Alekseev Vasily Ivanovich biography. Vasily Alekseev weightlifter biography

Alekseev Vasily Ivanovich (born in 1942) - Russian athlete (weightlifting). Became Olympic champion in 1972 and 1976.

He won the world championships eight times, the European championships six times, and the USSR championships seven times.

Set 80 world records. Honored Master of Sports.

Vasily Alekseev was born on January 7, 1942 in the village of Pokrovo-Shishkino, Ryazan region, becoming the fourth child in the family. His father worked at a local distillery. When Vasya was eleven, the family moved to the village of Rochegda in the Arkhangelsk region. During the holidays, the boy helped the family harvest and float timber and became accustomed to lifting heavy logs.

One day, having decided to compete with a high school student, Vasily tried to squeeze the axle of the trolley. His attempt was unsuccessful, but his opponent lifted the iron twelve times. After this incident, Vasya Alekseev began training under the guidance of a physical education teacher, and since 1955 he became a mandatory participant in all district and regional youth competitions.

After graduating from school, Vasily entered the Arkhangelsk Forestry Institute, where he continued his sports activities. However, after he gained a total weight of 315 kg in 1961, Alekseev interrupted his studies, took an academic leave and, after getting married, went to the Tyumen region to earn money.

Upon returning, Alekseev transferred to the correspondence department and continued his studies at the institute. Having moved with his family to the town of Koryazhma, Vasily worked as a shift foreman in the biological treatment workshop of the Kotlas pulp and paper mill, soon becoming a shift supervisor.

After a year of training, Vasily Alekseev fulfilled the standard of a master of sports, lifting 442.5 kg. However, in Arkhangelsk they refused to register the achievements of the extraordinary athlete, and he went to the city of Shakhty in the Rostov region, where weightlifters trained under the guidance of the Tokyo Olympics champion Rudolf Plückfelder. However, not finding a common language with the eminent coach, he continued his studies on his own and developed his own training system, which gave the highest results.

Soon Vasily Alekseev played for the USSR national team, but, having torn his back, he was excluded from the team, because doctors categorically forbade him to lift weights. Despite the bans, on January 24, 1970, at a performance in Velikiye Luki, the athlete broke the records of the Americans Robert Bednarsky and Joseph Dube, as well as twice the results of the leader of Soviet weightlifters Zhabotinsky in the total triathlon. And in March, in international competitions for the Friendship Cup, he overcame the six hundred kilogram mark for the first time in the world. In June of the same year, at the European Championships, Alekseev bench pressed 219.5 kg, snatched 170 kg and clean and jerked 225.5 kg, setting new world records. And in 1970, at the World Championships in the USA, he lifted a 500-pound barbell for the first time and thereby caused a hail of admiration from a crowd of six thousand spectators. When a girl approached the champion to present the gold cup for this victory, the athlete raised her with his right hand and the cup with his left, drawing thunderous applause from the audience.

In 1971, the European Championship was held in Sofia, at which Alekseev again turned out to be the best. After returning home, he successfully defended his thesis, receiving the specialty of a mining engineer.

Then there was the world weightlifting championship in Lima, where the athlete confirmed the title of absolute world champion and set three world records. After this victory, the French Academy of Sports named Vasily Alekseev “the number one athlete of 1971.” At the same time, he was awarded the "President's Prize". By the beginning of the XX Olympic Games, the athlete reached a total weight of 645 kg. And during the Olympic competitions themselves, he decided not to take risks, not to immediately press the maximum weight, and, smoothly beating his rivals Manta and Reading, gained a total of 640 kg in triathlon - an Olympic record.

In just two and a half years, Vasily Alekseev rose to the highest level of his sports career, breaking world records 54 times. However, one of the types of triathlon - the bench press, in which the athlete had no equal in the whole world - was canceled after the XX Olympics. In the future, he had to work hard on himself in order to achieve new victories and not damage his health. And his hopes came true.

At the European Championships in Madrid in 1973, the Russian hero set two world records in the clean and jerk, and totaled 417.5 kg in the double event. Then, at the world championship in Havana, he once again became world champion, and in May 1974, European champion. After that, at the World Championships in Manila, he lifted 35 kg (425 kg in double-event total) more than his main opponent Reading.

In 1975, the World and European Championships were held in Moscow, at which Alekseev’s main rival was twenty-two-year-old Bulgarian Hristo Plachkov. But the Russian strongman again came out on top, setting records in the clean and jerk and total - 427.5 kg.

In 1976, the athlete set the 76th world record at the USSR Championship in Karaganda - 435 kg, and at the next Olympics in Montreal, a weightlifter who weighed 156.8 kg lifted 185 kg and pushed 255 kg.

At thirty-five years old, Vasily Alekseev became the world champion for the eighth time; in November 1977, he lifted a barbell weighing 256 kg, setting the eightieth world record.

Two years before the start of the XXII Olympic Games, Alekseev stopped competing - he decided to conserve his strength. Apparently, during this period he lost, as the athletes say, the feeling of the platform and dropped out of the game, losing the championship to younger and more energetic rivals.

After this, the eminent champion became the coach of the USSR weightlifting team and until 1990 he was training new champions in this sport.

Brief biographical dictionary

"Vasily Alekseev" and other articles from the section

Vasily Ivanovich Alekseev is a weightlifter, an idol of millions, an Honored Master of Sports, who climbed to the highest step of the podium at the World Championships eight times, took first place eight times in Europe and seven times in the Soviet Union. A man who holds 80 world records, one of which cannot be broken.

Vasily Alekseev: biography

On January 7, 1942, in the Ryazan village of Pokrovo-Shishkino, the future great weightlifter was born. In 1953, his family moved to the Arkhangelsk region and settled in the small village of Rochegda. From the age of 11, Vasily helped his father in logging and rafting, where he acquired his first experience of working with heavy loads while carrying logs.

After graduating from school, Vasily Alekseev entered the Arkhangelsk Forestry Institute. But, having married, for family reasons he decides to interrupt his studies. He takes an academic leave and goes to work in the Tyumen region. A year later, he returns, transfers to distance learning and moves with his family to the city of Koryazhma, where he gets a job as a shift foreman at a pulp and paper mill. After some time, he is promoted and appointed shift supervisor.

After working in production for a year, Vasily Ivanovich Alekseev moved again, now to the Rostov region, the city of Shakhty, where his professional sports career began.

World and European Championships, the Olympic Games, where he becomes an unsurpassed leader, numerous victories and records set - even one tenth of the successes that V. Alekseev achieved during his life can be the envy of any athlete.

After the Moscow Olympics (1980), Vasily Ivanovich decides to quit big-time sports, devoting himself to coaching. In 1989, he was appointed to the post of head coach of the country's weightlifting team. And on November 9, 2011, Vasily Alekseev with heart disease ends up in a clinic in Munich, where, to the great grief of his admirers, he dies on December 25.

The beginning of the sports career of a great weightlifter

The first coach of the future multiple champion was Semyon Mileiko, his physical education teacher. Since 1955, Vasily Alekseev has taken part in almost all regional competitions, defending the honor of his native school on the weightlifting platform.

After entering the institute, the weightlifter continues to train independently, gradually developing his own training methodology. By 1961, the total weight that he was able to lift in triathlon - bench press, snatch and clean and jerk - reached 315 kg. And just a year later, he was able to improve this result to 442.5 kg, which corresponded to the qualification “master of sports”, and this in the absence of a professional coach.

But since Vasily Alekseev lived in the Arkhangelsk region, there was no one and nowhere to register this achievement due to the lack of a training base for weightlifters in the region. Therefore, the weightlifter decides to move to Shakhty, where the champion of the Tokyo Olympics (1940) Rudolf Plückfelder trained athletes. However, Alekseev’s relationship with the eminent teacher did not work out, since they had different approaches to organizing the training process. Vasily returns to independent studies, which soon began to bring the first tangible results.

