Translated material
Day of the day: Victor Chukarin
On November 9, 1921, Viktor Chukarin, the legendary Soviet gymnast, prisoner of German camps, was born.
Personal business
Viktor Ivanovich Chukarin (1921-1984) was born in the village of Krasnoarmeyskoye, Donetsk region of Ukraine, in the family of the Don Cossack and Greek. Soon the family moved to Mariupol. Victor was fond of football, swimming, rowing. Together with his brother, he was engaged in gymnastics in the courtyard on the crossbar, then in the school section in athletics. In 1932 (according to other sources in 1937), his father was arrested for a letter that he wrote to his friends in Romania. From the conclusion, he no longer returned. Mother alone raised two sons and daughter.
After school, Victor entered the Mariupol Metallurgical College, but soon decided to professionally engage in gymnastics and transferred to the Kiev College of Physical Culture. Its coach was the famous Ukrainian gymnast, the absolute champion of the USSR (1939, 1940) Ajat Ibadullaev. In 1940, Chukarin himself became the champion of Ukraine and received the title of master of sports of the USSR. He made plans to win the union championship, but the war began, and the athlete went to the front as a volunteer.
He fought in the artillery regiment, defending Kyiv. Near Poltava he was wounded and shell -shocked, was captured. Soon Chukarin was in a concentration camp for prisoners of war near the city of Zandbostel in northern Germany. In the spring of 1942, when the prisoners decided to use as labor, Chukarin called the peasant and received a referral to the farm in a small fishing village of Kappel-Nachufeld. “I did not know how to finish or mow grass, and Frau Brunes soon noticed this. But she did not betray me and sent me to the field to thin out the turnips, ”the athlete recalled. On the farm, he made a crossbar and was able to gradually engage in gymnastics. After the war, he corresponded with the Brunes family, said that he survived thanks to them.
At the end of the war, he was again placed in the camp. Before the retreat, the Nazis plunged Chukarin along with other prisoners on a barge, which they were going to flood in the North Sea. Having gotten into battle with the British, the Germans threw the barge. The ship was carried away far into the sea, and only a few days later he was discovered by an English patrol boat. Prisoners, locked in holds without food and water, were released. In November 1945, Chukarin returned home. He said: “I was so thin and exhausted that my mother did not recognize me. Only when she laid her hands on my head and felt for the scar, who remained with me since childhood after falling from Skirda, recognized her son. ”
For some time, Chukarin was an instructor in physical education at the Mariupol Metallurgical Plant. Ilyich. He worked there with a local gymnast, also former prisoners of war Pavel drain.
Together with the factory youth, they equipped a gym, in which they studied with children and working youth during the day, and in the evening they trained themselves.
In 1946, Chukarin participated in the first post-war championship of the USSR in gymnastics, but took only 12th place. In the same year he went to study - he entered the Lviv Institute of Physical Education. In 1948 he won the championship of Ukraine, and at the championship of the USSR took fourth place.
In 1949 he became the champion of the USSR in sports gymnastics. In 1950, 1951, 1955, this title confirmed.
In 1952, Chukarin went to the first post -war Olympics in Helsinki, where he won four gold (team, polythery, horse, supporting jump) and two silver medals (rings, bars).
In 1954, at the World Cup in Rome Chukarin, despite the dislocation of the finger, he won three gold (team, all -around, bars) and one bronze award (horse).
In 1956, the 34-year-old Chukarin triumphantly performed at the Olympics in Melbourne, becoming a champion in the absolute championship. He won three gold (team, all -around, bars), one silver (free) and one bronze (horse) medals.
After that, the gymnast completed his sports career, became a teacher of his native institution of physical education in Lviv, since 1971 he headed the Department of Gymnastics there. He was the coach of the national team of Ukraine. In 1972 - the senior coach of the Soviet team of gymnasts at the Olympics in Munich.
Chukarin prepared about 30 masters of sports, members of the national teams of Ukraine and the USSR.
Victor Chukarin died of cancer on August 25, 1984. He was buried in the Lychakovsky cemetery of Lviv.
What is famous
The famous Ukrainian and Soviet gymnast, seven -time champion of the Olympic Games, absolute champion of games of 1952 and 1956. The multiple winner of the championships of the USSR and the world champion, coach, teacher. Chukarin, who passed through 17 Nazi camps, only miraculously escaped repression in his homeland for being captured.
