different from others, adopted what I liked, and again tested it on myself.

“ONE TIME A DOCTOR ADVISED ME TO ME, WHO WORKED IN THE CIRCUS WITH ANIMALS. OR WITH ANIMALS - WHICH IS CORRECT?

If you believe the numerous books, studies and monographs that have tried to unravel the Alekseev phenomenon, you, firstly, have never had a coach, secondly, you have never listened to anyone's advice and recommendations, and, finally, thirdly, by trial and error. mistakes, they developed their own training system - they reduced the training weight of the bar, increasing the number of approaches to the projectile. Is everything correct?

Not approaches - lifting the barbell at a time.

At the same time, you often said to athletes and coaches: “Damn ... birds, you all do it wrong” - were they happy to hear this from you?

In this, I think, I was wrong, but about the fact that I did not listen to anyone ... I did not listen to those who did not understand anything about the barbell. Once, a doctor advised me in general, who worked with animals in a circus. Or with animals - how right?

- Both options are acceptable, except that the second one is a little outdated, but what did he advise?

At the competitions, where I unsuccessfully went to the platform twice - I didn’t lift it, he, under a hot hand, suggested how to tear the barbell for me.

Did you listen to his advice?

I remembered a three-letter word...

- ...peace, May?

Yes (laughs)and so the doctor...

I suspect that not everyone was pleased with your successes, but at least the fight was fair, or could competitors put a bandwagon on occasion?

I'll tell you one episode, and draw your own conclusions. In 1970, the Friendship Cup was held in Minsk. Usually the kids are the first to arrive, then the middle weights, and then we, the heavyweights, are the last, and on March 16 (I remember the date for sure, because I went on the platform on the 18th) we are sitting in the dining car, and behind four ordinary peasants settled down. Suddenly one of them says: “There is the most strong man planet Alekseev” (and before that I set four records and bypassed Zhabotinsky in total). The second one echoes him: "Come on - some kind of goat is sitting" - and to me: "Do you hear, goat ?!" I didn’t answer: as I ate, bending down, a hodgepodge, I continue to eat, as a wine glass flies into the back of my head - and it shatters on my head! Meanwhile, I still have zero attention: I continue to eat up the hodgepodge!

There were four of us: two heavyweights (including me) at 130, and two at 110 kilograms: you can imagine who these little bastards climbed on - four elephants. With my character, it was not worth it to tear off their heads, but God saved me.

I felt that it was a serious matter, I remembered the two-time European champion and four-time boxer Union Viktor Ageev and 1968, when he was convicted(he was expelled from the USSR national team and stripped of the title of master of sports for a drunken fight near a Moscow cafe at night. - D. G.) ...

Yakubovsky was sitting opposite me. “What, - he asks, - did not you hear: you were insulted? Yes, I’ll tear them to pasture, I’ll break their necks. ” “I,” I say, “would have done it long ago, but we will be to blame: sit down.” In the meantime, the peasants continued to speak, but seeing that we did not utter a word, they shut up.

- Do you think it was a provocation?

Now, after so many years, I am 100 percent sure of it. I was on my way to set a world record in triathlon, to open the "600 Club", which many in our country only dreamed of - of course, someone did not like it.

- Competitors, probably ...

I didn't have them at the time. It is not clear who wanted to take me out of the game - this question still torments me. There are, of course, speculations...

No, I won’t, but after I performed on March 18 and set the very expected, crazy record, they still wrote dirty tricks about me: they say, I didn’t feel the breath of my opponents, so I used only five of the nine set approaches.

- Do not regret that you did not take impudent fellow travelers by the collar, did not ask who sent them ...

To do this, it was necessary to beat their faces, but then we would not have reached Minsk. If they were so cunning, they would have pretended to be beaten, and the witnesses were probably prepared ... Who would have believed that men with a total weight of 250 kilos climbed half a ton?

“WELL, WHAT CAN BE FOR THE ROD WEASEL? IRON - IT IS IRON ... "

- You said (I quote):“I didn’t lift the barbell like everyone else - a huge army of Soviet coaches adhered to one school, and I went the other way, and therefore I was considered a black sheep, a fool, an idiot” ...

Well, I think they didn’t consider me an idiot and a fool, it’s just that when I lifted 40 tons, they were four each - 10 times less.

- 40 tons per training session?

For two. They trained once a day, and I did it twice: I threw 25 tons in the morning, and 15 tons in the evening, and at the same time I heard from them: “We met loaders before you.” - “Guys,” he said to them, “how about catching a fish without difficulty?” Their results grew, but not so much, and the same Zhabotinsky, if he lifted a ton or two, this is good.

- Lazy or did not understand how to?

Everything was given to him by nature - so he didn’t overwork, and if they lifted seven tons (as in 1968, when they were preparing for the Olympics in Mexico City), then they went down to the bar at the hotel in Dubna, near Moscow, where they allowed themselves to miss cognac under a jar of cod liver, taken for this occasion. They also offered me something like that, because I didn’t have money at that time, but I answered that I ate this liver as a child, in the Arkhangelsk region. There, all the shelves were filled with it - except for the liver and sprat, no canned food, so for me this is not a shortage.

- Listen, lift 40 tons every day ...

In one day.

- Did you like to pull such weights or did you know that there is a word “must”?

No, for me, “playing with muscles” was a pleasure, a joy. Of course, all sorts of life's vicissitudes interfered with this, but I always repeated to athletes and fans: the most important thing (today they have already begun to forget about this principle!) Is to train with pleasure and for well-being.

- If it doesn't work, is it better to wait?

If you feel bad, go train, and if you feel good, let's load two or three times more. If there is an exercise, then you eat it so that you are full - then there will be a return, otherwise you didn’t get enough here, here, this is impossible, there is a lot ...

- When you were an athlete on the crossbar, did you pull yourself up?

I think I'm the only heavyweight who pulled up 12 times (Zhabotinsky, by the way, never). Then, I will notice, my weight was 126 kilos.

- Weightlifters do not like this exercise ...

Well, small ones on the crossbar work wonders, but heavyweights ... Biceps, in principle, everyone has the same strength. Here we had Gennady Chetin(weightlifter in the bantamweight division. - D. G.) , so that from the bottom up at least 100 times came out.

- “I had many secrets,” you once admitted, “but I hid them” ...

They are still plentiful right now.

- Did not share with anyone?

What about those who want it? I trained behind closed doors: at the training camp in Podolsk I had a separate gym. One of the reasons - was engaged with open windows. If you open the door - a draft, because in the hall opposite, the window was also wide open and it blew decently there, and the second reason ... There was no desire ...

Has an ambitious guy who dreamed of becoming just as great never come to you and ask: “Vasily Ivanovich, well, share what you are doing there ...”?

And I, when I passed the others in the hall, always prompted, because, like in a movie, it was clear to me who was missing something. I just did not want to impose my understanding on those who do not need it. Why, if the team performed well anyway?

- Did everyone listen to you or did some of them brush aside?

Why brush aside, if it is clear that a person understands this matter?

- Some weightlifters say that they loved the bar like a woman - you too?

Well, the similarities, of course, are few, but to love - loved, and even now I respect. I never allowed you to step over the bar, put your foot on the bar - this is disrespect for your favorite projectile. For me, putting a foot in a boot on a barbell, which you then take on a bare chest, is like climbing on a table with your feet: this is simply bad manners, but many do it, one might say, everyone. Stuff like this creeps me out...

- How affectionately did you address the barbell?

Well, what kind of affection can there be: iron - it is iron, just a projectile.

“THE HORSE IS TOO HARD, BUT IT PULLS. MAYBE, SHE DOES NOT LIKE IT, AND I LIFTED THE BAR FOR PLEASURE ”

I read somewhere that in one workout you changed 8-12 shirts, because four kilograms of sweat came out of you - is this not a myth?

No, I really took a few shirts - almost a dozen! - changed every now and then. Your chest is wet, and if you don't change in time...

- Sweat flowed in streams?

Well, if four kilograms are down, it should flow. I remember that in Ryazan, where there is a tea-packing factory, I met with a candidate of sciences on these matters, and let him lecture me on how to make tea and how to drink it: they say, you need three cups a day. “And I,” I say, “four liters in the morning and the same amount in the evening - then it comes out. Do you think three cups will be enough for me? He spread his hands: “Yes, my science is powerless here.”

I first came up with tea to drink in training. I came from the institute hungry and immediately hit the barbell, but my stomach was on strike without food, so after two exercises I’ll leave the gym, drink tea and go back, and when I was already in the team, no one drank tea, but I bought a samovar and had tea. Well, it’s like a buzz and everything else, but in Ryazan, from the tea-packing factory, teas were brought of the highest grade, and I made so many records there in the first couple of months - I worked wonders. Then, however, once - and stopped. I think: what's wrong? I trained, as usual, according to the same methodology, and I realized that the secret is in the tea that I brewed.

If there was capitalism then, the Ryazan factory would engage you with the face of its brand - you would earn more than for records ...

I'm afraid that under our capitalism, tea would not help(laughs).

- How many liters of liquid did you drink then a day?

How much I lost, so much, as I understand it, and drank. Here in Shakhty there was a methodology - they trained from four in the evening ... By the way, this is about Plukfelder: I worked with them for a total of two months, and in December 1967 I left the team. In the evening you sip the barbell, you get drunk - you sleep badly, and in the morning I trained alone - beauty: in the evening water balance I recover and sleep as expected.

- Why did you torture yourself like that? What did you want to prove to yourself or someone else?

Tortured?

- Well, I think, to transfer 40 tons per day ...

We just now said that I was happy to raise them.

- I agree, but this is hard labor ...

Who is destined for what - the horse is also hard, but she pulls. Maybe she doesn’t like it, but I lifted the bar for pleasure, and now I train like that. It has simply become a need, a necessity.

- Labor nonetheless exhausting?

At the beginning, until the muscles grow, until the ligaments get stronger, and until the body is drawn in, it really is hard, but you need to endure two or three months, and then things will go. You also need to have a head on your shoulders: if you tear your navel or break your back - yes, your fate is unenviable, but if, as we said, you practice reusable lifts ...

- ... it's different ...

Exactly. Then, raising the projectile, you get such an adrenaline rush ...

There is an opinion that potency suffers from such an excessive load in athletes - have you experienced any problems associated with this?

- (Laughs).Once I spoke on television in Salekhard, and a woman called the studio: her daughter, they say, is marrying a master of sports in weightlifting - will the future son-in-law's passion affect the intimate life of the young? I reassured: “Mom, don’t worry! They'll all be fine."

- He will carry his wife in his arms ...

And on the hands, and there(winks) everything will be OK.

"YURI VLASOV? AND WHO IS IT? DID NOT HEARD…”

From an early age, I paid attention to the thick spirit that stood in the halls where the weightlifters trained: the air there was so ... as if it were softer ... a real, in a word, gas attack ...

No, it seemed that way to you when you were young. The hall in Feodosia is huge, the game room is 36 meters long plus high ceilings. Nothing for 20 people...

- ... but the smell, I remember, was specific ...

Well, this may be due to the fact that the Dynamo hall(laughs).

- That is, the bases of other societies smell of incense ...

