"Girls, just go"

The Olympic sports gymnastics tournament in Tokyo this summer was remembered by two things: the victory of the men's team and broadcasts, which were briskly and figuratively - commented on Lidia Gavrilovna Ivanova. Two -time Olympic champion, two -time world champion and Honored Master of Sports of the USSR this year turned eighty -four years old

This is a sport

Gavrilovna (as in the near -sports environment is often called Lidia Ivanov. - Approx. Author) is known for its directness and emotionality. Everyone who is familiar with her, who has been watching her broadcasts for a long time, know: the Olympic champion zealously roots for the Russian team and will never skimp on expressions to the opponents. “You survived, you restrained these troglodytes - great and strong - from America. You defeated your grace, your girlish beauty! ” - Lidia Gavrilovna addressed the Russian gymnasts at the end of the Olympic tournament in Tokyo.

And during the broadcast of the Olympic Games in Tokyo, she called Simon Biles, the nineteen -time world champion, "snag in the bars."

Lidia Gavrilovna photo: Stanislav Novgorodtseva for TD

“Well, how else to say if it is a short -legged fat man? In gymnastics, you can’t with crooked legs! And a short neck is a complete contraindication! - Lidia Gavrilovna waves her hands. - From performance in sports gymnastics, there should be a sense of beauty, artistry. And when you see this scrap horse ... Yes, it is amazing, not feminine, physically developed, this is her trump card. But there are some objective norms! Correspondents from this gymnast are written with happiness: such a star! Which can be pulled out or a handle to show the sock beautifully. Okay, I am already harmful, ”Ivanova pulls himself.

In the comments to broadcasts, many are outraged by the formulations of Ivanova. Sometimes they even become an occasion for individual news and discussions, how appropriate this is in our time. Lidia Gavrilovna herself has no doubt about the correctness of what he does.

Simona Bails (USA) performs exercises on a log of the team all -around among women at the World Sports Gymnastics Championship in Glasgow photo: Vladimir Astapkovich/RIA Novosti

“Yes, I evaluate hard, especially foreigners. Well, I don’t see for us to be happy for us how we did well. For example, I comment on in London, and behind the glass - Romanian Nadia Komanuchi (five -time Olympic champion, commentator. - Approx. Author). I respect her, we kiss her at a meeting. But she drank so much blood that I would have put her a bandwagon. This is a sport! I have never heard that she would praise our athletes in her comments. ”

“The athlete’s physical abilities really affect the results of the competition,” Emin Garibov, who often comments on sports competitions with Lydia Ivanova, delicately explains the Russian team in sports gymnastics. - Of course, we always root for our athletes, for our team. Perhaps it is worth being more political correct, to avoid sharp statements somewhere, but I admit that Lidia Gavrilovna with her vast experience has the right to do so. She clearly knows how to notice those things that are inaccessible to the ordinary viewer, knows how to analyze the psychology of the athlete, explain all his luck and failures, she knows the story of all gymnastics. And her eloquence occupies a separate place in my heart. Sometimes I go out of the air from verbal turns to laugh. It is her comments that give the broadcasts of charm, make them interesting for the viewer. ”

Can there be diplomacy in sports?

Lidia Gavrilovna photo: Stanislav Novgorodtseva for TD

“In sports - no,” Lidia Gavrilovna answers without hesitation. - In the chatter of sports - perhaps. But I am for the truth, for sincerity. I know that they can express me for this. - Now she looks slightly confused: these questions seem to be discouraged. -I think I will try the next time at some international competitions to comment softer. This, of course, will be something vile. Sometimes I look and think: well, she came from this Slovenia - and there is weak gymnastics - and obviously, there she is one of the most powerful. And here, in the hall, her fans, coach, her mother are sitting. And then I find kind words to say: “Well done. Of course, she has a weak program so far. But at the moment, this is not bad for her.”

“I am probably brave in my comments,” says Lidia Gavrilovna. “But I sued eight Olympiads.” I am a coach. I have my personal experience of speech and saw the reactions of thousands of stadiums. Not a single comrade sitting with me who has gone this path can compare with me in this experience. Any business is perceived only when sincerity. And when I comment, I always try to do it sincerely, I try to convey this super -spacing, for which any start that has reached before this start came out and performs. I feel with the skin that this girl is now experiencing, who, with the coat of arms of the country, approaches the projectile. I got nervous a little - she lost, lost the team, lost the country. ”

Girls, you are not ashamed!