Having taken part in the USSR Championship (1968), Vasily Alekseev won bronze, losing only to the famous weightlifters Leonid Zhabotinsky, who became the champion, and Stanislav Batishchev, the silver medalist. Since the difference in results between first and third place was almost 50 kg, no one made high bets on the young twenty-six-year-old athlete, although he was still invited to the Olympic team. However, Vasily Ivanovich Alekseev was unable to go to the XIX Games due to an injury.

First world records, first titles

Since January 24, 1970, Vasily Alekseev, a self-taught weightlifter, participating in competitions held in Velikiye Luki, opens an account of his world achievements in triathlon. In total he lifts weight. equal to 595 kg, thereby breaking the records of American athletes R. Bednarsky and D. Dube, as well as the best result of the leader of the Soviet weightlifting team Zhabotinsky. And just 2 months later, in Minsk, during the World Cup competition, he surpassed the 600 kg bar. On June 28 of the same year, in Europe, the total weight in triathlon was 615 kg, which became another unsurpassed record.

That same year in the USA, at the World Championships, Vasily Alekseev, a weightlifter whose training method no coach wanted to recognize, lifted a five-hundred-pound apparatus (almost 227 kg), surprising all weightlifting fans with the result.

1971, Sofia, European Championship - and again Alekseev is the best.

At the same time, despite a series of sporting triumphs and world fame, Vasily did not forget about his studies. Returning home, he successfully defends his diploma in the specialty “mining engineer”. After which he goes to the next championship, where he confirms his title of world champion, and along the way sets three more records.

By the beginning of the twentieth Olympics (Munich), Vasily Ivanovich Alekseev in triathlon reached a weight of 645 kg, but directly at the competition he decided not to take risks and settled on 640 kg, which was already an Olympic and world record.

The Soviet weightlifter soared to the highest and unattainable level of his sports career in just over two years, while setting 54 world records. But after the Munich competition, Alekseev’s “strong point” - the bench press - was canceled, and in order to continue to remain in the lead, the athlete had to completely revise his training system.

New records under new rules

In 1973, in Madrid, at the European Championships, the Russian hero, despite the changes introduced, again set two records in the clean and jerk, and gained 417.5 kg in the total weight of the double event. And then again a series of “golden victories”:

• 1973, Madrid - European champion. That same year, Havana became world champion.
• 1974 - European champion, and in the same year - world champion.
• 1975, Moscow - both titles (European and world champion) again replenished the weightlifter’s “gold” box.
• 1976, the USSR Championship, was another world record, and in the same year the Russian weightlifter became the gold medalist of the Montreal Olympics.
• 1977 - Alekseev receives his eighth world title, setting an eightieth record.

V. Alekseev divided his training day into two parts, training for 4 hours in the morning and the same amount in the evening, in total lifting about 40 tons during training. At the same time, he did not strive to take a record weight, working exclusively with those kilograms in which he was completely confident.

The main emphasis during his classes was on the exercise that “went best” during this period. He worked it until he was completely exhausted.

In addition to basic training, the athlete did not deny himself the pleasure of skiing, playing volleyball, while wearing a belt weighing 13 kg.

The following mandatory items were present at the training: a samovar with hot tea and 10 shirts, which were changed as they became soaked in sweat. Training in the gym always took place with the windows wide open - Vasiliev could not live without fresh air.

But the main thing is that V. Alekseev loved his “pancakes”, and training for him was not work, but pleasure - this is where his strength came from.

Leaving the platform

After his last record, V. Alekseev decided to take a two-year break. He completely stopped participating in competitions in order to gain strength for the future Moscow Olympics.

But during this time, a new generation of strong and energetic athletes has grown up who managed to displace the barbell legend on the world stage. Having taken part in the XXII Games, Vasily could not even take the initial weight. The athlete was not happy with this situation. A man accustomed to being first did not want to settle for second place. The Russian hero decides to continue his activities as a coach, first in his city (Shakhty), and then in the Soviet weightlifting team.

Under his leadership, at the XXV Olympiad, Russian athletes won 10 medals, of which five were of the highest standard, four silver and one bronze.

Titles that cannot be taken away

Over the years of his career, V. Alekseev became an Honored Master of Sports of the Soviet Union. Later he was awarded the honorary title of Honored Trainer of the USSR. But the main thing is that the Russian weightlifter remains the holder of the current world record - 645 kg in triathlon. And since official competitions in this discipline are no longer held, this means that the record set will forever remain with Vasily Alekseev, and no one will be able to beat him.

V. Alekseev, according to A. Schwarzenegger, is one of his idols, standing next to Yu. Vlasov and L. Zhabotinsky.

Another symbol, the legend of the Soviet Union, V. Vysotsky, dedicated his song “Weightlifter” to the athlete.

In 1972, Ajman (United Arab Emirates) issued a postage stamp with the image of V. Alekseev.

In the city of Shakhty, a park and an avenue were renamed in memory of the great athlete. And also one of Aeroflot’s airliners flies under his name.

Vasily Alekseev, whose records are forever inscribed in the history of Soviet sports, was a real king of the barbell and will forever remain an example of a strong-willed and strong person in all respects.

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

“I want to be first!” - Vasily Alekseev wrote after the 1968 USSR Championship on the back of the photograph where he, the bronze medalist, was immortalized with Leonid Zhabotinsky and Stanislav Batishchev (I and II places, respectively). This impudent statement could not have evoked anything but a condescending grin then, since the 26-year-old weightlifter was lifting 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 one “I can” - not only climbed to the highest step of the podium, but subsequently became the strongest man on the planet, two-time Olympic champion, eight-time absolute world and European champion, and also set 80 world records, one of which was 645 kilograms in triathlon! - dubbed eternal.

“Monotony suffocates, deprives you of flight,” the champion complained. Maintaining equanimity, Vasily Ivanovich told journalists stories about his special training techniques: he focuses, they say, on lifting the barbell in the river (he even showed a photo to non-believers) and eats half a glass of salt a day, and also, stroking his oversized waist, he formulated his personal credo like this: “ 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 soviticus, obliko morale” with their wary views and feeling of being in the camp of the enemy. Alekseev, for example, could easily slip his suitcase to a strict American customs officer, from which a rubber devil would jump out with a nasty squeak, and once, while giving an interview for a reputable Israeli magazine, he asked - to defuse tensions! - say hello to your aunt. "And who is your aunt?" - the journalists became interested. “Don’t you really know? - Vasily Ivanovich was picturesquely amazed. - Golda Meir,” after which the magazine came out with the sensational headline “The Soviet champion is the 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, he got away with his reluctance to stand in the common line and have his hair cut with the same brush: his character was supposedly uncooperative, conflict-ridden, but a nugget, and even when he was angry with the Ryazan authorities (they promised to build a sports complex “for him”, and then they happily “forgot”, and he had to go to Moscow stores 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.

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

It seems that this “Russian bear,” as he was called in the West, was ahead of his time not only in sports results, but also in understanding the nature of big-time sports, which is akin to show business and also needs competent PR. Maybe that’s why Alekseev, although he left the platform 30 years ago and lives in the provincial town of Shakhty in the Rostov region, far from television cameras, is not forgotten by sports fans.

“AND I WALKED SO LONG TO THE PEDESTAL THAT I TROMPED DENTS IN THE DASHIF...”

First, Vasily Ivanovich, I must admit that the most vivid memory of my childhood is connected specifically with you: it so happened that for several years in a row my parents and I went on vacation to Feodosia, where the Soviet Union weightlifting team, led 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 champion in the barbell - to lift this colossus above my head as easily and naturally as you. Well, now I will be pleased to remind our readers of the titles of my outstanding interlocutor. So, Vasily Alekseev: the strongest man on the planet, called 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 still stand - decades later! - remains unsurpassed?

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

- Did it really matter?