Some kind of nasty plant was also built there ... I, already being the head coach of the USSR national team, brought the team there, and in a week half, as a rule, had a sore throat. What kind of chemical monster was slapped there, in the Crimea, along with a nuclear power plant?

You said that you liked to play volleyball, but, as far as I heard, you usually went out on the court with a small lead belt. How many kilograms were in it?

- (With surprise).How did you know that?

- Work is so...

He had 13 kilos - I trained with him.

- And what, they flew over the net?

And then! For four hours on a non-training day, on Saturday or Sunday, I played.

Who made this belt?

I did it myself. I'm a designer-inventor - out in the yard, you see, machines made by me personally.

- Once upon a time, as a kid, I interviewed the famous Soviet weightlifter Yuri Vlasov ...

Yes? And who is it? - have not heard (laughs)...

And he said that the main problem of weightlifting is doping, which drives many people to their graves ahead of time. Without exception, all world records are achieved, according to him, thanks to doping, and sport has ceased to be a competition of the strong, but has turned into a struggle of chemicals. Before, with you, this problem was, did you use doping?

Tell me, what does this word mean?

- Anabolics...

Let's say, but they were not considered doping until the 76th year. In the 76th at the Olympics in Montreal - this is an interesting topic! - for the first time used anti-doping, or rather, anti-anabolic control. I don’t want to name names, but in my weight I will mention Gerd Bonk from the GDR ...

- ...a serious guy!..

And Hristo Plachkova from Bulgaria.

It wasn't a gift either...

Both of them are cool guys. Before going to Montreal, one won Europe at home, gaining 432 kilograms in biathlon (I didn’t compete there, although I went, I later regretted that it happened), and the second broke my record - I lifted 442 kilos in total. On this topic, if you have time, I can tell a story like a joke.

- I'd love to hear from you...

In December 1975, I moved to Ryazan, and some correspondent found my phone and called: “What amount is needed in the biathlon to win in Montreal?” Me: “Well, 420 kilograms is enough,” and my record was 435, in my opinion.

In short, when the European Championship was held, where Bonk 432 lifted, he called again with the same question. “Write down, - I said, - 420” (the journalist didn’t know that there would be anabolic control, but I already knew). The third time he got me in Vladimir at the hunting base of Grishin - he was like that ...

- ... First Secretary of the Moscow City Committee of the CPSU ...

Right. I took a barbell with me there 285 kilos and four boards - I put together a platform, drove in racks for squats and plowed there for three weeks. Rains just charged: from one to three a day.

- So you had a good rest! ..

He trained normally, and a man with a towel stood next to him - he drove away mosquitoes. Like a gap between rains, so I went to the bar - at any time of the day, if only it didn’t drip from the sky, and at three or four nights I went to the steam room - such was the routine. At this time, Plachkov performed at the Bulgarian Championship and set a record - 442.5 kilograms.

- I beat yours by seven kilos ...

Yes. I don’t know how, but a Ryazan journalist found me at this base in Vladimir and asked the same question again with sarcasm. I repeated: “Write it down and circle it with a felt-tip pen - 420 is enough,” but even I did not think that anabolics had such a strong effect on them. Well? 17 days before Montreal, I tore my groin. In the Ikarus, on which we were either going to Red Square, or somewhere else to take an oath, I sat in a chair where the back fell off, and by the time we got there, it probably flew off 15 times. It would seem, take it, Vasya, move to another place - no, when jerking, he managed to group, due to the press he rose, and damaged some muscles. The next day, training, I started breaking through speed (lifting the barbell as fast as possible), and I got injured - I didn’t do anything before the Olympics for 17 days.

- But they swore on Red Square!

- (Laughs).And then! Well, the day after tomorrow I compete in Montreal, and I snatched 155 kilograms, and then the jerk was only successful once, and there were five unsuccessful attempts (before that, I didn’t hold on to the neck at all - more precisely, I held on, but I didn’t do anything from the classics). They just arrived, we had one time - and they took samples for control. Plachkov refused to perform at all: he flew away and did not even register in the Olympic village.

- But Bonk came out?

Yes, he broke 167 there, in my opinion, and I carefully increased - 175, 180, 185: not knowing what was happening with my groin. I was ready for 200. I pushed 232, then immediately climbed to 255. Bonk, who set a record in Berlin (so what did they feed him there?), Gained 405 kilograms.

- And you?

Well, add 185 and 255. Do you have a pen? From memory - 440 (this world record was shown in America in the morning and evening for several years in a row). By the way, I wanted to push another 265, but when the journalists who jumped onto the platform surrounded, it was no longer up to the bar - it was driven off.

- That's what it means to swear on Red Square ...

Yes (with a smile), it's worth a lot.

“DRINK RUSSIAN VODKA,” I SAID TO THE JOURNALISTS, “THIS IS BETTER THAN ANABOLICS, BECAUSE IT CANNOT BE DETECTED IN THE BLOOD”

- Personally, you didn’t take anabolic steroids?

But as? There, even before the competition, when we first arrived, they immediately took samples for doping control, and after ...

- Does a weightlifter need doping at all?

My opinion remains unchanged: if you take a doping sample, then everyone does. Or not to take - again, everyone. Our Russians, as a rule, are strangled. What athletes, what biathletes, and in general the word “doping” slightly jars me - I say “anabolics”. In small doses, this medicine, in large ...

When I pushed 255 kilograms in Montreal, the journalists trampled on the platform: there was no longer up to the bar and there was no time for jerks - who should I explain that I want to push another 265? That's it, the competition is already over. Someone from the writing fraternity asked the question: "Mr. Alekseev, why did everyone perform so badly, and you set a fantastic world record?" Well, I explained to them in pure Russian: “Who lives on what, guys, but the main thing is to drink Russian vodka. It's better than anabolics because it can't be detected in the blood." By the way, I drank it on purpose ...

- ...even so?..

Because our medicine, the pharmaceutical industry has never produced anything for healthy people. This is not a foreign country, and there were no restorers as such. On Saturday or Sunday, when it happened - a steam room and four "thin", that is, a liter. You go to training the next day like a cucumber - this is a proven folk Slavic way.

- Have you ever been so drunk that you could not knit a bast at all?

Well, we always knitted bast, but it reached a cheerful state.

- How much did you need to take on your chest for this? Could you drink two or three liters?

I don't think this is the limit.

- Four?

Also not a problem, although, to be honest and frankly, there was not enough time to get drunk. At the same time, cafes and restaurants closed early.

- Have you ever smoked?

On a bet - others throw a bet, but I lit a cigarette.

- Liked?

I worked in a team of carpenters - they all had the sixth category, and I had the fourth after school, but do you know how houses are built in the North? In the same place, the foundation is not poured with concrete, but they take pillars - the so-called high chairs - poured with resin, wrapped in roofing material and buried: it was under them that we dug the ground. I installed two before lunch and the same number after lunch, and they were one at a time. “Are you progressive,” I ask, “are you thinking of getting?” Brigadier this and that: "And smoke?". “Give up this rotten occupation,” I say. He sighed, "Try to quit." This provoked me: “How many months do you have to smoke to get involved?”. - "Two". I have been addicted to nicotine for about a year ...

- And they quit?

As soon as I entered the institute. Honestly, it was hard, in a dream two or three times I dreamed that I was taking a drag on Belomor, and I woke up covered in sweat, and we smoked self-garden.

- How tall are you, I wonder? How much are you in best years weighed?

Hmm, what are the best years?

- 1975-1976, I think...

IN big sport I walked in 188 centimeters tall and was gaining weight all the time. In the 72nd at the Olympics in Munich he performed, having 157 kilograms, then he drove them. Most big weight, with which he went to the platform, - 162 kilos.

I remember then they said: “Do you know how much Alekseev eats in one sitting? Five chickens. Did you really eat for ten?

I remember one case in the subject. I drove the weight from 157 kilograms to 138 and I think: “Let me try to lift something with this weight in Mtsensk (this is the Oryol region). I arrived, and there friends and buddies brought me a journalist from Orlovsky Komsomolets. You know: I don't like to give interviews, but once asked, where are you going?

In order to lose weight, I don’t need to be very friendly with food, so I kept food, and your colleague’s first question was this: “Readers of Orlovsky Komsomolets are interested in how much you eat.” - "Do you have a pen and paper?" - I asked. He nodded, "Of course." - "So write. In the morning 400 grams of caviar, eight chickens, salads, fifth or tenth, cakes and 16 glasses of tea. The correspondent's eyes widened: "Why 16?". - "How much do you drink?" I raised my eyebrows. "Two". - “But my norm is 16. Further: for lunch, eight borscht, 40 cutlets, and in the evening everything is the same as in the morning - 400 grams of caviar, eight chickens and the rest ...”.

How did you actually eat?

Fine. Well, in Soviet times, what could you eat for those pennies?

- Did you ask for supplements at least in the canteens at the training camp?

There was nothing to ask. There is a norm - 5 rubles 80 kopecks for food per day, plus a ruble for heavyweights, and with this money, given that you still had to feed the cooks and their families, you can’t really accelerate. 5.80, to clarify, this is when I was in the national team, and before that, two and a half plus a ruble like a heavyweight. Feeding at 3.50 is blue sticky noodles and a cutlet, in which, if meat had been found, the cooks would have been planted. Accordingly, an empty borscht or soup, and we still somehow managed to keep the weight.

- On what your 80 records were set, it is not clear ...

- (Laughs). On the nerves.

Vasily ALEKSEEV:“I lost the Moscow Olympics because I was poisoned. Who? Shura Rykov from Chernihiv, whom I warmed up - for money and a place in the national team "

Part II

“WORLD RECORDS I ACTUALLY SET HUNGRY: BOILED SAUSAGE, A PACK OF COTTAGE COTTAGE, BREAD - EVERYTHING!”

- Maybe this is another story, but they wrote that you had three compression fractures of the spine ...

Why was it? - they are still there, apparently.

- Why did you get them?

Well, probably not from the fact that he was lying on the bed, but from the fact that he lifted such weights. To be honest, I entered the big sport, being thrown out from everywhere - in the 69th they even gave the second group of disability and put such a big fat cross on me. Thanks to the neuropathologist who explained what the spine is. For two months I lay at night and thought until I came up with a machine. I recovered, but I'm still doing my back. That's why I'm surprised: healthy young guys, but they can't lift the barbell. I'm with the second group...

- ... on sticky blue noodles ...

Set records. When they wrote me off, I came here to Shakhty without getting a penny anywhere - no one needs an injured heavyweight weightlifter. I remember that in the 70s, when I had already become the world record holder, they decided to feed me and they allocated a pot of entrecote for 12 liters. They brought it twice, and each time I walked along the porches, on the floors - handing out this grub to people. Then he completely abandoned it, and the world records were actually set by the hungry. Can you imagine: boiled sausage, a pack of cottage cheese and bread - everything!

- What about Russian vodka?

Well, at that time, what kind of vodka? Unless he was a student, when he worked part-time at unloading, he could afford it. As for me, I started lifting barbells when the ice on the Northern Dvina got up, and before that I unloaded barges - during the summer holidays in the ORS (Department of Work Supply) of my native village, I got a job as a loader.