Lydia Kalinina was nineteen, when in 1956, as part of the USSR team in sports gymnastics, she won her first gold at the Olympics in Melbourne.

“The first time I went to the adult championship of the Soviet Union - this is almost like today we perceive the Olympic Games. Sixteen teams: fifteen republics and the city of Moscow. It was a start of abnormal size: such resistance, such competition. I performed somehow-and I was included in the list of the national team. Before that, I looked at them from the rostrum: here is Sofya Muratova, here Tamara Manina (Muratova and Manina-Olympic champions in the USSR national gymnastics team in the 50s), and this is Larisa Latynina! And I am nobody! In my thoughts I did not admit that I could once meet with them. ”

Bronze and gold medals of the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne Photo: Stanislav Novgorodtsev for TD

When did sports ambitions woke up? Lidia Gavrilovna is thinking.

“We did not even know such words,” she says, “there were bonded, clamped. When the sports was going to school, I was shy to open the door myself-I stood, waited for someone to pass, and I slipped after him in this gap. Once I was driving in the subway: I am fourteen, I have a “master of sports” on me. And there are some boys: “Yeah, I put it!” And I was so offensive, it was so painful! “Here are bastards!” - I think, - I am all myself, honestly did! ””

But the moment when she woke up the famous, there was no life in her life. Sports are hard and long work. First, the championship of the district, then Moscow.

“My mother is an illiterate woman, she did not even really understand what kind of sports school there was. Nothing worried her after the hunger of this terrible - just learn! I brought letters home, but it was not impressive. Once I came home and I see how she boasts with letters in the Kommunalka kitchen. I pretended that I did not see, but then I finally realized: she was also pleased. When I was included in the team, I began to receive a scholarship. It was good money, four times more than my mother’s salary. I remember how I brought the first scholarship home, put on the table - the bills are so large. And mom scared: “What is this? What are you doing? Why do you pay such money?” ”

July 10, 1958. XIV World Sports Gymnastics Championship. The USSR team (from left to right): Polina Astakhova, Raisa Borisova, Larisa Latynina, Tamara Manina, Lidia Kalinina (Ivanova), Sofya Muratova photo: Dmitry Kozlov/RIA Novosti

The phone calls. “Here it is, Latynina! And I will tell her now: “Goodbye!”, - Lidia Gavrilovna smiles conspiratorially. - Alla, lor, is everything okay? I am in an interview, I talk, we’ll chat with you later. ”

“We have this norm,” he says, picked up. “Every day to call each other, to report - we are still alive or how.”

And the competition was once such that they practically hated each other, Ivanov admits.

“Tomka (Tamara Manina. - Approx. The author) with Larisa after the competition, they screamed at each other, could not reconcile. It seemed to everyone that she was evaluated unfairly. But I did not climb into this struggle, even put them on. “Girls, I say, okay to you! Better take champagne tonight! ” Which is not anywhere, for nothing and in any way, ”Lidia Gavrilovna explains with a crafty smile.

“I often ask myself why I did not fit into that struggle. In the 56th year, I met the future husband-and, probably, my brains led the other way. "Ah, I have a date today!" I thought, and it was the biggest motivation in my life. I must admit, even the training sometimes skipped. I did not train eagerly - everything worked out for me. Latynina is puffing after training, puffing: she was archbounded to make a twine! And I was all stretched, soft, flexible - my legs lifted up wherever you want, I didn’t care about it - it’s easy! ”

Larisa Latynina confirms the words of her friend.

Lidia Gavrilovna Ivanova Photo: Stanislav Novgorodtseva for TD

“The first time I saw her in competitions when I played for Ukraine,” recalls a nine -time Olympic champion. - Then they performed in very beautiful costumes for Moscow. And then Lida got into the Olympic team, and there she shocked me with her opinion, despite the fact that she was the youngest of all. When the all -around managed to win, there was talk: other athletes, they say, clamped, and Latynina slipped. Fasted because of this. And Lida said: “Girls, you are not ashamed! We should now congratulate the winner, and you say such things here!” ”

What is it in her character that she knows how to support like that?

“Well, her character, you know, is quite complicated,” 86-year-old Larisa Semenovna answers maliciously. -Sometimes it rummages with someone, sometimes it may be a muck to say past the passing. But at the same time, Latynina stops laughing, “when it comes to something serious, she will break into the cake and do everything as it should, will defend anyone to the end.”