But of course! - difficulties forge character. Nowadays weightlifters come to gyms, but in winter I trained in basements, in summer - on the street, and all this strengthened me and gave me purposefulness. Look, these days the guys are like a pick: talented, healthy, they are fed to their heart's content, but there are no records... It would seem that what is stopping them, but they... just don't train. Quirk on quitter - this amazes and offends me.

- Vladimir Vysotsky once dedicated “The Weightlifter’s Song” to you with these words:

Such an unmanageable bulk
I wouldn’t wish it on my enemy.
I'm approaching a heavy projectile
with a heavy feeling -
Suddenly I won’t pick it up.
We both seem to be made of metal,
but only it is really metal.
And it took me so long to reach the podium,
that he trampled dents in the platform...

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

- Not marked by the grace of a mustang,
I’m constrained, I’m not quick in my movements.
Barbell, overloaded barbell -
my eternal rival and partner...

I am dissatisfied with these words. How do you mean “constrained”, how do you mean “not fast in your movements”? - yes, I played masters volleyball and table tennis for 40 games in a row: everyone still remembers that.

Vladimir Semenovich, as I understand it, when he wrote this song, he didn’t agree on the lyrics with you, but did you know that he dedicated it to you?

I found out later, later. Vysotsky, by the way, was here in Shakhty - he lived in a dacha for three days on the Don. At that time, I think, I was performing in America - I was just flying back from the World Championships, and, unfortunately, I didn’t catch it.

- Did you meet him later?

Alas. In 1980, at a training camp in preparation for the Olympics, I asked through the Komsomol Central Committee to find him and invite him. Other artists of the Taganka Theater came more than once: Zolotukhin, Farada, Filatov - I name them from memory now, but he didn’t: they said that he was somewhere on tour, he was busy, he couldn’t. Well, then the news came - he died. Of course, this traumatized us greatly.

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

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

- Have you at least estimated 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 this entire household.

“IN THE LESPROMKHOZ I REGULARLY RUINED 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 in the 27th and 33rd years, died of hunger (we, too, suffered from the Holodomor, like Ukraine). Two brothers survived, my sister and I were the sixth.

-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 raised in strictness or spoiled?

I did not see any harshness or affection from the parents as such - it was a normal family. They didn’t force us into the house from the yard and didn’t ask us about our school successes, because in the post-war period everyone lived like that - we didn’t stand out in anything special.

- Was poverty terrible?

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

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

Yes, I spent all my holidays: both winter and summer with him.

- Were you already a hero as a child? When did you feel your strength?

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

- How did the guys - peers and older - feel about this?

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

- How much weight could you, say, lift and squeeze in the fifth and sixth grades?

One day, a neighbor got hold of a trolley axle - there were 30 kilograms in it - and he pressed it about 10-12 times, and I pushed it 14 times (I couldn’t press it yet, I didn’t have the strength). Therefore, since childhood I had a confident push, but over time the strength increased, and accordingly I walked and looked out for where to find a heavier axle. Then, at the timber industry enterprise in the North (in 1953 the family moved to the Arkhangelsk region), he regularly destroyed trolleys, which caused considerable damage to the state. It was only at the institute that I saw a real barbell...

- Excuse me, but didn’t you see her at all before the institute?

Of course not.

- How old were you already?

19, probably - now at that age no one would be allowed into the gym.

Not seeing a barbell until the age of 19 and becoming the greatest weightlifter of all time is fantastic! By and large, can you call yourself a nugget?

I can’t - it’s immodest. Yes, I agree, such things are surprising now, but then... Well, I came to the institute and at the same time to the section: I took the 28-mm bar, and it seemed to me that it was sharp, like a knife, cutting into it. The axles were wow (shows by connecting the thumbs and index fingers) - 90 millimeters in diameter. I left after the first training session - I didn’t like the barbell, and then they persuaded me to compete for the course, for the department, for the entire forestry engineering institute, and by the spring I was already the champion of the course, the institute, and the region.

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

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

- ...That?..

I'll tell you: there would be a lot more records - over 100. In the snatch, I didn't use a wide grip - I didn't have enough wrist length. I couldn’t reach my little fingers, but here, on my right hand, one is missing at all...

- How is it not?

Well, he’s injured and doesn’t bend, so I set four world records in the snatch with these two fingers.(shows middle and index).

In other words, the famous Russian expression: “Yes, I’ll kill them with one finger!” - in your case it needs adjustment: two...

I simply envied many weightlifters who had long fingers - for example, David Rigert: he wrapped them around the bar, and also pressed his thumb with his ring finger (in addition to the index and middle) - and there were no problems! It’s like with safety straps, but I had to rebuild the entire training methodology - practice gripping, gripping, and gripping again.

“I HAVE TRIED THE METHOD ON MYSELF, LIKE PAVLOV ON DOGS, DOZENS, IF NOT MORE,”

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

Sewage - was a shift supervisor there.

Even so? That is, they could well tell themselves that life, in general, was a success. Stable job, good salary, respect as a proletarian bone - what kind of sport is there?

Nevertheless, I stubbornly lifted the barbell. They tried to persuade me to quit the sport, they said: “You are talented, but our technologist is just leaving...”, they predicted that I would take his place. By the way, he later became the governor of the Arkhangelsk region.

- I see an enviable prospect has opened up before you...

Well, yes (laughs)- Maybe I, too, would eventually advance to this position in his footsteps.

You, like few people, probably, made yourself, but first trained under the guidance of Rudolf Plückfelder, the champion of the Tokyo Olympics...

Never!

- Is that so?

Yes, only so. I moved here to Shakhty - Moscow sent me! - because in 1971 the local team (it was part of the Yuzhnaya-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, two athletes were missing - a hole appeared...

- ...and they found you...

They sent me because I had to leave Koryazhma, where I worked. There wasn’t even a gym there - they trained in the basement on an ordinary floor, broken through. I couldn’t even lift the barbell, because the ceiling in the basement didn’t allow it, and by that time I had already met 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’s the same from Koryazhma, except that it’s further from Paris.

- So you didn’t train under the leadership of Plyukfelder?

The thing is that the classes at the institute section helped me. There were no masters or record holders there - only first-class performers, but what virtuosos! In terms of the technique of performing movements, I have never seen anyone equal to them, and when I came here, there were simply idiots here to beat them.

In short, I had something to compare with, and out of stupidity I tried to advise Plyukfelder something... He put me down once, and then I see: what he offers is completely nonsense. Again I came in with advice, but the result was not so great, only I arrived as a master of sports...

-Didn’t you try to hit him?

Well, no, we haven’t practiced such things yet. That’s all, he and I immediately found a “common language”... 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: Jabotinsky has 170 kilograms , and I have 102-105.

- Is there such a difference?

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

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

Let me add: he still doesn’t know.

- What did you mean?

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

“ONCE A DOCTOR ADVISED ME, WHO WORKED WITH ANIMALS IN A CIRCUS. OR WITH ANIMALS - WHICH IS CORRECT?”

If you believe numerous books, studies and monographs that tried to unravel the Alekseev phenomenon, you, firstly, never had a coach, secondly, you never listened to anyone’s advice and recommendations, and, finally, thirdly, by trial and error mistakes, we developed our own training system - we reduced the training weight of the barbell, increasing the number of approaches to the apparatus. 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’re all doing it wrong” - were they happy to hear this from you?

I think I was wrong about this, but about the fact that I didn’t listen to anyone... I didn’t listen to those who didn’t understand anything about the barbell. I was once advised by a doctor who worked with animals in a circus. Or with animals - which is correct?

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

At competitions, where I twice unsuccessfully went to the platform - I didn’t lift it, he promptly suggested how to break the barbell for me.

- Did you listen to his advice?

I remembered a three letter word...

- ...peace, May?

Yes (laughs)and accordingly doctors...

