sport.ru / Others. Dear sports fans! Our portal is launching a project dedicated to the most interesting and significant events in history, in the center of which were Russian and Soviet athletes. Today we will be scrolling through the calendar from May 1 to May 6.

Passed the Tour de France

On May 1, 2005, Russian cyclist Vyacheslav Ekimov was training as usual. He, along with Discovery Channel teammate, American Lance Armstrong, traversed the expanses of North American roads in the vicinity of Austin, Texas. It was a planned preparation for the mythical Tour de France, which was to be Armstrong’s last in his career, and he wanted to participate in it with all the partners. But, alas, the American team did not count Ekimov that year.

The reason for this was, as the Russian cyclist himself put it, “fatal bad luck.” In fact, what can you call a situation where your bicycle wheel enters almost the only pothole in the entire road? So, after contact with this very roughness, Ekimov flew over the bike and fell back to the asphalt. It’s scary. It probably looked even worse, but of course we don’t have that archival footage. But Vyacheslav himself, despite the severity of the injury, was even able to stand on his own. Only now the wild pain covered almost the whole body, so the Russian couldn’t get far.

Lance Armstrong had no choice but to call an emergency vehicle. Already on it, Ekimov was taken to a local hospital, where an X-ray showed a broken collarbone and a crack in the spine. It is clear that there was no talk of any preparation for the Tour de France and Ekimov returned to his native St. Petersburg on the orders of the doctors for a recovery course. By the way, it only took 3.5 months, which with such a serious injury is just a gift of fate: other athletes lie in bed for many years after such falls. This is how Ekimov turned out to be: both unlucky and lucky.

Evidence for Goebbels

It was in 1942. Leningrad is taken under blockade. The Soviet people went through an incredibly difficult time, but the fighting spirit had to be strengthened and, at the same time, demonstrate their strength to foreign invaders. The latter was especially important, since Reich Army General Goebbels, after several months of capturing the northern capital, loudly declared that there were no living creatures left in Leningrad, only people literally started to eat each other and the city actually died. Then the Soviet leaders, in the best traditions of the parade of November 7, 1941, decided to carry out another “action of inexhaustible courage”.

Football players Valentin Fedorov and Arkady Alov appeared before the Chairman of the Military Department of the City Committee of the CPSU, where they were instructed to recruit 2 teams and play a match. This decision was announced on May 4, and on May 31, this same memorable match took place on the territory of besieged Leningrad, namely at the Dynamo Stadium on Krestovsky Island. The then well-known referee Pavel Pavlov served the meeting, and on the field the teams of Dynamo and the team of workers of the Leningrad Metallurgical Plant met, which were also joined by a number of players from Zenit’s pre-war roster.

In addition, Dynamo was forced to give their player to the opponents’ side, because most of the workers, due to a lack of elemental strength due to hunger, could not even go out for 2 halves of 30 minutes. This “friend among strangers” turned out to be Ivan Smirnov. The meeting ended with a major victory for Dynamo (6-0) and she decided on the main objective: “to show the Nazis how the dead play football”. Later, in 1991, a commemorative plaque was unveiled in honor of this event, and already in 2002, a monument to the football players who took part in this heroic match. It is located not far from the Dynamo Stadium in Saint Petersburg.

Newcomers to the Olympic Movement

On May 7, 1951, an important decision for national sport was taken. The International Olympic Committee allowed delegations from the Soviet Union to compete, recognizing their right to participate in the Olympics. The beginnings for us were therefore the Olympic Games in Helsinki, which are also remembered for the return of countries excluded from sport for political reasons (we have already seen that somewhere, have we not?), whose Japan and the Federal Republic of Germany. – the main aggressors of the Second World War.

Politics, as you can see, was already present in sport in all its glory, and the process of stratification of the world into socialists and capitalists began to enter its active phase. And just then, the Soviet athletes expressed their principled position and refused to live in the same Olympic village with representatives of the camp. As for sports results, the national team of the USSR in these games turned out to be very powerful, becoming the second in the team standings after the Americans. The Soviet Olympians won 71 awards: 22 gold, 30 silver and 19 bronze. In addition, our representatives in the Finnish capital have set 2 world records and 6 Olympic records.

And we, fans of modern sport, can only wait and hope that the Olympic precepts of Baron de Coubertin will be respected again. Otherwise, glorious stories will increasingly be pulled from dusty archives and not remembered in the wake of recent events.

Alexander Petriakov, SPORT.RU