After two brilliant victories at the Olympics in Munich and Montreal, Moscow was ahead. You are 38 years old, an experienced fighter, everyone thought: well, at home, where the walls, as they say, help, Alekseev will surely take the third Olympic gold, and suddenly a failure, after which you said that you were ... poisoned ...

Name the person who did this, if you can... There is a city of Chernihiv, 150 kilometers north of Kiev, and Shura Rykov lives there, who was my second, “followed” me. I warmed him up, and he poured me six approaches before entering the platform ...

- Poured, sorry, what?

Liquid with some kind of muck, which supposedly gives vivacity and strength.

- Rykov did it out of stupidity or out of malice?

For money and a place in the national team - he poisoned me, you understand?

Do you know who was behind this?

I think yes. The Muslim world - one (Rakhmanov won), Uzbekistan and the leader of the Rashids there - two, Dnepropetrovsk, where Leonid Ilyich began his career - three ...

- ... Sultan Rakhmanov is from there, after all ...

Yes, well, plus Ukraine, which needed a medal.

- What did you feel when you stepped onto the platform - dizziness, weakness?

I felt that I was an idiot: the bar was standing far away and so small, as if you were looking at it through inverted binoculars, and there was a continuous knock in my head and only one thought beats: “Why do you need this? Where are you going?". True, my legs are programmed - so I’m going ... If I had even come out earlier, I would certainly have pulled out these 180 kilograms, but they calculated everything ... Then I asked the doctor of the national team: “What could they pour ? - "Yes, ordinary sleeping pills - a horse dose."

- In Moscow, were you determined to win again?

I was in such a shape that there were no equals - if I had doubted my abilities, I simply would not have entered the platform, I would have withdrawn from the competition. Disgrace? Why is it for me?

“IN THE PRESENCE OF NIXON, I SAID THE BRIEFEST SPEECH IN ENGLISH. THANKED: "SANQU", BUT "VERY MUCH" DID NOT ADD, BECAUSE I DIDN'T KNOW THESE WORDS YET"

- What did such a big and strong person feel after he received "steering wheels", zeros?

Never mind.

- How? - this is, by and large, a tragedy. Didn't you feel like crying?

What is there to cry?(With annoyance). At first I thought they made a mistake - they poured it out, but it had an unforeseen effect on me, but then, when I saw how they treat me: they don’t take me to the national team as a coach, and they don’t let me do it, I realized that it was set up on purpose. Maybe the KGB had a hand in it... Then I restored everything every minute, I remembered verbatim who said what...

Alexander Prilepin knocked me out on this bodyaga (the little one was 134 centimeters tall, and as the team captain I actually appointed him as the head coach of the USSR national team - God rest him!), And Rykov, who was listed as a coach with me. They arrived at 11 pm after Taranenko's speech (in the first heavy weight up to 110 kg. - D. G.) and they said: he won against Christ, because they allegedly poured him an elixir, which adds 20-30 kilograms. Rykov began to frighten me: “If you don’t drink, the Sultan will overcome you.” - “Yes, I’m ready to raise 190-260 even now,” I say. "Let's go to the hall, I'll show you." They just set me up...

- And it was impossible not to drink?

And who then in this life to believe? Of course, there was some doubt, and if I had a little bit to think about it when they came up to me and ordered ... So I was ready to vomit, and Prilepin came up to me: "Let's start with 170."

"For what..? - I say. - You will pour me something else, which adds 20-30 kilos - you need to start from 210. In general, I ordered 185, and he only - Yurk! - and left. Well, your fellow countryman brought me a paper cup in six approaches. The next day they came to me in Podolsk. “Now, if you started with 170,” Rykov sighed, “you would compete for a silver medal.” “I haven’t dreamed of her for 100 years,” he snapped, “I would have pushed exactly as much as needed to win.” He nodded: "We thought so," - therefore, apparently, they decided to jam on the spot! True, they didn’t want to throw at zero - they thought I was silver, and Rakhmanov was gold.

- The Sultan knew about it, don't you think?

They didn't report to me. I think he didn’t guess, or then he was reassured, but as we were friends with him, we continued to be friends - the kingdom of heaven to him!

(After a pause).If you tell all about these things... After all, I was poisoned twice in Moscow - I just couldn't believe it then. Both in Peru and Latvia they poured something a couple of times, only here I knew who was pouring, but I didn’t see it there.

What nicknames were given to you in the West: “Russian bear”, “Russian shirt-guy”, “big Russian” - in fact, you were the plenipotentiary representative of a great country. Is it true that after one of the world championships, you were even received by US President Nixon?

It was the first World Championship for me and for America - it happened, but since they had, frankly, little brains, or rather, experience in holding such competitions, they set up a training room on the second floor in the same room where we lived , well, after the first training session, the columns on which the floor stood cracked. We were immediately taken to the buses and dragged to athletics arena 20 kilometers from Columbus, the capital of Ohio. Zharyuk was over 40, one hundred percent humidity, the roof is a stadium! - heats up (they made it for autumn and winter) ... They built it, in general, and Nixon publicly promised on television to the one who was the first in the USA or on the continent to raise 500 pounds, to personally hand over a gold tie clip with his coat of arms.

- And what is 500 pounds for you?

Well, at that time this world record was, not yet set, - 227.5 kilograms. I picked them up and brought the hairpin to Shakhty, but on the eve of their two heavyweights - the American president received the whole team! - they trumpeted in all the magazines that this red communist would be beaten here. Then we met: a bottle of cognac, red salted caviar in jars, and Joseph Dube, the world champion of the 69th year (it was in the 70th), apologized: they say, he didn’t say that, all the journalists came up with it.

I did not study French much, in English I did not boom-boom at all, but I learned there. Then the Polish translator laughed: “Vasil, you said the shortest speech in English.” I thanked: “Sankyu”, but I didn’t add “very match”, because I didn’t know these words yet(laughs).

“I WENT OUT: STALINGRAD, I THINK, THEY STILL REMEMBER... TWO AUTO MATCHES HAVE BLOCKED THE ROAD, SO I SHIBANULED THEM TO THE BOOTH AND COMMANDED: “ALL FOLLOW ME!”

You met with many world celebrities: sportsmen, politicians, actors - who of them was remembered more and why?

Well, we have always allocated a team of artists for the Olympic Games. Oh, Lord, you won’t remember the names right now: Andrei Mironov, Edita Piekha, Galka Nenasheva ...

- It’s clear now why you set records - such girls inspired ...

No, they just sang, talked about their work. Both Olympics, it should be noted, were very difficult. Firstly, in Munich, the entire Israeli team was shot ...

- ...they were taken hostage by terrorists from the Palestinian radical organization "Black September"...

And just those guys who I knew died - weightlifters, wrestlers. I met them in Sweden and became friends.

- Did it make a painful impression on you?

It worked for everyone - I remember walking down the street, and towards the basketball player: "Vasily, come on to the wall - they are shooting there, they promised to blow it up." Armored personnel carriers, machine guns, submachine gunners, helmets, bulletproof vests are everywhere... You go down to get on a bus, and you get to the front - can you imagine the situation? - and yet, be that as it may, they messed up literally everywhere and everywhere. On September 5th I was supposed to perform. Everyone says: "Sit down, don't go - they said on TV that the competition was postponed for a day." Me: "That's good, but let's go." We arrived, and all the judges and athletes were already there. If I hadn't insured myself, the tournament could easily have been held - and would certainly have been held! - without me, because the main rival was Rudolf Mang.

German, obviously...

We return by bus. I took a nap - whatever it was, but experiences. He opened his eyes: “What are we standing?”. - “Yes, they don’t let them through the gate, they are waiting for some kind of order.” Well, I screwed up again. I wake up again - we stand still. There are other gates literally nearby, capitalist countries are passing by, and the socialist countries are all here: both Poles and Czechs ... There have already gathered about 20 buses - this is the attitude towards us ...

- Nightmare!

I went out: Stalingrad, I think, they still remember ... Two submachine gunners blocked the road, so I pushed them to the booth and commanded: “Everyone follow me!”(laughs).Well, it was clearly a provocation...

- You were no less famous in the world than Brezhnev - didn’t fame turn your head?

My head is on a strong neck - in vain, or what, did you lift so many things on it when you shook your back? No, I looked at life realistically, I knew what was getting out of her now, and what would happen later. He did not deceive himself with fireworks and sweet speeches, because he understood: for athletes, no matter how famous they were, after the end of the performances, the attitude changes radically. This was waiting for me, but I was ready for this.

“IN BOXING, IN WRESTLING EVERYTHING IS BUYED - GOLD MEDALS FOR BENCHMARKS, AND IN WEIGHTLIFTING - NO, YOU HAVE TO PLOVE”

Once you complained: “No one was guarding me, and all the schizophrenics just burst at me” - what does “burst” mean?

Well, I didn't have security.

You don't need it, I don't think...

Ooo! Look: the first secretary of the regional party committee went for a walk in the evening - two foremen accompanied him on the sides, but I didn’t go out into the street at all after dark - only at night. During the day, if you go, everything is sure to be crazy or an alcoholic will become attached: a normal one will not work. How did I live here before? I sit behind the wheel, my wife opens the gate (now they are automatic), I leave, she closes, and we go somewhere. They returned the same way ... You can’t go to the cinema, they immediately discouraged the hunt for a restaurant, but to walk around the city like people - this was not the case.

It seemed to many that Soviet champions, especially such great ones as you, like cheese in butter, and how much did Vasily Alekseev receive on average then?

Well, 400 rubles in scholarships (they gave 300 to everyone, but Kosygin the steward paid me extra) and 140 were paid at the mine - I'm a miner - that's all. Guys, my friends from Donetsk, from Luhansk (Batishchev and others) earned decent money, although they were not champions and record holders. They called the amounts - I will not voice them! - and they thought that I had 10 times more, and when I said how much I have, they were sincerely surprised: “Then why do you live in this hole?”.

I live because I have to live and I like this city, however, in 1974 I realized that I have no future here. I was promised to open a technical school of physical education, but I understood that all this was nonsense. And I led a group of masters, and good guys grew up with me, but when I asked our native Communist Party to improve the living conditions of one of them, the champion of Russia, they didn’t meet me halfway. "Well," he said, "then you'll have to run away from here," but where? I soaped myself in the hero city of Kyiv, but they immediately hung such barriers here ... I had to turn back to my historical homeland, to Ryazan, and there ...

- ... there were no conditions ...

This is the first, and the second, the attitude towards sports and people was completely unacceptable.

I already recalled my childhood impressions, but for some reason it especially stuck in my memory how after dinner you left the dining room, lay down on the bench with your stomach up, closed your eyes and rested. Around you, the children were noisy - I, too, and one day, standing up, you laid siege to me: “Well, stop screaming, otherwise I’ll throw a brick on my head.” It was said, however, kindly, nevertheless, there were legends about your difficult character. In particular, in Feodosia, it was quietly passed from mouth to mouth that once Alekseev was sitting in the dining room, having lunch, and suddenly his fork fell on the floor, and he was healthy, he couldn’t bend down ... He called the waitress: “Pick it up.” She flared up, “How can you? I am a Soviet woman - what do you allow yourself? Without saying a word, you allegedly got up, turned the table over and left...