I suspect that not everyone was happy with your successes, but at least the fight was fair, or could your competitors trip you up 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 arrive first, then the middleweights, and then we, the heavyweights, last, and so on March 16 (I remember the date exactly because I got on the platform on the 18th) we were sitting in the dining car, and four ordinary peasants sat in the back. Suddenly one of them says: “Here is the strongest man on the planet, Alekseev” (and before that I set four records and surpassed Jabotinsky in total). The second one echoes him: “Come on - some kind of goat is sitting” - and to me: “Do you hear, you goat?!” I didn’t answer: just as I was eating hodgepodge, bending over, I continue to eat, when a glass flies at the back of my head - and smashes it into pieces on my head! Meanwhile, I still have zero attention: I continue to finish the hodgepodge!

There were four of us: two heavyweights (including me) weighing 130 kilograms, and two weighing 110 kilograms: you can imagine who these little guys were up against - four elephants. With my character, it wouldn’t have cost them anything to rip their heads off, but God saved me.

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

Yakubovsky was sitting opposite me Valera. “Didn’t you hear,” he asks, “were you insulted? Yes, I’ll tear their mouths, break their necks.” “I,” I say, “would have done this a long time ago, but we will be to blame: sit down.” Meanwhile, the peasants continued to speak up, but seeing that we didn’t say a word, they shut up.

- Do you think it was a provocation?

Now, after so many years, I am 100 percent sure of this. I was going to set a world record in triathlon, to open the “Club 600”, which many in our country only dreamed of - someone, naturally, did not like it.

- Competitors, probably...

And I didn’t have them at that time. It is not clear who wanted to take me out of the game - this question still plagues me. There are, of course, assumptions...

No, I won’t, but after I finally performed on March 18 and set that same expected, crazy record, they still wrote nasty things about me: they say that I couldn’t feel the breath of my opponents, so I only used five out of the nine required approaches.

- Don’t you regret that you didn’t grab your impudent fellow travelers by the scruff of the neck, didn’t ask who sent them...

To do this, we had to hit them in the face, but then we wouldn’t have gotten to Minsk. If they were so cunning, they would pretend to be beaten, and the witnesses were probably prepared... Who would believe that men with a total weight of 250 kilos climbed half a ton?

“WELL, WHAT CAN BE A WEASEL TO THE BAR? IRON IS IRON..."

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

Well, I don’t think they considered me an idiot or a fool, it’s just that when I lifted 40 tons, they were 4 tons - 10 times less.

- 40 tons per workout?

For two. They trained once a day, and I trained twice: I moved 25 tons in the morning, and 15 in the evening, and at the same time I heard from them: “We’ve met loaders before you.” “Guys,” I told them, “how about catching a fish without difficulty?” Their results increased, but not so much, and the same Jabotinsky, if he lifted a ton or two, that’s good.

- Were you lazy or didn’t understand how to do it?

Everything was given to him by nature - so he didn’t overwork himself, and if they lifted seven tons (as in 1968, when they were preparing for the Olympics in Mexico City), then they went downstairs to a bar at a hotel in Dubna, Moscow Region, where they allowed themselves to drink cognac under a jar of cod liver grabbed for this occasion. They also offered me something like that, because I had no 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 liver and sprat, no canned food, so for me it’s not a shortage.

- Listen, lift 40 tons every day...

In one day.

- Did you like to lift such heavy weights or did you know that there was a word “must”?

No, for me “flexing my muscles” was a pleasure, a joy. This, of course, was hindered by all sorts of life’s ups and downs, but I always repeated to athletes and fans: the most important thing (today we have already begun to forget about this principle!) is to train with pleasure and according to your well-being.

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

If you feel bad, go train, and if you feel good, do two or three times more workload. 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, there, this is impossible, there is too much...

- When you were an athlete, did you do pull-ups on the horizontal bar?

I think I’m the only heavyweight who has done 12 pull-ups (Zhabotinsky, by the way, never once). Then, I note, my weight was 126 kilos.

- Weightlifters don’t like this exercise...

Well, small ones work wonders on the bar, but heavyweights... Basically, everyone’s biceps are the same in strength. Here we had Gennady Chetin(weightlifter in bantamweight. - D.G.) , so he came out from the bottom up at least 100 times.

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

There are still plenty of them now.

- Didn’t you share it with anyone?

So, are there anyone interested? I trained behind closed doors: at the training camp in Podolsk I had a separate gym. One of the reasons was that I worked with the windows open. If you open the door, there’s a draft, because in the room opposite, the window is also wide open and there was a fair amount of air flow there, and the second reason... There was no desire...

Has an ambitious guy who dreamed of becoming just as great never came to you and asked: “Vasily Ivanovich, please share what you’re doing there...”?

And when I passed by others in the hall, I always suggested them, because, like in the movies, I could see who was missing what. I just didn’t want to impose my understanding on those who didn’t need it. Why, if the team was already performing well?

- Did everyone listen to you or did some brush you off?

Why brush it off if it’s clear that a person understands this matter?

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

Well, of course, there are few similarities, but I loved to love, and I still respect him. I never allowed anyone to step over the bar or put their foot on the bar - this is disrespect for your favorite apparatus. For me, putting your foot in a boot on a barbell, which you then take on your bare chest, is the same as climbing with your feet on a table: this is simply bad manners, but many, one might say, everyone, do this. Things like this bother me...

- How kindly did you address the barbell?

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

“THE HORSE IS TOO HARD, BUT HE PULSES. MAYBE SHE DON’T LIKE IT, BUT I LIFTED THE BAR FOR PLEASURE”

I read somewhere that during one workout you changed 8-12 shirts, because four kilograms of sweat came out of you - isn’t this a myth?

No, I actually took several shirts - almost a dozen! - and changed it every now and then. Your chest is wet, and if you don’t change your clothes in time...

- Sweat flowing in streams?

Well, if four kilograms are gone, it should flow. I remember 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 brew 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 is enough for me?” He threw up his hands: “Yes, my science is powerless here.”

I was the first to come up with the idea of ​​drinking tea during training. I came home from the institute hungry and immediately hit the barbell, but my stomach was on strike without food, so after two exercises I’d leave the gym, drink some tea and go back, and when I was already on the national team, no one drank tea, but I bought a samovar and made tea. Well, it seemed like a thrill and all that, but in Ryazan they brought top-quality teas from the tea-packing factory, and in the first couple of months I set so many records there - I worked miracles. Then, however, once - and stopped. I think: what's wrong? I trained as usual, using the same method, and realized that the secret was in the tea that I brewed.

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

I'm afraid tea wouldn't help under our capitalism(laughs).

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

I drank as much as I lost, as I understand it. Here in Shakhty there was a methodology - they trained from four in the evening... This, by the way, is about Plyukfelder: I worked with them for a total of two months, and in December 1967 I left the team. In the evening you lift weights, drink water - you sleep poorly, but I worked out alone in the morning - beauty: by the evening I restore my water balance 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 it’s enough to transport 40 tons in a day...

We were just talking about how I happily raised them.

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

Whoever is destined for something - the horse is also having a hard time, but she pulls. Maybe she doesn’t like it, but I lifted the barbell for pleasure, and now I train like that. It has simply turned into a need, into a necessity.

- Is the work still exhausting?

At the beginning, until the muscles grow, until the ligaments become stronger, and until the body retracts, it really is difficult, but you need to endure it for two or three months, and then things will go well. You also need to have your 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 repeated lifts...

-...that's another matter...

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

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

- (Laughs).Once I was performing on television in Salekhard, and a woman called the studio: my daughter was supposedly marrying a master of sports in weightlifting - wouldn’t the hobby of the future son-in-law affect the intimate life of the young couple? I reassured: “Mommy, don’t worry! Everything will turn out fine for them.”

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

Both in your arms and there(winks) everything will be OK.

“YURI VLASOV? AND WHO IS IT? I DIDN’T HEARD...”