What you need to know about
In 1948, Viktor Chukarin married an athlete of Claudia Zaitseva. She was a master of sports in gymnastics, a member of the USSR national team. The spouses were born to their daughter Victoria and Olga, who became masters of sports in rhythmic gymnastics. Claudia Chukarina said in an interview with Sport-Express : “When we met, both only“ gave hopes ”, playing for the Bolshevik society. I lived in Voronezh, he is in Lviv. Met in competitions. They told me that he was a front -line soldier, he was captured. Victor knew that in the war I was a lieutenant of the medical service. Having moved to Lviv, I was without a coach, and Victor took patronage over me. In 1948, they performed at the USSR championship. Then he could become a champion for the first time, but, completing the combination on the last shell, the crossbar, was literally shot down by the announced events with the exclamation of Mishakov’s coach: "Well done, Vitash, we are at home." Victor broke, fell and in the all -around was only the fourth. He was upset, but he tried not to show. <...> Then he suggested becoming his wife. "
Direct speech
About the qualities of the athlete (from the interview, quote for Olympiady.ru ): “A real athlete is primarily a strong character. A person who is not confident in himself has nothing to do in gymnastics. But this does not mean at all that I see the key to success in some desperate efforts. Everything is much more complicated. After all, courage in sports has a different interpretation. A long-distance runner, for example, should be able to endure, a cyclist-sprinter or slalomist will not achieve success without a tendency to risk. The gymnast should be a skillful, calculating athlete, and not a player who is supposed to be fate, on luck - in a word, for all unassumed and random. No matter how the situation develops, he is obliged to control himself, to remain a wise strategist and, of course, do everything as best as possible. And it is possible to perform flawlessly only a combination well prepared in training, proven hundreds of times. ”
About training (the widow of the athlete Claudia Chukarin, Sport-Express , July 2001): “Muscovites trained three times a week in those years, no more. And he daily for at least three and a half hours. Victor adopted such a technique from his first mentor, the pre -war champion of the Soviet Union Ajatula Ibadulaev. Chukarin himself also became a master of sports before the war. Then he met with Ibadulaev, who was one of the first to predict a great future for him. In turn, Chukarin believed that, if not for the war, Adjat would probably have become famous in the world arena. After the war, Ibadulaev did not fall into the national team - he was a disaster. It was rumored, due to the fact that during the war he performed in the circus in front of the Germans in occupied Kyiv. And he was allegedly somehow detained when trying to leave for Turkey. ”
About the failed judicial career (ibid.): “At the Olympic Games in 1960, in Rome, Chukarin was part of the Judicial College. There, in the struggle for gold medals, the Japanese Takashi, it, who was still with Victor in Helsinki and Melbourne, and Boris Shahlin, was around the Japanese. The leaders of the Soviet team turned to Chukarin: "Do everything to help our athlete. The prestige of the country has been put on the map." Getting to the persuasion, Viktor Ivanovich went against his conscience. He convinced Finn and the Germans to underestimate the Japanese assessment on a horse, and, on the contrary, to lift Shakhlin - only five hundredths. But this was enough for victory. Then Vitya said that the stands were booming. Allegedly shouted: "Down with Chukarin!" After that, Victor decided to never succumb to such requests again and to judge only honestly. In the following international competitions, he sued without a bitch and a bitch. But the leadership did not like this, after the tournament, a real court was arranged over it. He was very worried. And he gave the floor that he would not judge at all. ”
About German farmers (daughter of Chukarin Victoria and her husband Nikolai Chaplinsky, Fakty.ua , November 2007):
- Dad knew German well. I learned in captivity. “You know, where is this letter from? From the places where I was,” told us. Correspondence ensued. It turned out that in the local German newspaper a note was published that the Soviet team that Viktor Chukarin had arrived ... when Viktor Ivanovich lit up in the international arena, this German family of farmers immediately recognized him, began to collect about him from newspapers. And then they decided to write to the Union.
“They invited him to visit,” continues Chaplinsky. - Moreover, they lived 70 kilometers from Munich, where the Olympic Games were held. Viktor Ivanovich prepared gifts for this family. I really wanted to see them! But under the Soviet team there were people from the KGB, and they forbade him to go. <...> When Viktor Ivanovich was abroad, he always called him. ”
About the honesty of the athlete (ibid., The son -in -law of Chukarin Nikolay Chaplinsky): “I will tell you such a case. After the Olympic Games, the gymnastic team often left with indicative performances. Once they were invited to Canada. The team held three planned performances. Canadians asked to go out onto the carpet again, and paid this time. Having received three and a half thousand "unaccounted out" dollars in his hands, Viktor Ivanovich immediately handed them to the cashier. Crystal honest person. "
4 facts about Victor Chukarin
- He spent 3.5 years in concentration camps. There his name was replaced with the number "10491". He was concluded in Buchenwald.
- Already becoming an Olympic champion, Chukarin tried to find out the fate of his father. He even undertook to help the KGB chairman Vladimir Semiytnoye, but he could not find traces in the archives.
- Chukarin owns a record in the all -around, which he set in 1951 - 118.75 points out of 120 possible.
- The athlete strictly observed the regime. “I remember how I told my grandmother:" Boulonchik is a half -drawing, a cutlet - one. " It was impossible to gain weight in any case, ”recalled his daughter Victoria. Having finished his sports career, Chukarin began to pamper himself with sweet: he loved the plum jam and jam from apples.
Materials about Victor Chukarin:
Article about the athlete in the journal "Physical Culture and Sport"
Interview of the widow of Chukarin "Sport-Express"