Ivanova and Latynin are friends for almost seventy years.

Distant Melbourne

After the victory at the adult championship of the Soviet Union, Lidia Kalinin got into the national team.

“Before that, I looked at them from the rostrum: they are luminaries, and I am a sping. And then in 1956 they took me to collect preparations for the Olympic Games. For some reason, sports scientists decided that we had to go to Tashkent: after it, acclimatization in Melbourne will supposedly be easier. I returned home only six months later, and before that, after all, I have not gone anywhere further than Moscow. They flew to Australia with transfers: Tashkent - Delhi - Rangun - Singapore - Darwin - Melbourne. When they landed in Delhi, from the porthole I saw people standing at the ramp: thin, dark, wrapped in white sheets. Hungry sticks! We go down from the ramp, they pull our hands to our bags, and we are these bags with a shape - closer to ourselves: I will not give it! This is now I understand that they just wanted to offer their services, the porters were. In Melbourne, we left the aircraft according to a special system: first daggers, then wrestlers, then athletes. I realized that in this way we cover the athlete, which, returning from London on the eve of London, grabbed a hat there in the store. Australian newspapers then wrote: “Russian thief flies to us!” This is how they were waiting for us.

Australia. Melbourne. November 22 - December 8, 1956. Soviet gymnasts Lyudmila Egorova, Lidia Kalinina (Ivanova), Larisa Latynina and Sofya Muratova (from left to right) during a group performance with objects on the 16th Summer Olympic Games. The exact date of shooting is not set photo: Vasily Egorov/TASS photo

I also remember the corridor, fenced with rods, as in the circus. We walked along it to the airport, and behind the rods there was a crowd - the first Russian diaspora, emigrating to distant Australia. They came to see us, hear their native speech. I put a finger through the rods, and they grabbed it tightly. All of ours go, and I shout: “Give it up! Give your finger!” And at the very performance of our team in Melbourne, the hall was half-empty: some millionaire bought tickets so that no one saw the success of the Soviet team. ”

Remembering Melbourne, Lidia Gavrilovna each time emphasizes on the second syllable and always puts the word “distant” nearby. The distant Melbourne is a city where a nineteen -year -old athlete became the Olympic champion in the team championship and where she met her future husband - the captain of the USSR football team Valentin Ivanov.

Damn cute

In the cinema almanac “Soviet Sport” for 1973, the Ivanov family is dedicated to a separate plot. Black and white shots of the family feast: a festive table, a cake with candles-celebrate the birthday of the youngest daughter Olya. At the head of the table, Valentin Ivanov, captain and striker of the Moscow football team Torpedo. Nearby - happy, radiant - Lydia. Medals, cups, shots from competitions and matches. "The Ivanov family is raising a new generation of champions!" - the announcer behind the scenes broadcasts in a vigorous voice.

Medals for sports achievements photo: Stanislav Novgorodtsev for TD

“I was already the coach of the country's national team when one journalist asked me:“ What is your biggest victory in your life? ” She answered without hesitation: “My biggest victory is children.” Wherever I went, got on the plane and thought already how I would go back. The best, the most convenient, the warmest for me is the house. And to see how the children grew up. ”

After the victory at the Olympic Games in Italy in 60, Ivanova returned home and began preparations for the next Olympics. “The eternal four -year cycle. I'm starting to train, but I don't want to! The lazy was an infection. At the training camp in the GDR, my knee flies out. The leg is placed in gypsum from the hip to the heel. I call my husband in the hotel corridor, happy, screaming into the phone: “Valya, that's it! I finished gymnastics!” And then I see - next to my coach Alexei Ivanovich. And for him this is a huge loss. She stopped short: how shamelessly I said. "

July 1, 1979. Valentin Ivanov, Honored Master of Sports of the USSR, his wife Lidia Ivanova, gymnast, Olympic champion, Honored Master of Sports, and daughter Olya follow the performance of the children of the football school of youth photo: Yuri Somov/RIA Novosti

After an injury, Ivanov worked for ten years as a senior coach of the USSR youth team, then received a certificate of judge of the international category.