From an early age, I paid attention to the thick spirit that stood in the halls where weightlifters trained: the air there was so... how could this be 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 games room is 36 meters long, plus high ceilings. For 20 people this is nothing...

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

Well, maybe it’s because the hall is Dynamo(laughs).

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

They also built some nasty factory there... When I was already the head coach of the USSR national team, I brought the team there, and after a week, half of them, as a rule, had a sore throat. What kind of chemical monster was put there, in Crimea, along with the nuclear power plant?

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

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

- The work is like this...

He weighed 13 kilos - that’s why I trained with him.

- And what, they flew over the net?

Otherwise! I played for four hours on a non-training day, on Saturday or Sunday.

-Who made this belt?

I managed it myself. I am a designer-inventor - in the yard, you see, there are machines made by me personally.

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

Yes? And who is it? - haven't heard (laughs)...

And he said that the main problem of weightlifting is doping, which drives many people to early graves. 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 battle of chemicals. Previously, when you had this problem, did you use doping?

Tell me, what is meant by this word?

- Anabolic steroids...

Let's say, but until 1976 they were not considered doping. In the 76th Olympics in Montreal - this is an interesting topic! - for the first time they used anti-doping, or rather, anti-anabolic control. I don’t want to name names, but in my weight I’ll mention Gerd Bonk from the GDR...

- ...a serious guy!..

And Hristo Plachkova from Bulgaria.

- It wasn’t a gift either...

They're both cool guys. Before going to Montreal, one won Europe at home, gaining 432 kilograms in the biathlon (I didn’t compete there, although I went, and then I regretted that this happened), and the second broke my record - he lifted a total of 442 kilos. On this topic, if you have time, I can tell you a story like an anecdote.

- I’ll be happy to listen to you...

In December 1975, I moved to Ryazan, and some correspondent found my phone number and called: “What amount is needed in 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 passed, where Bonk 432 raised, 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 was already aware). The third time he got me in Vladimir at the Grishin hunting base - he was like that...

- ...first secretary of the Moscow City Committee of the CPSU...

Right. I took a 285 kilo barbell and four boards with me there - I put together a platform, drove in racks for squats and plowed there for three weeks. The rains have just started to rain: from one to three per day.

- So you had a normal rest!..

I was training normally, and there was a man standing next to me with a towel, driving away mosquitoes. Just like there was a clearing between rains, I went to the bar at any time of the day, as long as it wasn’t dripping from the sky, and at three or four nights I went to the steam room - that was the routine. At this time, Plachkov competed at the Bulgarian Championship and set a record - 442.5 kilograms.

- Beat yours by seven kilos...

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

- But they swore on Red Square!

- (Laughs).Otherwise! Well, the day after tomorrow I’m competing in Montreal, and I pulled out 155 kilograms, and the snatch was only successful once, and five attempts were unsuccessful (before that I didn’t hold on to the bar at all - or rather, I held on, but didn’t do anything from the classics). We just arrived and took samples for control. Plachkov refused to perform at all: he flew away and didn’t even register in the Olympic village.

- But Bonk came out?

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

- And you?

Well, add up 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 me, there was no time for the bar - they rolled it away.

- This is what it means to swear on Red Square...

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

“DRINK RUSSIAN VODKA,” I TOLD THE JOURNALISTS, “IT’S BETTER THAN ANABOLICS, BECAUSE IT CANNOT BE DETECTED IN THE BLOOD”

- Personally, you didn’t take anabolic steroids?

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

- Does a weightlifter even need doping?

My opinion remains unchanged: if you take a doping test, then everyone. Or not to take it - again, from everyone. Our Russians, as a rule, are strangled. For track and field athletes, for biathletes, and in general, the word “doping” slightly offends me - I say “anabolic steroids.” In small doses this medicine, in large...

When I jerked 255 kilograms in Montreal, journalists trampled the platform: there was no time for the barbell and no time for clean and 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 a question: “Mr. Alekseev, why did everyone perform so poorly, 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 and pharmaceutical industry have never produced anything for healthy people. This is not abroad, and there were no restorers as such. On Saturday or Sunday, whenever it happened, there was a steam room and four “thin” ones, that is, a liter. You go to training the next day like a cucumber - this is a proven folk Slavic method.

-Have you ever been so drunk that you couldn't tell?

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

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

I think this is not the limit.

- Four?

Not a problem either, although, to be honest and frank, there wasn’t enough time to get drunk. At that time, cafes and restaurants closed early.

-Have you ever smoked?

On a dare - others throw it on a dare, but I lit a cigarette.

- Liked?

I worked in a team of carpenters - they all had the sixth category, and after school I had the fourth, and do you know how they build houses in the North? There, the foundation is not poured with concrete; I installed two before lunch and the same amount after lunch, and they installed one each. “Are you a progressive,” I ask, “are you thinking of getting it?” Brigadier this and that: “What about smoking?” “Quit this disastrous occupation,” I say. He sighed: “Try and quit.” This got me excited: “How many months do you have to smoke to get hooked?” - "Two". I was addicted to nicotine for about a year...

- And they quit?

Immediately when I entered the institute. To be honest, it was a little hard, in my sleep I dreamed two or three times that I was taking a puff of Belomor, and I woke up covered in sweat, and we were smoking samosada.

- How tall are you, I wonder? How much did you weigh in your heyday?

Hmm, what are the best years?

- 1975-1976, I think...

I entered big-time sports at 188 centimeters tall, and I was gaining weight all the time. In the 1972 Olympics in Munich, I competed with 157 kilograms, then lost them. The heaviest weight with which I stepped onto the platform was 162 kilos.

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

I remember one case on topic. I dropped my weight from 157 kilograms to 138 and I thought: “Let me try to lift something at this weight in Mtsensk (this is the Oryol region). I arrived, and there my friends brought a journalist from Oryol Komsomolets to me. You know: I don’t like giving interviews, but once you’ve been asked, where can you go?

In order to lose weight, I need to be less friendly towards food, so I kept my diet down, but your colleague’s first question was: “Readers of Oryol 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, fifths and tenths, 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. Next: for lunch, eight borschts, 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 with those pennies?

- Did you even ask for supplements in the canteens during training camps?

There was nothing to ask for. There is a standard - 5 rubles 80 kopecks for food per day, plus a ruble for the heavyweights, but with this money, considering that you also had to feed the cooks and their families, you won’t get much faster. 5.80, let me clarify, this is when I was in the national team, and before that two and a half plus a ruble as a heavyweight. The food at 3.50 is blue sticky noodles and a cutlet in which, if meat had been found, the cook would have been imprisoned. Accordingly, empty borscht or soup, and we still somehow managed to maintain weight.

- It’s unclear how your 80 records were set...

- (Laughs). On the nerves.

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

“I ACTUALLY SET WORLD RECORDS WHILE HUNGRY: BOILED SAUSAGE, A PACK OF Cottage Cheese, Bread - EVERYTHING!”

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

Why was it? - they still exist, 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 was lifting such heavy weights. To be honest, I entered the big sport after being thrown out from everywhere - in 1969 they even gave me the second group of disability and they put such a big fat cross on me. Thanks to the neurologist who explained what the spine is. For two months I lay at night and thought until I came up with a machine. I have recovered, but I am still working on 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...

He set records. When they wrote me off, I came here to Shakhty, not getting a penny anywhere - no one needs an injured heavyweight weightlifter. I remember in 1970, when I had already become a world record holder, they decided to feed me and allocated a 12-liter pot of entrecote. They brought it twice, and each time I walked around the entrances, along the floors, handing out this grub to people. Then he abandoned it altogether, and actually set world records while hungry. Can you imagine: boiled sausage, a pack of cottage cheese and bread - that’s it!

- How about Russian vodka?