This is not the only bike about me - there are hundreds of them. In particular, I have heard that I threw the captain of a speedboat into the Don, took away some hunting rifles in the store and took them away, but I am a rather tactful person, and the culture in me also lingered in some places(laughs). As for bending over, drop the fork at least now - I'll get it with my teeth. I’m flexible, I could make a “bridge”, at school I climbed wooden stairs on my hands to the second floor and in this position I could walk for kilometers, but how did I play tennis, get the balls from the floor? Hundreds of them fell there, thousands - oh, those storytellers!

From 1990 to 1992, you were the head coach of the Soviet Union weightlifting team, and this period is notable for the fact that under your leadership, Soviet weightlifters never received zero marks. They say that this became possible due to the fact that, firstly, the wards respected you very much (after all, you were not just a coach, but also an athlete - God forbid everyone!), And secondly, according to rumors, if the guys didn’t obeyed, they could well put their fist on them ...

This is another bike, I tell you right away. How can you? Firstly, I never communicated directly with the athletes - only through their coaches, and I did not allow anyone to do this. Not only did I not lose a single “steering wheel” in three years, but I didn’t lose a single competition, and the guys in my team didn’t get a single injury. From the Olympics in Barcelona, ​​for example, he brought five gold medals, four silvers and one bronze, and if the fight had been fair, there should have been seven golds and three silvers.

- Another confirmation that for someone your success is like a bone in the throat?

What's surprising? In boxing, in wrestling, everything is bought, and the medals are divided between countries where this sport is progressing or is being closely practiced.

- Still buying?

You didn `t know? Gold medals for grandmothers, but in weightlifting - no, you have to plow. In the fight, he lay down - he got a point, but how can you buy a barbell? You need to lift it, and if you haven’t mastered it, who will give you a medal? So far, the bodyaga is going on: they say, Zhabotinsky, my friend, deceived Vlasov. Nonsense! How can you cheat? - three judges on the platform and five - in the jury.

He also convinced me that Vlasov did not deceive - it was a tactical struggle, and in general, there is no deception in sports - there are winners and losers in sports ...

There was absolutely no fight there. Lenya told me this story twice: the first time while drunk, and the second - already patriotically, that is, embellished, but you never know what he says. I know something: push Vlasov 217.5, Zhabotinsky would not have overcome 220, because it was a psychological weight.

“THEY SAID THAT I AM UNGOVERNABLE, WHY SHOULD I BE CONTROLLED BY ONE WHO CANNOT ADD THREE FOUR-DIGITAL NUMBERS IN THE MIND?”

Vasily Ivanovich, I cannot help but ask you about the most outstanding Soviet heavyweights - there are not many of them, and if chronological order, this is Vlasov, Zhabotinsky and Alekseev ... What do you think about Yuri Vlasov?

A truly great weightlifter, the greatest - there is no other word for it! - but also unique. I went to the Olympics in Tokyo, was three heads stronger than Zhabotinsky and ... lost. True, his coach Suren Bogdasarov took the blame, but the coach’s fault is then palpable when the athlete has no head.

So I never let either the coach or the taker get close to me - I didn’t allow anyone to count for me or order weight. I was told that I was uncontrollable, and why should I be controlled by someone who cannot add three four-digit numbers in his mind? He takes a pen, paper and counts in a column ...

- Did you put it together in your mind?

What's smart about that? Any competition: how much I shook, how much I pulled out and how much I need to push in order to set a world record in total - it all happens automatically.

When Vlasov, for example, in Rome set records, 202.5 kilograms pushed, I was a freshman, I lived in a room for 18 people, and I had some kind of homemade barbell. I shook it 40 times. “This,” he said, “is in honor of Yuri Vlasov.”

- How did Vlasov treat you?

To be honest, we didn't really meet him. He is an unusual person - not a single comedian from the stage will make you laugh like the story that I will now tell.

When I became the captain of the national team, I lifted record weights, found his phone number and called. Natasha, wife, (God rest her soul!) picks up the phone. “I am so-and-so,” I introduce myself. - Can I talk to Yuri Petrovich? - "He is busy. Please call back in two weeks." Exactly at the appointed time I dial the number again, and everything repeats: “Yuri Petrovich is busy. Call back in two months. - “I am Alekseev,” I say, “I am also a weightlifter.” - "Yes, we know you, we follow your records ...". Only in the 75th year ...

- ... descended ...

It so happened that we met.

- What impression did Yuri Petrovich make on you?

Not good.

- They say that a few years ago he began to drink urine ...

And what to eat?

- I don’t have an answer to this difficult question - I’m not ready for it ...

He, I remember, was sitting in the center of the table, and I, the vice-president of the federation weightlifting USSR, to his right. He quarreled with everyone in the federation and went into powerlifting, in my opinion (there, however, he also did not last long - he was asked). He never liked to meet athletes who were not very educated at that time, and, as far as I know, he has no contacts with weightlifters by occupation.

Now Zhabotinsky ... Lenya is an absolutely talented person and, if he was engaged in weightlifting, he could remain on the platform for a long time. If I didn't exist(laughs).

- Between you and Zhabotinsky mutual jealousy - I do not say envy - was felt?

Firstly, in 1968 I was third, and they looked down on me condescendingly. They became interested, because unexpectedly in Voroshilovgrad at the Union Championship “jumped out” - drove Leonid Ivanovich there on the platform in the bench press, but in fact he was an unknown athlete, and when they wrote about me in Soviet Sport, I was surprised: why did I deserve such attention in the press ? The first secretary of the Voroshilovgrad regional party committee, Vladimir Vasilyevich Shevchenko, said then: "Immediately drag this guy to me in Voroshilovgrad."

He was very fond of sports...

Yes, but we did not agree with him in character, or rather, in opinions. Shevchenko believed that Voroshilovgrad is the navel of the Universe, but for me Voroshilovgrad and Zhmerynka are one and the same: the main thing is a gym and a barbell.

- When you meet with Zhabotinsky today, do you have something to talk about?

We talk on general topics: how are you, how is your health. The main thing is to see each other, exchange a word, tell a joke, make sure that everything is in order. Recently, our mutual friend in Moscow celebrated his 70th birthday. Many athletes, coaches gathered, and I flew, but he was not. Now I have returned from Sochi - there were also guys I knew there. By the way, I made a proposal to revive competitions like the former Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR, only to replace the bastard word "CIS" - say, call it the Commonwealth Spartakiad and have prizes, respect, anthems. You can’t save on sports: now they play hockey somewhere, and boxers meet - they check the strength of the jaw. I think it would be nice to measure strength in the bar, in wrestling and in other sports. Alexander Vasilievich Butko(Head of the Directorate of Complex Reconstruction and Construction of Sochi. - D. G.) promised me personally to build a hall in Krasnaya Polyana. If you think about it, with the collapse of the Union, we ...

- ... not a single new hall, probably, appeared ...

Nothing has been built in 20 years, despite the fact that we (I mean Russia) have lost two bases - in Feodosia and Alushta. And in the highlands - Tsaghkadzor in Armenia, and, by the way, a monument should be erected to me in Alushta: being in charge, I sent several wagons with equipment to the gym.

I don’t know what condition it is in, because I have never been there, but this is my merit - I knocked it out. I did a lot of things in this post, but you know what moment I consider one of the defining ones? Then our coaches rushed abroad - to the European and World Championships, because there, if their athlete became a champion or prize-winner, they were entitled to a premium in foreign currency, and nothing to those who remained in the Union. I went and made sure that both of them were paid equally.

- They hit, I suppose, with a fist on the table ...

I didn’t knock with my fist, but in a quiet voice convinced that more could be achieved this way, and to this day I try to do everything that depends on me for weightlifting. Now in Russia there are no competitions at all(In February 2011, Dmitry Medvedev tried to rectify the situation, for which he established the President's Weightlifting Cup. - D. G.) . This kind of money is allocated to athletes, coaches for this and that, but at the Olympics in London, I feel they will give us a ride, push us to fourth place.

“WHY THERE ARE NO BEAUTIES? BECAUSE NOBODY LIFTS 40 TONS - ONLY THE SYRINGE AND HOPE"

- God willing, someday a new Alekseev will be born, perhaps the future hero will have a hungry childhood ...

I am surprised: now there are no problems with nutrition ... So I managed to gain weight on noodles, but if I could do it faster, the records would go much earlier. In my time, there were no reducing agents, but now - please, money is allocated for this crazy chemistry, but they raise less than me. I'm not saying that I could pull out a record weight - my fingers did not allow - but I pushed 265 in Montreal, and at times 270 - can any of them dream of such a thing now?

- At least swallow chemistry, if you can’t do it differently, but do it, right? Apparently weak...

And I am amazed at this.

- Very big hopes filed at one time a resident of Kiev Anatoly Pisarenko ...

Well, I had little contact with him - I met after he completed his sports career. A businessman, quick-witted ... Newspapers wrote that Anatoly was much lighter than me, to which I replied that at 24 years old I weighed 100 kilograms, and he weighed 128. “He will live to my age,” he said, “we’ll see how long he will pull” , but Pisarenko finished early.

You have overcome the fantastic milestone of 600 kilograms, but is there a limit to human capabilities in general and in weightlifting in particular?

When I overcame these 600 kilograms in Minsk, a correspondent approached me. At that time, I almost didn’t know journalists: they didn’t indulge me very much with attention, although they already wrote a lot about me in Soviet Sport. It seems that he didn’t deserve special attention, but for some reason he stood out - all the time they bowed my name ...

Why is unclear...

He told me: “Vasily, in Rome, when Vlasov became the champion of the Olympic Games, I asked him: “Yura, how do you see a heavyweight who will lift 600?” Vlasov replied: "He should be 190-200 centimeters tall, 170 kilograms of weight and not an ounce of fat." Well, he is a writer, he understands in ounces, but you are the same as Vlasov - in terms of dimensions, according to all data.

- Only with ounces not very ...

Well, with height and fat - no coincidence. Meanwhile, the journalist continues: “And how do you see an athlete who will lift 700?”. “Why should I see him? - I laughed it off. “Look at me: I will pick them up.” And raised would, without humor. In 1972, when they canceled the bench press, I could already gain 680: 250 stings, 180 tore, well, 255-260 pushed.

- Terrible business!

Yes, and in 1975-1976, I would probably press 265, because the bench press was not a problem for me - just to drag the bar to my chest. I could shake any world record two or three times.

- How long can the pursuit of records continue - is there, after all, a limit to this or not?

So the chase is already over - for example, I don’t see anyone swearing at a new one. Recently, the Iranian Hossein Rezazade left - his compatriots so wanted him to lift 500 in the biathlon, but did not reach it. I was in 2003 in Vancouver where he became the world champion. What struck? All journalists, both Canadian and visiting, attacked me like a frontal attack. I told them: “There are young weightlifters, fresh champions of the Olympics, the world - why don’t you go to them?” Moreover, with the newspapers of the 75-76th years, they arrived, on which my autographs stood: sign, they say, again. Some kind of horror - I sat for two hours after the competition. Everyone was already drinking compote, and I kept scribbling autographs - that's how it crashed into their memory.