“I think my fate is very happy, everything turned out in the film, as in a fairy tale: son, daughter. I did not have the goal of marrying, I didn’t even know what words I had to say for this, ”Lidia Gavrilovna says innocently. -Once we went on a date-and Valentine says: “Take a passport with you.” We go along Avtozavodskaya, where he lived, in the courtyard, down, in the semi -basement. There they give me a pen: sit down, write. I fill out the documents, I get to the line with the surname and say: “I will leave my own.” He looked at me like that! I to him: “You understand, Ivanov can write with a small letter, this is a common name!” He looked at me again, and I brought out: "Ivanova." Fifty -three years lived with him, not jokes. ”

Fifty -three years without jealousy, says Lidia Gavrilovna. If you believe a person, then you believe him - that's all. Like Antonov in the song: "Love is long, and life is even longer."

“Around the players of the crowd of crazy beautiful girls, choose any,” Ivanova calmly admits. - And I, of course, was not a beauty, I saw it. But I, - Lidia Gavrilovna lifts her head a little, - damn pretty! And when he returned to Moscow, he was always only with me, at home. ”

Lidia Gavrilovna near the portrait of her husband. Valentin Ivanov played for the Torpedo team photo: Stanislav Novgorodtsev for TD

Valentina Ivanova was gone in 2011. “The last year he was very seriously ill, I thought that I was crazy,” Lidia Gavrilovna said in a changed voice. -Sometimes he will answer me somehow rudely, and I will: “Val, why are you? Do not see what I am?” The doctor said: “Do not be discouraged, Lidia Gavrilovna, he doesn’t say it, this is his illness.” But it still hurts me so much. When he left, I sat in this house and thought: “What should I do now?”

***

During the interview, Lidia Gavrilovna repeats several times: “I am very happy!”, “I have nothing to complain about!”, “Life has developed successfully!” The fact that does not fit into this “formula for success”, says quickly, without going into details.

“When I got married, my coach was very cursing. Oh, how he hated my Valentine! - recalls Ivanova. - When I found out that I was pregnant, I took my hand in my training and pointed to a very large woman who was in the doorway: “You see her? Now you will be - you won’t eat on a trolley.” I was twenty -four. When my son was three months old, I returned to the hall. I go to the bars, I make a hanging angle. My legs long went ahead, and back - no: there is no abdominal press. Nothing! Restored and again got into the Olympic team. I then made this VIS with an angle for up to fifty years at home - all around fell. "

December 3, 1958. The Absolute Champion of the USSR among women Lidia Kalinina (Moscow) during free exercises at the USSR championship in acrobatics and rhythmic gymnastics in the Sports Palace of the Central Stadium named after V.I. Lenin photo: Leonid Dorensky/TASS photo

After the birth of a second child, in 1964, Ivanov was immediately deprived of a scholarship. «Обидно, конечно, было, но, с другой стороны, это не дом инвалидов, это закон жизни: Иванову снять, Петрову поставить, — как будто самой себе объясняет Лидия Гавриловна. — Как-то так я поставила себя по жизни, что ни от кого не хотела быть зависимой. Как только родила, сразу же пошла работать, что-то делала, как могла шевелилась».

«Она через многое прошла, и тот опыт, мудрость, которая у нее сейчас, вызывают большое уважение, — говорит Эмин Гарибов. — А ее энергичность! Когда мы с ней приходим на трансляции, она бегом забегает, практически залетает на комментаторскую позицию».

— Я, возможно, не всех устраиваю, — рассуждает олимпийская чемпионка. — Но сами звонят, я даже не знаю, какие цифры набирать надо: “Лидия Гавриловна, приезжайте, машину за вами пришлем!” Значит, есть что-то во мне, раз зовут? Значит, я интересно рассказываю о своем виде спорта.

— Тяжело даются такие долгие трансляции?

Лидия Гавриловна во дворе своего дома Фото: Станислава Новгородцева для ТД

— О возрасте в этот момент я не думаю, хоть он и неприлично приличный. Когда комментирую, я вообще его не чувствую: я просто смотрю свой предмет.

— А в жизни?

— В жизни стараюсь поддерживать себя в форме. Каждый день выхожу и иду три-пять километров пешком. В это время я размышляю. Одиночество — не совсем сволочь, имеет свои удобства и прелести. Я вижу, как подтянула своих соседок, этих толстых тетенек, которые сидят на скамеечке, плюют свои семечки и жалуются, что ноги не ходят. Я им говорю: «Девочки, вставайте, держите свои пакетики с семечками. Только идите. Топайте потихонечку. И они встают и идут».