Well, what kind of vodka then? Only as a student, when he worked part-time unloading, he could afford it. I started lifting weights when the ice on the Northern Dvina stopped, and before that I unloaded barges - during the summer holidays I got a job as a loader in the Work Supply Department of my native village.

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

State the name of the person who did this, if you can... There is a city called Chernigov, 150 kilometers north of Kyiv, and Shura Rykov lives there, who was my second and “followed” me. I warmed it up, and he poured it for me six approaches before going on the platform...

- I poured it, excuse me, what?

A liquid with some kind of nasty stuff that supposedly gives you vigor and strength.

- Did Rykov do this out of stupidity or malicious intent?

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 - once (Rakhmanov won), Uzbekistan and its leader Rashidov - two, Dnepropetrovsk, where Leonid Ilyich began his career - three...

-...Sultan Rakhmanov is from there...

Yes, and plus Ukraine, which really needed the medal.

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

I felt like I was an idiot: the bar stood far away and was so small, it was as if you were looking at it through upside-down binoculars, and there was a continuous pounding in my head and only one thought was beating: “Why do you need this? Where are you going?". My legs, however, are programmed - so here I go... If I had at least left for the approach earlier, I would certainly have thrown up those 180 kilograms, but they calculated everything... Then I asked the team doctor: “What could they have poured in?” ?. - “Yes, an ordinary sleeping pill - a horse’s dose.”

- Were you determined to win again in Moscow?

I was in such shape that I had no equal - if I doubted my abilities, I simply would not have stepped onto the platform, I would have withdrawn from the competition. Shame? Why do I need it?

“IN THE PRESENCE OF NIXON, I GAVE THE SHORTEST SPEECH IN ENGLISH. THANKED: “SANKYU”, BUT “VERI MUCH” DID NOT ADD, BECAUSE I DIDN’T KNOW THESE WORDS YET”

- What did such a big and strong man feel after he received the “steering wheels”, zeros?

Never mind.

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

What kind of crying is there?(With annoyance). At first I thought they made a mistake - they threw it at me, but it had an unforeseen effect on me, but then, when I saw how they treated me: they didn’t hire me to be a coach for the national team, and they didn’t let me train, I realized that this was deliberately arranged. Maybe the KGB had a hand... Then I reconstructed everything minute by minute, I remembered verbatim who said what...

Alexander Prilepin (he was so small, 134 centimeters tall, and I, as the team captain, actually made him the head coach of the USSR national team) and Rykov, who was listed as my coach, got me into this bullshit. 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 from 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 defeat 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 you couldn’t help but drink?

And who then in this life to believe? Of course, there was doubt, and if I had thought about it a little when they came up to me and ordered... So I was ready to 190, ready to tear, and Prilepin came up to me: “Let’s start with 170.”

“For what..? - I say. “You’re going to pour me something else that will add 20-30 kilos, I need to start with 210.” In general, I ordered 185, but it was just quick! - and left. Well, your fellow countryman brought me a paper glass in six approaches. The next day they came to me in Podolsk. “If you had started with 170,” Rykov sighed, “you would have competed for the silver medal.” “I haven’t dreamed of her for 100 years,” he snapped, “I would push exactly as much as needed to win.” He nodded: “That’s what we thought,” so, apparently, they decided to jam it on the spot! True, they didn’t want to throw it to zero - they thought I’d get silver and Rakhmanov would get gold.

- The Sultan knew about this, don’t you think?

They didn't report to me. I think he didn’t realize it or they calmed him down later, but we were friends with him and continued to be friends - the kingdom of heaven to him!

(After a pause).If I tell you everything about these things... I was poisoned twice in Moscow - I just couldn’t believe it then. In both Peru and Latvia they poured something a couple of times, only here I knew who was pouring it, 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?

This was the first world championship for both me and America - it happened so, but since they, frankly speaking, had little brains, or rather experience in holding such competitions, the training room was set up on the second floor in the same room where we lived , well, after the first training, the columns on which the floor stood began to crack. We immediately boarded buses and were dragged to an athletics arena about 20 kilometers from Columbus, the capital of Ohio. The heat was over 40, the humidity was 100%, the roof was like a stadium! - it heats up (they made it for autumn and winter)... They built it, in general, and Nixon publicly promised on television that whoever was the first in the USA or on the continent to lift 500 pounds would personally be presented with a gold tie clip with his coat of arms.

- What does 500 pounds mean to you?

Well, at that time this world record was not yet established - 227.5 kilograms. I picked them up and brought the hairpin to Shakhty, but the day before two of their heavyweights - the American President - received the whole team! - they trumpeted all over 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 in 1969 (this was in 1970), apologized: they say, he didn’t say that, the journalists made it all up.

I didn’t study much French, I don’t know much about English at all, but I learned from there. Then the Polish translator laughed: “Vasil, you made the shortest speech in English.” I thanked him: “Senkyu”, but didn’t add “believe me”, because I didn’t know these words yet(laughs).

“I WENT OUT: STALINGRAD, I THINK THEY STILL REMEMBER... TWO AUTOMATIC DRIVERS BLOCKED THE ROAD, SO I PUSHED THEM TO THE BOOTH AND COMMANDED: “EVERYONE FOLLOW ME!”

You have met many world celebrities: athletes, politicians, actors - which of them was more memorable and why?

Well, we have always assigned a team of artists to the Olympic Games. Oh, Lord, you can’t even 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 and 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 it was just those guys I knew who died - weightlifters, wrestlers. I met them in Sweden and became friends.

- Did this make a painful impression on you?

It had an effect on everyone - I remember you were walking down the street, and a basketball player came towards you: “Vasily, let’s go to the wall - they’re shooting there, they promised to blow it up.” Everywhere there are armored personnel carriers, machine guns, machine gunners, helmets, bulletproof vests... You go down to get on the bus, and find yourself at the front - can you imagine the situation? - and, be that as it may, they did dirty tricks literally everywhere. On September 5 I was supposed to perform. Everyone says: “Sit, don’t go - they said on TV that the competition has been 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 been on the safe side, the tournament could have easily been held - and probably would have been held! - without me, because the main rival was Rudolf Mang.

- German, of course...

We return by bus. I took a nap - no matter what the experiences were. He opened his eyes: “Why are we standing?” - “But they don’t let you through the gate, they’re waiting for some order.” Well, I took a nap again. I wake up again - we are still standing. There are literally other gates nearby, the capitalist countries are passing through there, and the socialist countries are all here: both Poles and Czechs... About 20 buses have already gathered - this is the attitude towards us...

- Nightmare!

I went out: Stalingrad, I think, is still remembered... Two machine gunners blocked the road, so I pushed them towards the booth and ordered: “Everyone follow me!”(laughs).Well, it was a clear provocation...

- You were no less famous in the world than Brezhnev - did the fame go to your head?

My head is on my strong neck - was it in vain that I lifted so many things on it when I rocked my back? No, I looked at life realistically, I knew what I was getting from it now, and what would happen later. I wasn’t flattered by fireworks and sweet speeches, because I understood: the attitude towards athletes, no matter how famous they may be, changes radically after the performances are over. This awaited me too, but I was ready for this.

“IN BOXING, IN WRESTLING, EVERYTHING IS BUYABLE - GOLD MEDALS FOR BIG, BUT IN WEIGHTLIFTING - NO, YOU HAVE TO WORK”

You once complained: “No one was guarding me, and all the schizophrenics were just breaking in on me” - what does “breaking in” mean?

Well, I didn’t have security.

- In my opinion, you don’t need it...

Ooo! Look: the first secretary of the regional party committee went for a walk in the evening - he was accompanied by two elders on either side, but I didn’t go out into the street at all before dark - only at night. If you go during the day, you will definitely be crazy or an alcoholic: a normal person will not do. How did I live here before? I get behind the wheel, my wife opens the gate (now they are automatic), I drive out, she closes it, and we go somewhere. That’s how they came back... They couldn’t go to the cinema, they immediately discouraged them from going to the restaurant, but there was no such thing as walking around the city like other people.