- Vasily Ivanovich, why are there no such handsome men as Vlasov, Zhabotinsky and you now?

Because no one lifts 40 tons. 40 minutes of training, and they leave the gym - they only hope for a syringe.

- Rely on a syringe, but don’t make a mistake yourself! ..

Alas, coaches and athletes for several generations (not only in the barbell, but in many, if not all sports) have been doing this bodyaga: a general torsion. I was and saw the head coach of the USSR national team ... Until I check everyone, I don’t clean them out, I won’t turn them inside out, I won’t let them go abroad, so I didn’t get anyone, no matter how they tried to catch them.

Imagine: the guy backed off, he is already sitting on the podium, and his time is for doping control. One is so grabbed, the second, even two were removed from the banquet and taken to be checked. I was indignant: “This is a violation of human rights. The competition is over - why are you pulling them? Tomas Ajan, president of the International Weightlifting Federation, said: “Tomas, don’t look for mine - I don’t let unverified people go abroad.” Well, as soon as the Union collapsed, off we go: 93rd year - three "hits", five years ago, in Europe - nine. More than 200 thousand dollars paid ...

- ...fine, huh?

And yours got caught somewhere, and the Bulgarian team was filmed, the Turkish one. Science is moving forward, and in the laboratories in Cologne(Cologne Institute for Sports Biochemistry. - D. G.) they manage to discover drugs that are already gone. I used to stop taking anabolics a month before the competition - and sleep peacefully, and then they learned to identify them even after 90 days. And they do not report to the local police, and they catch - I mean doping control specialists: they cannot do without it.

“I ADVISED SCHWARZENEGGER: “YOU NEED TO RAISE THE BAR AND GLORIZE AUSTRIA,” AND HE TAKEN AND GLORIFIED AMERICA”

One guy who was very fond of the bar - Arnold Schwarzenegger - became the governor of California: did you imagine yourself as a politician?

I already said once: the only one who can be president in this country is me, but I don’t want to (laughs), and met Schwarzenegger for the first time when he was still a kid - in Austria in the 71st. Then the Ukrainian team played with the Austrian team, and the Austrians set the condition that I, “like a diamond in the crown”, be included in the Ukrainian team. They brought us, in short, to the hall where these guys were swinging ... I remember that Arnold then advised: “You need to raise the bar and glorify Austria,” and he took and glorified America.

- Vasily Ivanovich, but if, purely theoretically, suppose you were called to the presidency, would you go?

Never! I won’t even become president of the Weightlifting Federation, because I have to live in Moscow, and I don’t like this anthill. Once I was pulled there by ropes.

- I imagine...

When I was about to leave for Kyiv, everything was promised there. You were the chairman of the State Committee for Sports - I forgot my last name ...

- ... Mikhail Makarovich Baka ...

Yes, we called him MM. I talked with Alexander Pavlovich Lyashko, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR (I still remember his last name, although it was the devil when), and at the highest level they promised me: “We will do everything for you - you just head the barbell for us.” I agreed: "And I will lead, and I myself will raise it." Well, they shook hands and they told me: “Bring us a paper from Pavlov that you are a free man,” and Pavlov, the chairman of the USSR Sports Committee, by that time in the Central Committee of the party received two reprimands for me. He spread his hands: “Vasily, that’s it, I can’t do it anymore - they will remove me from work.” I just couldn’t understand the Constitution of the USSR: everyone is free, everyone can live anywhere, but ...

Alekseev Vasily Ivanovich - no, however, let's not talk about sad things. What do you think a young man needs today, who will not get acquainted with the barbell at the age of 19, but much earlier, in order to surpass your achievements?

Firstly, you need a specialist trainer, and although I trained all my life myself, I still learned a lot from communicating with the guys with whom I trained at the institute - they were wonderful guys. No one would ever have had injuries as such if they were doing, as I suggested: reusable lifts at medium weights, with which the muscle can cope, and for the so-called penetrations at high weights, I would generally kill.

In the national team, I weaned the guys from this. They beat records in training all their lives, and everyone rushed to watch: wow! When one young Igor Sadykov lifted 190 kilos in the snatch three times instead of the 170 planned, I warned him several times: “If you don’t stop, I will expel him from the training camp.” He thought I was joking, but it turned out that everything was too serious. Therefore, maybe they considered me tough: everything that harmed the bar, I unequivocally stopped. He came to get equipped, and I handed him a return ticket to Ferghana, so the next year he tore everyone up, and before that he had never raised anything serious anywhere.

- Terrible injuries weightlifters before your eyes received?

Well, at the Beijing Olympics, the Hungarian Janos Baranyai broke off his arm - his elbows turned inside out, and when I took the team to Germany, a 16-year-old guy from Lebanon suffered there - the barbell fell on his neck and his spine, in my opinion, interrupted. He was lifted by a helicopter through the roof, and then they organized a show - I don’t know how else to call it! - in order to raise money for treatment, so I sat all this show and signed autographs on banknotes of 10 deutschmarks - they were sold at 110. I signed a lot ...

- Have you ever had such a thing that you felt: just about - and there will be a terrible injury?

I have? No, after all, I was wiser by experience. And he trained himself, and trained all the guys in the national team so that no one got a single injury.

Before the revolution, strong men like you were invited to work in the circus - in the arena they juggled weights, lifted horses along with carts, and so on. Have you ever, by chance, been lured there?

Well, the circus is such a thing, there, maybe, the horses were underfed ... No, they didn’t invite me, and they don’t pull. We have Dikul Valentin Ivanovich, who is related to the circus - they even look alike.

- In the national team, you did not practice fun when the guys began to measure their strength - who wins?

No, I stopped such things.

Have you ever used physical strength in life? I mean situations on the street, maybe somewhere else, when you had to stand up for yourself?

Regularly. I said that until you give a kick, they will not leave. I'm going with two children, my wife - they don't let me through.

- And it happened that they molested you because they didn’t recognize you?

No, these were not observed.

Greatest Heavyweight Weightlifter Vasily ALEKSEEV:“When two “Miss Las Vegas” were offered to me in America, I was indignant: “Are you crazy, fools? “I’m a communist and a family man”

Part III

“WHAT COULD BREZHNEV TELL ME? HE CAN'T SPEAK"

- What do you think, for your outstanding sports achivments Motherland rewarded you generously?

At what plan?

In moral, material. I think if Vasily Ivanovich Alekseev lived in the United States of America, he would have a slightly larger house and a little bit in a different place ...

You know, I don’t like these subjunctive moods either - with what I did in sports, in weightlifting, and I am satisfied with the attitude towards me, because at that time there was no better for anyone. On the other hand, America is not needed - if he lived in Ukraine, he would be treated kindly much more than in Russia. A simple example. In Ukraine, in other republics of the USSR, any weightlifter who won the title of world champion at that time received a Certificate of Honor from the Presidium of the Supreme Council, which provided him with a pension for life ... What was it called?

- Personal...

Yes, and no one here could even think of such a thing.

- Do you now have some kind of personal pension or a regular one?

I am an honorary pensioner of this Shakhtinskaya street - Klimenko Avenue.

- How much, if not a secret, in terms of dollars pays you today from the generosity of its state?

Well, eight thousand divided by tritsulik - about 270, it turns out ...

- Well, do you have any savings left? Can you afford something today?

Do you know such names: Gaidar, Yeltsin?

- Heard...

They stole everything from the people in one night.

- Have you lost much in your passbooks?

100 000.

- Soviet rubles?

Yes - everything that I saved up, that was paid for records and victories at the European, World and Olympic Games championships, turned out in one night. I always say that I could buy six Volga cars and one Zhiguli with my savings. Who rides them today? Berezovsky?

- When you heard that the deposits were gone, what was the reaction?

Yes, none. I arrived from China on December 28, 1991, and my wife says: the rumor is that the money is about to depreciate. I waved it off: "Let them depreciate at least twice - what, 50 thousand is not enough for you?" But no, it turned out that, as one of the comedians said, it was now possible to buy a pie for these pennies (well, it turns out that I can grab two). Now sometimes in old age, upon reaching a certain age, they will pay a thousand ...

- Rubles?

What else?

You are talking about responsibility... Playing for the Union national team in the heaviest weight has always been a matter of international prestige...

Both before me and after (although, maybe not to such an extent) under the Soviet Union, it was established: if the team lost, and the heavyweight won, it was a victory, but if it was the other way around, it was a defeat.

- Did you feel pressured that you couldn’t lose, and that’s it?

To some extent yes...

- ... but not overpowered ...

Well, God gave me strong nerves, and I took it easy, and the other guys - take my rivals Manga or Reading - beat the jitters. A hail of sweat ran from the Belgian (such drops that do not exist in nature - four times more than usual - flowed down from the forehead), and the German, when I approached, was covered with red spots.

- And you at least henna?

What about me? Firstly, I always said that they have two opponents - the barbell, which must be lifted, and me, who is difficult to beat, and I have only one - the barbell.

- Do you need a serious character to win?

The one who is deprived of them did not win.

In Soviet times, athletes, especially the great ones, were the banner of the country, and the authorities treated them with emphatic respect. Did you meet Brezhnev during your heyday?

Yes, in 1975, at the closing of the Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR, we sat side by side at the Luzhniki stadium.

- What did Brezhnev say to you?

What could he say? Leonid Ilyich did not know how to speak.

Did you even shake hands?

Certainly.

- Many, interestingly, the secretaries of the Central Committee, the leaders of the regional committees expressed a desire to have a drink with you?

It happened at ceremonial receptions, but what is served there? Champagne or wine. I met Gorbachev in 1988 - they drank champagne, which I never liked.

- Did Mikhail Sergeevich ask for your autograph?

No, but I took it from him, and from Raisa Maksimovna - they are still lying somewhere. I even have him football team asked to play in the second league. Here two cities claimed it - Shakhty and Azov. The people of Azov still have the sea, all kinds of prickly fish swim, but we only have coal, so it was more difficult for us. I had to turn for help to the Chairman of the State Committee for Sports Gramov, and then to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU.

Did he go forward?

Yes, we offended the people of Azov. There was a Shakhtar team - I can say, its parent! - played football...

"DRIVERS, - I SAID, ARE GOOD ONLY IN THE MINE, WHEN COAL IS EXTRACTED"

When, while performing abroad, you saw Western stores with their abundance and a generally different way of life, smiles on people's faces, was it not dreary and sad to return home, where everything looked different?

I didn’t particularly notice their smiles - all these are grins, but the smoked and raw-smoked sausage, which hung and no one bought it, struck me ... I remember I was surprised: “This is stale goods - what are they selling here?”. The only thing that always depressed me was when I went into their hardware stores and saw screws, bolts and nuts for every taste, of any size (I’m a needleworker - I had to make everything myself). I looked at them and thought: “When will we have this?”. Appeared...

- What did you usually bring home from abroad?

Tape recorders, some kind of cassettes ... The kids were still small then, they loved music. The list was given - I bought.

- Did the collapse of the Soviet Union somehow affect you, did you suffer about this?

