Commentator Vladimir Gomelsky told what are the character traits of the Olympic champion basketball player Sergei Belov Above all, he remembered everything.
On January 23, Belov would have turned 80 years old. One of the most successful Russian basketball players died in 2013.
— First of all, Belov is for me a great basketball player, I had the chance during a certain period of my life to train and play with him on the court. The concept of losing did not enter his head and his vocabulary. Sergei emerged victorious, his eyes burning with a thirst for victory. He made us, his teammates, better because we saw how determined the best player on our team was to show his best on the field.
I remember this trait: I liked to come to training early, half an hour before the start, but I was never ahead of Belov. But he didn’t coach throwing, it was after school, when everyone was leaving. Before training, Belov trained his legs in the gym with a barbell. It was 1972, when Sergei was 28 years old. The same thing happened at 33, then at 36 he was still first in training.
Sometimes it seemed like Belov could run a marathon. By working his muscles, he developed fantastic endurance. It was an example for everyone: to succeed, you have to work at least as much. An extremely hardworking athlete.
Sergei was a reserved, introverted person. I knew what I had to do on the pitch and I guess I expected maximum effort from all my teammates. He maintained this trait as a coach and demanded the same from his basketball players. According to stories, Belov was a tough coach who did not understand how it was possible not to work at full strength during training. Hence his preferences – he chose someone, for example, Babkov, because he resembled Belov in his attitude to business. Eternal memory to Belov and Babkov. And for some, Sergei (Belov) invented sticks to drive harder, like Andryusha Fetisov. Belov achieved his success as a coach, which brought him the silver medal at the 1994 World Championship in Toronto with the Russian team. This includes the successes of national basketball,” Gomelsky told .
Belov is an eleven-time USSR champion as a player; with the USSR national team, the basketball player won gold in all tournaments (Olympiad, twice World Championship, four times European Championship). As a coach – two-time champion of the USSR, with the national team two-time vice-world champion and bronze medalist of the European Championship.
Source : MatchTV
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