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

Well, a 400 ruble stipend (everyone was given 300, 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 Lugansk (Batishchev and others) earned decent money, although they were not champions or record holders. They named the amounts - I won’t voice them! - and they thought that I had 10 times more, and when I said how much I had, they were sincerely surprised: “Then why are you living in this hole?”

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

-...there were no conditions...

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

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

This is not the only story about me - there are hundreds of them. In particular, I heard that I threw the captain of a speedboat into the Don, took some hunting rifles from a store and carried them away, but I am a fairly tactful person, and the culture in me also lingered in some places(laughs). As for bending over, just drop the fork 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 could walk for kilometers, but how did I play tennis, get balls from the floor? Hundreds of them fell there, thousands - oh, these 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 grades. They say that this became possible due to the fact that, firstly, your players 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 your guys didn’t obeyed, could give them a good fist...

This is another story, I’m telling you right away. How is it possible? Firstly, I never communicated directly with athletes - exclusively through their coaches, and I did not allow anyone to do this. Not only have I not had a single “steering wheel” in three years, I haven’t lost a single competition, and the guys on my team haven’t received a single injury. From the Olympics in Barcelona, ​​for example, he brought five gold medals, four silver and one bronze, and if the fight had been fair, there should have been seven gold and three silver.

- Another confirmation that for someone your successes are like a bone in the throat?

What's surprising? In boxing, in wrestling, everything is bought, and the medals are shared among the countries where this sport is progressing or is closely involved in it.

- Are you still buying it?

You didn `t know? Gold medals are for money, but in weightlifting - no, you have to work hard. I lay down in wrestling and got a point, but how can you buy a barbell? You have to lift it, and if you haven’t mastered it, who will give you a medal? The bully is still going on: they say, Jabotinsky, my friend, deceived Vlasov. Nonsense! How can you cheat? - three judges on the platform and five on the jury.

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

Yes, there was absolutely no struggle there. Lenya told me this story twice: the first time while drunk, and the second time patriotically, that is, embellishing it, but you never know what he says. I know: if Vlasov had pushed 217.5, Zhabotinsky would not have overcome 220, because it was a psychological weight.

“THEY SAID THAT I AM UNCONTROLLED, AND WHY SHOULD I BE CONTROLLED BY SOMEONE WHO CAN’T ADD THREE FOUR-DIGIT NUMBERS IN HIS MIND?”

Vasily Ivanovich, I can’t help but ask you about the most outstanding Soviet heavyweights - there are few of them, and if in chronological order, these are Vlasov, Zhabotinsky and Alekseev... What do you think about Yuri Vlasov?

Truly a great weightlifter, the greatest - there is no other word to use! - but also unique. He went to the Olympics in Tokyo, was three heads stronger than Jabotinsky and... lost. True, his coach Suren Bogdasarov took the blame, but the coach’s guilt is palpable when the athlete has no head.

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

- Did you add it up in your mind?

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

When Vlasov, for example, set records in Rome, pushing 202.5 kilograms, I was a freshman, 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 on stage will make you laugh like the story I’m about to tell.

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

- ... condescended...

It so happened that we met.

- What impression did Yuri Petrovich make on you?

Not good.

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

What to eat?

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

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

Now Jabotinsky... Lenya is an absolutely talented person and, if he had been involved in weightlifting, he could have remained on the platform for a long time. If I weren't there(laughs).

- Was there mutual jealousy - not to say envy - felt between you and Jabotinsky?

Firstly, in ’68 I was third, and they looked down on me condescendingly. They became interested because unexpectedly in Voroshilovgrad, at the Union Championship, he “jumped out” - there he drove Leonid Ivanovich on the platform in the bench press, but in general he was an unknown athlete, and when they wrote about me in “Soviet Sport”, he was surprised: what deserved such attention in the press ? The first secretary of the Voroshilovgrad regional party committee, Vladimir Vasilyevich Shevchenko, said then: “Urgently drag this guy to Voroshilovgrad for me.”

- He loved sports very much...

Yes, but we didn’t agree with him in character, or rather in opinion. Shevchenko believed that Voroshilovgrad is the navel of the Universe, but for me, Voroshilovgrad and Zhmerinka are one and the same: the main thing is the gym and the barbell.

- When you meet with Jabotinsky today, do you have anything to talk about?

We talk about 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 everything is in order. Recently, our mutual friend celebrated his 70th birthday in Moscow. Many athletes and coaches gathered, and I flew, but he was not there. Just now I returned from Sochi - there were guys I knew there too. 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” - let’s say, call it the Spartakiad of the Commonwealth and so that there would be prizes, respect, anthems. You can’t skimp on sports: now they play hockey somewhere, and boxers meet to test their jaw strength. I think it would be good to compete in the barbell, wrestling and other sports. Alexander Vasilievich Butko(Head of the Directorate for Integrated 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...

- ...probably not a single new hall has 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 - Tsakhkadzor in Armenia, and by the way, they should erect a monument to me in Alushta: being the head, I sent several carriages with equipment to the gym.

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

- They probably hit the table with their fist...

He didn’t knock with his fist, but in a quiet voice convinced me 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 Cup in weightlifting. - D.G.) . This kind of money is allocated to athletes, coaches, and for this and that, and at the Olympics in London, I feel that we will be given a ride, pushed to fourth place.

“WHY ARE THERE NO BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE? BECAUSE NOBODY LIFTS 40 TONS - THEY ONLY HOPE ON A SYRINGE"

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

I’m surprised: there are no problems with nutrition these days... I managed to gain weight on noodles, but if I had managed this faster, the records would have broken much earlier. In my time there were no reducing agents, but now - please, crazy money is allocated for this chemistry, but they raise less than me. I’m not saying that I could lift the record weight - my fingers didn’t allow it - but in Montreal I pushed 265, and at times 270 - can any of them dream of that now?

- At least swallow the chemicals, if you can’t do otherwise, then do it, right? Apparently weak...

And I am amazed at this.

- At one time, Anatoly Pisarenko, a resident of Kiev, showed very great hopes...

Well, I didn’t communicate with him much - I met him after he finished his sports career. A businessman, tenacious... The newspapers wrote that Anatoly was much lighter than me, to which I replied that at 24 he weighed 100 kilograms, and he weighed 128. “He’ll live to see my age,” he said, “we’ll see how long he can last.” , 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 had overcome these 600 kilograms in Minsk, a correspondent came up to me. At that time, I almost didn’t know journalists: they didn’t spoil me much with their attention, although they had already written a lot about me in Soviet Sport. I didn’t seem to deserve any special attention, but for some reason I stood out - they kept asking my name...

- Why - it’s 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 in weight and not an ounce of fat.” Well, he’s a writer, he understands in ounces, but you are the same as Vlasov - in size, in all data.”

- Only with ounces it’s not very good...

Well, both with height and with fat - there are no coincidences. Meanwhile, the journalist continues: “What kind of athlete do you see who can lift 700?” - “Why should I see him? - I laughed it off. “Look at me: I’ll raise them.” And he would have raised it, without humor. In ’72, when the bench press was abolished, I could already dial 680: 250 bench presses, 180 pounding, and pushing 255-260.

- It's a terrible thing!

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

- How much longer can the pursuit of records continue - is there, in the end, a limit to this or not?

So the chase is already over - for example, I don’t see anyone taking a swing at a new one. Recently, the Iranian Hossein Rezazadeh left - his compatriots so wanted him to lift 500 in the biathlon, but he fell short. I was in Vancouver in 2003, where he became the world champion. What struck you? All the journalists, both Canadian and foreign, attacked me like a frontal attack. I told them: “There are young weightlifters, fresh Olympic and world champions - why don’t you go to them?” Moreover, they arrived with newspapers from the years 75-76, on which were my autographs: sign, they say, again. It was kind of terrible - I sat for two hours after the competition. Everyone was already finishing the compote, and I was still writing autographs - that’s how I etched it in 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 the syringe, but don’t make a mistake yourself!..