Not much. The only thing I was worried about was the economy - I can understand something in it. She is like one organism, but I did not think that it would come to such devastation. Who benefited from this? The tsars, who took the helm, selfishness surged, and they do not care that this will not bring benefits to the people, but after all, everything that is done does not make it better for them.

- What kinds of sports, besides weightlifting, do you like? What competitions do you watch?

I'm not thrilled about boxing and its aftermath, but I watch it all the time. True, now these fights without rules are already tired, - the same thing! And I don't see any point in it. I watch hockey, volleyball, because I myself am a volleyball player.

- As the chairman of the USSR State Sports Committee Marat Gramov said: valetball ...

How how?

Well, he was a party functionary, and not an athlete - he didn’t fully understand ...

Oh, here in Ryazan they told (this is most likely an anecdote) a similar story about the chairman of the regional sports committee, who worked as secretary of the district committee before being appointed to this position. Then everything was difficult, including buying train tickets, and now the biathletes from the station call him: “We can’t leave for competitions - only you with your position ...”. - "What is your sport?" - asks. "Biathlon". - "What is it?". - "Well, skiers and shooters ...". He scratched the back of his head: "Let's do this: I will send the shooters today, and the skiers tomorrow."

- You loved hockey, but were friends with hockey players?

We trained together with them at the same base, and in the Crimea I even stood at the gate for them in football. They played hard...

- Admit it, someone could beat you?

Yes, three goals - we played 3:3.

- I would like to see how you stand in the football goal ...

Oh Lord! It happened on the children's beach in Evpatoria - there the stadium was like reinforced concrete, you can’t fall.

- But you can close the gate with yourself?

He closed it, threw himself at the feet of one - in my opinion, even twisted one, and from the podium they shout: “Idiot, this is a weightlifter!” - because when they run and see me, they are afraid. I'm not weak at the gate look. “This is a weightlifter, not a football player - hit!” Well, I got two offside goals.

sports destiny are you happy today? Do you think everything worked out perfectly or could you make adjustments?

Oh Dima! - if now, with my head, yes, start from the day I first got to the gym, I would have heaped up such miracles! Well, on the other hand, if I didn’t twist my back, if I didn’t get injured, maybe there would be nothing. I became smart because I independently overcame the consequences of it.

No, I have already reached a lot with my own mind, I trained normally, but turned my back, because new methodology found barbarian. With her, having a total triathlon of 500, in five months I made 540, I became an international specialist - this is such a leap! I was also invited to the national team to see under microscopes who I am and why I raised so much.

- Considered?

Yes, and they immediately gave a kick, because nothing outstanding - not all coaches are smart. Pulling 40 tons, they say, you can’t set records, but I threshed ... In the morning I go to the gym where the wrestlers have a barbell, I get up there and then, already plowed, I go to another gym where Zhabotinsky trains with friends. In the evening I am there again, but already alone: ​​there is no one, and therefore no one interferes. When such loads, you can’t lift a record weight, but they are used to it - they just come, the so-called penetrations right away, penetrations, penetrations ... I did not recognize this matter. “Tunneling,” he said, “is good only in a mine when coal is mined.” My coaches and I had different techniques preparation, and, of course, no one could convince me - and, however, did not try.

- Did they ever try to hurt you, hurt you, were there moments when resentment squeezed your heart?

Many times, but those who offended out of ignorance or out of habit, then repented, and seriously - they no longer had a second attempt.

- By the way, were your parents lucky to see how you became an Olympic champion?

My father did not live, he died in 1971, but by that time I was already a world champion.

Was he proud of you?

I didn’t ask, it’s not customary with us, well, my parents lived separately - in the Arkhangelsk region. Mother died after the Moscow Olympics, after this poisoning. Our family was very hardworking, and all my brothers and sister are workaholics.

"THIS IS ONLY THE LOOK I HAVE SUCH - IT'S NORMAL ITSELF"

- Vasily Ivanovich, your wife's name is Olimpiada - did you guess that on purpose?

When we guessed each other with her, I still did not raise much. He got married early, in 1962.

- Nevertheless, the name for the wife of the two-time Olympic champion is very symbolic ...

Yes (smiles)lucky with the name.

- Is it true that at one time you sat on your wife's neck for six months? In a figurative sense, of course...

Well, yes - before that, because of a back injury, I was kicked out of everywhere. When I figured it out with her, I invented the machine, I told her: “Hold me for six months - if it doesn’t work out, I’ll climb into the mine and I won’t get out of there: you’ll only receive a salary for me.” For six months he sat, yes, on 72 or 78 rubles of her salary.

- Didn't murmur?

And what is there to grumble? - we went through such a life with her ...

- Loved you?

She is still hiding it.

A picture from Feodosia stuck in my memory: you are walking to the beach, to an evening workout - an important, serious man ...

It's just the way I look - it's normal itself ...

- ... and then Olimpiada Ivanovna minces and pancakes seem to be dragging from the bar. Didn't it seem to me?

If only there are pancakes on the plate, like this(shows: on outstretched arms), But I don't eat during my workout.

- Has your spouse ever carried pancakes from the bar for you?

No, we didn't get to that point.

At the peak of insane fame, you certainly were not deprived of female attention. Admit it: the girls built their eyes, tried to get to know each other, maybe seduce you?

- (Embarrassed).Talking about it for a long time and uncomfortable ... I remember when in America two "Miss Las Vegas" was offered to me, I was indignant: "Are you crazy, fools? “I’m a communist and a family man.”

Give me at least three or four...

-(Laughs).And this snake-tempter in response: “So what? Here, in America, there are also plenty of communists - including married people. I: “No, guys, it won’t work like that with us,” so then on the “Voice” they told him three times that Alekseev was offered and he refused. What if you agreed?

- They would have been handed over four times ... When you returned home, were you rewarded for your vigilance?

- It happened that you didn’t really want to keep the defense?

Well, who is talking about this topic? True, we always behaved with dignity, and if there were any rumors, it was not about us.

- You have two sons - Sergey and Dmitry: what do they do?

Both graduated from the law faculty of Rostov State University (I don’t know what the second one went there for, apparently, in company with his brother), there is a two-year difference between them. The eldest, Sergei, was a prosecutor in a neighboring city for 13 years, and now he has moved to Rostov.

- Also a prosecutor?

No, I asked him to leave the prosecutor's office, because this life is not for him.

- And the younger one?

Does business. Lives in Shakhty.

- You wanted the children to do weightlifting?

The younger son lifted, was the fourth in Kharkov in the 88th, in my opinion, at the Union Championship. A very capable guy, but it's my fault - I didn't let him advance further. When he became the head coach of the Union team in 1989, he told him: “Dima, tie it up so that there are no complaints against me: they say, someone didn’t take you somewhere or, on the contrary, took you.”

- Did your son love the barbell?

He fulfilled the norm of the international master - 180 tore, 240 pushed. more talented than me...

- Seriously?

Yes, but he had a well-deserved coach of Russia - me.

"ALCOHOL IS FAKE, MEDICATIONS ARE ALSO - ONLY DRUGS ARE REAL..."

You recently said: “Youth was bad at all times - the ancients spoke about this, but now it has become even worse” - why do you think so?

Well, then there were no drugs, no tobacco, no alcohol.

- It was, but bad ...

In any case, the ancient Greeks and Romans drank noble wine, and now any low-quality alcohol in bulk. I recently arrived from Sochi, where they discussed the alcohol problem in Russia - Medvedev and Putin were there, and Mutko, our Minister of Sports, and Golikova, Minister of Health and Social Development.

We have the Tribuna newspaper, the editorial office of which burned down five years ago(in February 2006, when a fire broke out in the Moscow Press publishing house. - D. G.), and somehow her journalist, with whom I was friends, asked: what would you ask Putin at the meeting? (Vladimir Vladimirovich was then president). “I would,” he said, “would ask him only one question: when will the destruction of the Russian people stop?” Alcohol is completely fake, medicines too ...

- ...only drugs are real...

And they flooded the country. Now, if someone hit a person in the nose and blood started flowing, they will put him in prison, but if they poisoned him with false vodka or fake medicines, no problem: they scolded him and run on. For everything that causes harm to health, it is necessary to give a life sentence. Well, what do you want? Half a million people go missing every year. I don't know how it is with you, in Ukraine...

- Less...

Well, there are fewer of you, but the system is the same.

- How and how do you live today, Vasily Ivanovich? What do you do?

Oh Lord! Almost nothing this summer, because it's hot. He practically did not leave the house.

- Lazy...

And he was lazy and trained, but neither for fishing in particular, nor for hunting - nowhere: at most three or four times he went out (by the way, I never liked it if someone said: one-two or three-four - count and tell me, but here I myself took it and repeated it, so I’ll clarify: I went fishing three times and hunting once).

- You once confessed: “I have golden hands up to the elbow and my head is in place - I invent” - but what exactly?

Well, I designed a lot of weightlifting machines. Here is at least a machine for restoring the back, which I once turned off and because of which I was kicked out from everywhere. Now in Sochi, where the hall for the national team has been opened, I have to give at least two machines, to Anapa also two. I think this is also help for Ukrainian weightlifters - whatever you say, but the bar is harmful to health, but if you start pumping your back and knees as a kid, you will be insured against injuries and undesirable consequences for the rest of your life.

- Back and knees...

Well, the shoulders, of course. Those two machines that I invented allow you to stay healthy for life.

- You are 69 years old - do you continue to lift weights?

I continue, but the technique has completely changed. I no longer train for compression of the spine, but for stretching, although the muscles work the same way.

- Barbell, so pull?

No, I replaced it with rubber, other weights.

- If you imagine that today you will go out on the platform, how much will you take on your chest?

It's hard to say - for this you need to specially prepare, but I think that if I had performed for veterans, I would not have blundered. About five years ago, if I practiced, I could take 190 in the rack.

- Vasily Ivanovich, do your muscles, back, joints hurt now? Are you more of a healthy person or a sick person?

Sometimes like this, sometimes like that...

- The weather happens, what turns?

Now, even with heavy loads, if you drag something a little, the muscles hurt more. I still react to magnetic storms.

“I NEVER WORKED ON THE FIGURE. THEY SAID: HERE IS VLASOV'S FIGURE, THIS ONE, THIS ONE, AND I HAVE RESULTS"

Did you like your mid-70s musculature? Do you have beautiful posters in picture poses like Schwarzenegger?

My merit lies precisely in the fact that I have never worked on a figure. They said: here, Vlasov has a figure, this one, this one, and I had results. I only thought about them - they don’t pay for a figure and they don’t give food rations.

- You have an amazing appearance - have you ever been invited to act in films?

For the role of Karabas-Barabas?(laughs).No, although there was some conversation.

- When you fly in airplanes, how do you fit in narrow chairs with your dimensions?

Well, it depends on which plane and how many passengers fly. Ticket prices are crazy...

- Do you have to take business class?

Yah! - who will pay for it? I always sit with people, however, as a rule, I am alone in three chairs, because there are enough free places, the salon is not packed.

- What kind of car do you have now and how does a person of such dimensions fit in it?

I have the 452nd UAZ, a minibus is the only car that I can fit in and feel like a king on a throne in it. She is not mine personally - Vladimir Fedorovich Chub, our former governor, gave her to me.

- That is, you sit behind the wheel?

- And how did you go before, in Soviet times? You, probably, "Volga" and "Lada" allocated?

Well, how - bought and went. Then the “Volga” 24 was more spacious, and I normally fit in it, but now the doors have been thickened - soundproofing has been installed, the steering wheel has been raised, the seats (they used to be a trough) have been replaced with large and thick ones - and that’s it, I can’t get behind the wheel anymore.

- Do you like hunting?

What normal person doesn't love her?

- Who do you hunt?

On a wild boar, a hare, a duck - a game that does not need protection.

- What is your most impressive, memorable trophy?

Lord, why remember them? Boars. Ducks. This year we were supposed to go to Tver to see a bear, but as soon as we get together - frying.

- They say that you are a lover of a strong word ...

Strong - how is it? To not wobble?

- Yes, to be stable ...

Well, you and I live and lived in what state? Where without a mother ...

- ... and you won’t refuel, and you won’t go ...

It's like in Irtenev's poem:

And in pursuit added weighty
A word that you can’t immediately insert into a verse,
This word is familiar to everyone
With him everywhere we find relatives.
I don't know any other country
where it is so common.
And the samurai fell to the ground,
The kimono was torn on the chest.

(Laughs).So, when necessary - yes, we pronounce. We can.

"WHAT DOES THE EVIL FORCE MEAN? THIS IS ALEKSEEV GOING TO THE BATH»

- You are a recognized master of aphorisms - have you ever thought of writing them down and publishing them?

No one wants to write down, although they should ... They often say: “Do you remember, you said so-and-so? - we laughed...". I answered: “What should I remember? Record and tell.

- There were a lot of jokes about you at one time - which one do you like the most?

Well, this is not about me, but about Zhabotinsky, like they removed him from the competition - they found a jack in one place.

- In which?

In the ass, and then this jack was attributed to me, so we have it(laughs)passing. Well, once I was sitting with Marat Gramov at the Sports Committee, and he decided to help me buy a uniform for the USSR national team. Calls one Gavrik. “Do you,” he asks, “do you know Alekseev?” He: "Ah, this evil spirit ...". Marat turned pale: “What does “evil spirit” mean?”, And he answered: “This is Alekseev going to the bathhouse”(laughs).

You have a great sense of humor and I know you love telling jokes. What would you share with readers today?

No, my anecdotes are not for the public - this must be specially selected.

- Then, maybe you will read some of your poems?

This is what I keep to myself.

But you write, don't you?

Well, if there's ink...

- Many poems have accumulated?

Everyone has already been strangled: publish, publish, but I gave up my PhD, did not defend it - why do I need these burrs on my biography? True, I always correct when they say: I set so many world records, such and such a champion, two-time Olympic champion ... “Why don’t you show my mind? - I ask. - Do not indicate that, in addition to the honored master of sports, I am also an honored coach of the Soviet Union and Russia? It confirms something."

Poems... You still ask about the songs... Once I was with a delegation in Germany, in the sister city of Shacht Gelsenkirchen, and there the German alone says: "Herr Alekseev, do you have such a voice - do you sing?" I nodded, "Yes." - "What songs?" - “I have two favorites: “Life is wonderful under communism” and “Don't rub salt in my wound.” The head of the delegation made scary eyes at me: “Tie it up!”.

Vasily Ivanovich, I am happy that I visited a great athlete and coach, a real Russian hero who the whole world knows by sight. Great luck in my biography...

Thank you, and finally I want to appeal to parents: do not keep children at home, do not send them outside! There are so many gyms around, stadiums - take your children by the hand and lead them there, because sport is a great happiness. The main thing, as I have already said, is to endure the first two or three months, in any case, if a person weightlifting hits, is tied to the bar for life. I know this from myself, from those who trained nearby, and I wish the Ukrainians happiness, kindness, health, and I am very pleased that our Patriarch Kirill traveled all over Ukraine. He did the greatest thing: he reminded us that we are one whole, that we came from each other ...

- ...and not from monkeys, as some claim. Finally, I will not deny myself the pleasure of shaking your big strong hand. Thank you!

On September 6 in Munich, many were waiting for the fall of the Soviet colossus. The German Rudolf Mang was younger, besides, he hoped for the “houses and walls help” factor. At the pre-Olympic competitions, Mang was only 2.5 kg behind Alekseev - at the Games he promised to eat both the gap and the opponent. When the athletes left, the hall was quiet: even next to Mang (130 kg, 180 cm), Vasily looked like a giant (152.8 kg, 188 cm). But our athlete suppressed not with dimensions, but with his cold confidence: against the backdrop of a calm and dry Alekseev, the faces of his rivals were striking, sweat flowing down them in hail.

“I feel terrible strength,” according to legend, he said that day in the locker room. By the end of the competition between Vasily's gold and Rudolf's silver, there was a gap of 30 kg.

Journalists fanned the myth about the secrets of the preparation of the Soviet titan, reinforced by the fact that he trained behind closed doors. Today we will open both those doors and the notorious secrets that helped Alekseev set 80 world records, win the World and European Championships eight times and win the Olympic gold twice.

1. 40 tons per day

Vasily raised so much during two workouts, doing four hours in the morning and evening. In the hall, he did not take record weights (“you will only waste your nerves and get injured”) - instead, he repeatedly tore, pushed and pressed those kilograms that he was sure of.

2. Do what goes

The emphasis in training Alekseev did on the exercise that went best, and performed it to exhaustion. This, according to the champion, helped move the records up.

3. Don't get hung up

Unlike most heavyweight colleagues, Vasily could pull himself up 12 times or arrange a marathon ski race. On weekends, he played volleyball in a lead belt (13 kg) for four hours. I used weighting agents and: I hooked 7 kg on my arms and 15 kg on my chest. I loved water skiing: the cable behind the boat was pulled - and a hero grew out of the water.

4. All the power is in the liquid

Alekseev took 10 shirts and a samovar for training. Losing 4 kg with sweat, he changed shirt after shirt. The samovar helped to make up for losses - good tea was dope weightlifter. He did not know any other dope, which was confirmed by the tests.

5. More air

The closed doors of the gym were protected not from spies, but from a draft - while Vasily opened the windows wide open. Yes, and on the street platform he could be seen in any weather - he loved Fresh air. Even going with his sons and his wife Olimpiada to barbecues, Alekseev took a barbell with him. He did not part with her on the beach either - the athlete who lived on the banks of the Don diversified his leisure time by lifting the barbell in the water.

6. Favorite pancakes

The strength of Alekseev is that he loved training. Even at the age of under 70, he worked on machines of his own design, which he dreamed of promoting to the masses. I didn’t have time - the champion died in 2011: “Kilograms of muscles are not at all superfluous when you push a record barbell, but I realize that now I have at least 60 kg of weight, which is burdensome for the life of the body. I am two people, and the heart is one.

Eight-time world and European champion, seven-time champion of the USSR. He has 79 world records and 81 USSR records.

Two-time champion of the Munich and Montreal Olympics. Eight-time world and European champion, seven-time champion of the USSR. He has 79 world records and 81 USSR records. Honored Master of Sports of the USSR. Played in the 2nd heavyweight. With a height of 186 cm, he weighed up to 162.7 kg. He has been a member of the national team since 1970.

Vasily was born and raised in the village of Rochegda, Vinogradovsky District, graduated from the Arkhangelsk Forest Engineering Institute. The unknown 25-year-old Vasily Alekseev started at the IV Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR and lost to the champion L. Zhabotinsky 110 (!) kg. After 4 years, it was Alekseev who became the main hero of the V Spartakiad, in one evening he exceeded world records 7 times!

In January 1970, he set about storming the absolute record, surpassed the world records of the Americans R. Bednarsky and Duba, as well as his compatriot L. Zhabotinsky, showing 595 kg in triathlon.

In March of the same year, Vasily Alekseev opened a new page in the history of world weightlifting. Speaking in international competitions on<Кубок дружбы>in the Minsk Palace of Sports, he was the first in the world to gain 600 kg in triathlon!

Vasily overturned all the usual ideas about the limit of a person's physical capabilities. In April 1972 he set his 54th world record, gaining 645 kg in triathlon. Belgian S.Reding and R.Mang from Germany, Ken Patera and D.Dub from the USA, G.Bonk and J.Heuser from the GDR, Christo Plachkov from Bulgaria, A.Enaldiev and S.Rakhmanov (USSR) competed with Alekseev.

After the Olympic victory in Munich over<немецким чудом>R. Mangom, team captain Vasily Alekseev, at the end of the Olympic tournament in Montreal, lifted the heaviest barbell - 255 kg. The weight of the gold medal of the strongest athlete on the planet is 440 kg. There were eleven of them, heavyweights. The total weight of the athletes is one and a half tons. The heaviest was P. Pavlasek from Czechoslovakia. Alekseev weighed 156.8 kg. The only one who intended to fight Vasily was the German weightlifter Bonk (world record holder in the clean and jerk 252.5 kg) was fourth in the snatch.

Alekseev first pushed 230 kg. After silver medalist Bonk ran out of attempts, a fantastic figure appeared on the scoreboard<255>. The monstrously heavy 255 kg, which an ordinary man can only fit on a platform, Alekseev lifted so easily that he could push 260 kg. He set the USSR record in biathlon - 440 kg. He exceeded Bonk's world record in the clean and jerk by 2.5 kg. With his performance, he brought in indescribable delight all lovers of weightlifting. Montreal<Газетт>posted a photo of the Soviet weightlifter Vasily Alekseev, accompanying it with the caption: "The Russian hero confirmed that he has no equal."

At the XXII Olympiad in Moscow, V. Alekseev retired without mastering starting weight. It became the main sensation of the weightlifting tournament. Alekseev's failure is explained by his long absence from the platform - after an injury received 2 years ago at the World Championships in Gettysburg (USA). repeated Olympic record Alekseev 440 kg - S. Rakhmanov, becoming the Olympic champion of the XXII Olympic Games. Since 1980 Vasily Alekseev leads coaching in the city of Shakhty.

Vasily Ivanovich Alekseev is a legendary Soviet weightlifter. He set 80 world records, and his 645 kilograms in total triathlon went down in history forever.

Alekseev Vasily Ivanovich

07.01.1942 – 25.11.2011

Achievements:

• Olympic champion 1972, 1976.
• World Champion 1970-1977.
• European Champion 1970-1974, 1978.
• Holder of 80 world records and eternal record in the amount of triathlon - 645 kg.

The thorny path to the platform

The future hero was born in an ordinary working-class family in the Ryazan region. When the boy was eleven years old, the Alekseevs moved to the North - to a village near Arkhangelsk. There Vasily understood what work is - he helped his parents in felling the forest, and in his free time from study and work he attended various sports sections.

Over time, Alekseev decided - he liked weightlifting. After graduating from school, Vasily Ivanovich entered the Arkhangelsk Forestry Engineering Institute, where good training conditions were created for young people. However, Alekseev could not seriously train - he needed to earn money, so sport at that time was a fickle business for him.

Having married, the young man began to work even harder, first of all he was worried about the issue of providing for his family - especially after the birth of two children. In search of a better life, Alekseev moves to Tyumen region, but soon leaves it and returns to the lands that have become his native - in the small town of Koryazhma, he is successfully moving forward at work.

The young weightlifter finally finds time for regular training, and the result is not long in coming. Literally in a year, Vasily fulfills the standard of the master of sports of the USSR, but he is not awarded the title. This moment became, perhaps, fateful for Alekseev - realizing that he should not be missed, he decides to famously change his usual life and goes to Mines - a city in which weightlifting is held in high esteem.

After getting a job at the mine, Vasily transports to Rostov region your family. Life settles down, Alekseev trains in a specialized weightlifting hall under the guidance of the 1964 Olympic champion Rudolf Plyukfelder. True, the student and the coach cannot find a common language with each other, and soon the athlete switches to self-training.

Weightlifting legend

Paradoxically, left to his own devices, the young master begins to progress. Alekseev is recruiting own weight, fortunately, in the heavyweight category there are no restrictions, and steadily adds to the amount of triathlon. Experts are at a loss - the hitherto unknown athlete is already raising it to the level of the best international standards.

Interestingly, by the time he joined the USSR national team, Alekseev was already 28 years old - an age close to that of a veteran in weightlifting. But dialed in direct and figurative sense the weight of the weightlifter was not particularly worried. Vasily, by and large, was just getting started.

Alekseev approached the first Olympic Games in his life in Munich as the main favorite, although only a few knew about him four years ago Soviet coaches and no more. Since 1970, for eight years in a row, Vasily Ivanovich has been churning out one world record after another and has not lost a single start.

Vasily Alekseev - Olympic champion in 1972

He has two convincing Olympic victories and regular triumphs at world and European championships. Alekseev is of great interest to the media around the world - he is the first person in the history of weightlifting who managed to collect more than 600 kg in triathlon. It is not known what figure would have been recorded by him in the protocols if the press had not been excluded from the competition program due to its danger.

Vasily Ivanovich himself would later say that he would have reached 700 kg; he was painfully strong in the press - his best result in this movement, he stopped at around 236.5 kg! However, the transition from triathlon to biathlon did not shake the position of the leader of the Soviet team - he was given a particularly good push.

Stable progress is achieved primarily thanks to a well-built training process, and here Alekseev surpassed everyone by a head. Having no special conditions for recovery, Vasily Ivanovich developed his own training methodology. He refuted the standard ideas of coaches about working with big weights in low repetition mode. Alekseev often trained in the courtyard of his house, and for this he used his own designed products.

Of course, Vasily Ivanovich's character was peculiar, but that's understandable - ordinary average people are not capable of doing such things. Despite the fact that for almost a decade Alekseev glorified the country on international level, he had many envious people. Nobody liked the fact that the heavyweight achieves tremendous success alone - he even went out on the platform without outside help and independently ordered weights for himself. Alekseev had colossal authority, but at the same time, some coaches grew negative towards him.

Olympics-80

By his third Olympics - in Moscow - Vasily Ivanovich was unconditional No. 1, and no one doubted that the Moscow platform would become gold for Alekseev. However, the unimaginable happened - the favorite of the competition received the “steering wheel”, unable to cope with the initial weight in the snatch. Particularly surprising was the condition of the athlete - he did not look like himself.

Alekseev would later reveal that he was set up because he "interfered" with another Soviet weightlifter. In the warm-up area, the most experienced athlete made a fatal mistake when he agreed to accept from the coaches, as he called it, the elixir of cheerfulness. They specifically gave Vasily a "medicine" in advance - so that by the time they enter the platform, the effect will definitely work.

The would-be trainers' plan worked perfectly. Alekseev missed all three attempts, but, interestingly, he did not feel the weight of the bar, as the coaches suggested. The weightlifter made technical mistakes, worked "by", as the weightlifters say. It was also visible from the outside how Alekseev “floats” - alas, no hero can resist an infectious drink.

After sports

Having received such an offensive "steering wheel", Vasily Ivanovich decided to finish with the sport. Of course, he did not dream of such a point in his career, but he had to live on. And here the problems began - everyone turned away from yesterday's idol. For a long time, the legendary weightlifter could not find a job, and this depressed Alekseev.

Only in 1989 he was returned to weightlifting, having been appointed head coach of the USSR national team. This inspired Vasily Ivanovich, that he forgot old grievances and plunged headlong into work. Moreover, the athletes are not to blame for the fact that at one time Alekseev was set up.

In the case of Alekseev, the saying that not everyone strong athlete can be good coach, crashed. Vasily Ivanovich brilliantly proved himself in the coaching field, and the performance of our team at the 1992 Olympics cannot be called anything other than triumphant.

However, Alekseev was not destined to continue working for the benefit of the national Olympic weightlifting. The country fell apart, and sports for the state faded into the background. Nevertheless, Vasily Ivanovich did not exchange his mission for uninteresting things - he invested a lot of effort and money to equip the Youth Sports School in Shakhty, helped the boys take their first steps in weightlifting.

Athletes regularly came to him - to ask for the right advice, for rehabilitation after injuries. Alekseev always had something to tell young people, to protect them from wrong actions - everything he said was tested on himself.

Alekseev was a real legend in Mines, the whole city knew where Vasily Ivanovich lived - and he was no longer hurt by the fact that the leadership of our sport forgot about his experience and knowledge. In the end, the main thing is the people's memory, but it is still long. And even if someone suddenly forgets about the great champion, it will be enough to look into the book of records, from which Vasily Ivanovich Alekseev will never disappear.

Vasily Alekseev rightfully bore the title of a legend Soviet sports. The weightlifter broke record after record, which got into the Guinness Book. The Russian hero, who managed to develop his own training methodology and show it in action, dedicated the song "Weightlifter".

Childhood and youth

The strongest man on earth is a simple village boy, the fourth child in the family. Vasily Ivanovich was born in the village of Pokrovo-Shishkino (Ryazan Region). When the boy was 11 years old, for family reasons, his parents decided to move to the Arkhangelsk region and settled in the village of Rochegda.

Free from school time and summer holidays were spent at work. Little Vasya helped his father and mother prepare timber for the winter, he had to lift heavy logs. Once, with the older boys, he arranged a competition - who will be able to squeeze the axle of the trolley.

The opponent managed to do it 12 times, but the future champion did not succeed. After the defeat, Vasily began to intensively go in for sports under the guidance of a school athlete. Soon, not a single competition of the district and regional scale could do without Alekseev.

In 1961, a student of the Arkhangelsk Forestry Engineering Institute received the first category in volleyball. At the same time, Vasily began to take an interest in athletics.

Education alone seemed to Vasily Alekseev not enough, the young man also graduated from a branch of the Novocherkassk Polytechnic Institute. I managed to live in the Tyumen, Ryazan and Arkhangelsk regions. He spent several years in the city of Koryazhma, where he worked as a foreman at the Kotlas Pulp and Paper Mill, and rose to the position of shift leader.

Weightlifting

Weightlifting entered Alekseev's life with coach Semyon Mileiko - under his leadership, he took the first steps towards the championship. Year of training has yielded excellent results. Vasily Ivanovich lifted 442.5 kg, which was enough to be called a master of sports. But in Arkhangelsk they did not want to recognize the achievements of the weightlifter, so he went to the city of Shakhty.

Here, at the Yuzhnaya mine, the famous athlete, Olympic champion Rudolf Plukfelder trained heavyweights. The exhausted master of sports took Vasily under his wing, but the student and teacher soon parted, not finding understanding between themselves. Alekseev devoted a year to independent training, during which he came up with and developed his own system of influence physical activity on the human body.

An attempt to play for the USSR national team for the first time failed, Vasily was expelled from the squad for health reasons - in training, the weightlifter tore his back. Doctors strictly forbade lifting iron, but Alekseev did not obey the doctors and in the winter of 1970 broke the records of Joseph Dube and Robert Bednarsky.

In March of the same year, he set a record in triathlon (600 kg). And three months later, world achievements with the light hand of Alekseev were adjusted in seven points. At the World Championships held in America, Vasily delighted sports fans by managing to lift a 500-pound barbell.

Then they waited for victory at the World Championships in Sofia, in the world championship in Lima. By his first Olympic Games, Vasily Ivanovich reached a total weight of 645 kg. And at the competitions themselves, held in Munich, he chose a smooth tactic instead of a sharp bench press maximum weight and set a new record in triathlon - 640 kg. In addition to world recognition, Alekseev was also noted in his homeland, having presented the Order of Lenin.

The weightlifter brilliantly performed at the next Olympics in Montreal. In 1976, the Russian hero managed to push 255 kg and lift 185 kg and again got a gold medal. By the age of 35, the athlete managed to take the podium of the world champion eight times, and having lifted the barbell by 256 kg, he set the 80th record. In the bench press, the athlete had no equal in the whole world.

In 1978, the champion decided to move away from the "big" arena, stopped participating in competitions, and directed his efforts to educating the younger generation. Vasily Alekseev founded and stood at the helm of the 600 club, where schoolchildren were engaged. And also tried on the image of the coach of the USSR national team athletics and until 1990 prepared new champions.

After that, the man was put in charge of the national team Soviet Union(later the CIS) - in this position, the athlete also achieved recognition: at XXV Olympic Games the team of wards brought the country five gold, four silver and three bronze medals.

Personal life

Personal life, like sports career, Vasily Alekseev was successful. In 1962, the novice weightlifter got married. By a lucky chance, the wife's name was Olympias. The athlete joked that he had won three Olympics, among them one was his wife.

Vasily Ivanovich really considered the second half to be his talisman and assured that without her support there would not have been so many championship victories. The woman accompanied her husband at the competitions, was for him both a cook, a massage therapist, and a psychologist. At the end of his life, in an interview, a man admitted:

“My wife is the only and beloved. When we are apart, we miss. Now it’s good, there is a phone, you call 12 times a day, and she calls 12 times, 24 in total.

For three decades, Vasily Alekseev lived in Shakhty in a one-story wooden house. The couple raised two sons and had four grandchildren. Both heirs are lawyers by education. The younger Dmitry from childhood followed in the footsteps of his father, who generously shared his knowledge in weightlifting.

However, when Alekseev became the head coach, he forbade his son to go further. He justified such an act with Soviet upbringing - I didn’t want someone to blame him for promoting his own child, for taking his son abroad.

The eldest son Sergei did not show a craving for sports, but he was endowed with a talent for science. He graduated from high school with honors, received a doctorate in sociology. By the 70th anniversary, Vasily Alekseev dreamed of two things - to memorize "Eugene Onegin" from cover to cover and start writing memoirs. But he didn't.

Death

In the late autumn of 2011, Vasily Alekseev had a heart attack, the two-time Olympic champion was admitted to the Munich Cardiology Clinic.

The serious condition could not be normalized. On the evening of November 25, the hero who glorified Russia to the whole world died. Vasily Ivanovich was buried in Shakhty.

Awards

• 1972 – Golden medal at the Olympic Games in Munich
• 1976 - gold medal at the Montreal Olympics
• 1970-1977 - 8 gold medals at the world championships
• 1970-1978 - 6 gold medals at the European Championships