Alas, coaches and athletes for several generations (not only in the barbell - in many, if not all sports) have been engaged in this tramp: a general curl. I was the head coach of the USSR national team and saw... Until I check everyone, clean them out, turn them inside out, won’t let them go abroad, that’s why I didn’t catch anyone, no matter how hard they tried to catch them.

Imagine: the guy gave his speech, he’s already sitting on the podium, and he’s sent to doping control. They grabbed one like that, the other, they even removed two from the banquet and took them for inspection. I was indignant: “This is a violation of human rights. The competition is over - why are you bothering with them?” Tomas Ajan, president of the International Weightlifting Federation, said: “Tomas, don’t look for mine - I don’t let untested people go abroad.” Well, as soon as the Union collapsed, off we went: 1993 - three “hits”, five years ago, in Europe - nine. They paid more than 200 thousand dollars...

-...a fine, right?

And your guys got caught there somewhere, and they filmed the Bulgarian team and the Turkish one. Science is moving forward and in the laboratories in Cologne(Cologne Institute of Sports Biochemistry. - D.G.) they manage to discover drugs that have already disappeared. Previously, I stopped taking anabolic steroids a month before the competition - and slept peacefully, and then they learned to identify them even after 90 days. And they don’t report it to the local police, and they catch it - I mean doping control specialists: they can’t do without it.

“I ADVISED SCHWARZENEGGER: “YOU NEED TO LIFT WEIGHTS AND GLORY AUSTRIA,” AND HE TOOK AND GLORIFIED AMERICA”

One guy who really loved weights, 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 I met Schwarzenegger for the first time when he was still a kid - in Austria in ’71. Then the Ukrainian team contacted the Austrian team, and the Austrians set the condition that I, “like a diamond in a crown,” be included in the Ukrainian team. They brought us, in short, to the hall where these guys were lifting... I remember that I advised Arnold then: “You need to lift the barbell and glorify Austria,” and he went and glorified America.

- Vasily Ivanovich, but if, purely theoretically, let’s say 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 upon a time I was pulled there by ropes.

- I imagine...

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

-...Mikhail Makarovich Baka...

Yes, we called him MM. I spoke with the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR, Alexander Pavlovich Lyashko (I still remember his last name, although that was a long time ago), and at the highest level they promised me: “We’ll do everything for you - you just head the barbell for us.” I agreed: “I’ll lead you, and I’ll lift you up myself.” Well, they slapped my hands and they told me: “Bring us a document from Pavlov that you are a free man,” and Pavlov, the chairman of the USSR Sports Committee, by that time had received two reprimands from the Party Central Committee for me. He threw up his hands: “Vasily, that’s it, I can’t take it anymore - they’ll fire 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 myself all my life, 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 any injuries as such if they had been doing as I suggested: repeated lifting on medium weights that the muscle can handle, and for so-called lifting heavy weights one would generally kill.

I weaned the guys from this on the national team. They had been breaking records in training all their lives, and everyone rushed to watch: wow! When one young Igor Sadykov lifted 190 kilos three times in the snatch instead of the planned 170, I warned him several times: “If you don’t stop, I’ll kick you out of the training camp.” He thought I was being humorous, but it turned out that everything was too serious. That’s why, perhaps, I was considered tough: I unequivocally stopped everything that harmed the barbell. He came to get equipped, and I gave him a return ticket to Fergana, so the next year he tore everyone apart, and before that he had never raised anything serious.

- Have weightlifters received terrible injuries before your eyes?

Well, at the Beijing Olympics, 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 was injured there - the barbell fell on his neck and, in my opinion, broke his spine. They lifted him through the roof by helicopter, and then they organized a show - I don’t know what else to call it! - in order to raise money for treatment, I sat throughout this show and wrote autographs on 10 Deutschmark bills - they were sold for 110. I signed a lot...

-Have you ever felt like you were about to get a terrible injury?

I have? No, after all, I was wise by experience. And I trained myself, and I trained all the guys in the team so that no one received a single injury.

Before the revolution, strongmen 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, maybe the horses were underfed... No, I wasn’t invited, and I’m not interested. We have Dikul Valentin Ivanovich, who is close to the circus - they even look alike.

- In the national team, you didn’t practice fun when the guys started measuring their strength - who would win?

No, I stopped such things.

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

Regularly. I told you that until you give me a kick, they won’t leave you alone. I’m walking with two children and my wife - they don’t allow me to pass.

-Has it ever happened that they pestered you because they didn’t recognize you?

No, no such thing was observed.

Greatest heavyweight weightlifter Vasily ALEXEEV:“When in America they offered me two Miss Las Vegas, I was indignant: “Are you crazy, idiots? “I’m a communist and a family man.”

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

- Do you think your Motherland rewarded you generously for your outstanding sporting achievements?

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 slightly different place...

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

- Personal...

Yes, but in our country no one could even think about this.

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

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

- How much, if it’s not a secret, in terms of dollars, does the state pay you today from its generosity?

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

- Okay, do you have any savings left? Can you afford anything today?

Do you know these names: Gaidar, Yeltsin?

- Heard...

They stole everything from the people in one night.

- Have you lost a lot in your savings books?

100 000.

- Soviet rubles?

Yes - everything that I had saved up, that was paid for records and victories at the European Championships, World Championships and Olympic Games, was turned over in one night. I always say that I could buy six Volgas and one Lada with my savings. Who rides them these days? 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 said: there is a rumor that the money is about to depreciate. I waved it off: “Even if they depreciate by half, what, 50 thousand isn’t enough for you?” But no, it turned out that, as one of the comedians said, with these pennies one could now buy a pie (well, it turns out I can grab two). Nowadays, sometimes due to old age, upon reaching a certain age, they will pay something like 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 perhaps not to the same extent) under the Soviet Union, it was a rule: 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 by the feeling that you couldn’t lose, and that’s all?

To some extent yes...

- ...but it didn’t overwhelm...

Well, God gave me strong nerves, and I took it calmly, but the other guys - take my rivals Mang or Reading - were jittery. The Belgian was dripping with sweat (drops that do not exist in nature - four times more than usual - dripped from his forehead), and the German, when I approached, was covered in red spots.

- Would you like some henna?

What about me? Firstly, I always said that they have two opponents - a barbell that needs to be lifted, and me, who is difficult to defeat, and I only have one - a barbell.

- Do you need a serious character to win?

The one who was deprived of it did not win.

In Soviet times, athletes, especially 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 next to each other at the stadium in Luzhniki.

- What did Brezhnev tell you?

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

- Did you at least shake your hand?

Certainly.

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

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

- Didn’t Mikhail Sergeevich ask for your autograph?

No, but I took it from him and from Raisa Maksimovna - they are still lying somewhere. I even asked him for a football team to play in the second league. There were two cities laying claim to this - Shakhty and Azov. Azov residents still have the sea, all kinds of spiny 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 Sports Committee Gramov, and then to the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee.

- Did he meet you halfway?

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

“PININGS, I SAID, ARE ONLY GOOD IN THE MINE WHEN THEY MINE COAL”

When, performing abroad, did you see Western shops with their abundance and a generally different way of life, smiles on people’s faces, and wasn’t it sad and sad to return home, where everything looked different?

I didn’t particularly notice their smiles - they were all grins, but the smoked and raw smoked sausage, which was hanging out and no one was buying it, amazed me... I remember being surprised: “This is a stale product - 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 handmade - I had to make everything myself). I looked at them and thought: “When will we get this?” Appeared...

- What did you usually bring home from abroad?

Tape recorders, some kind of cassettes... The kids were still small back then and loved music. They gave me a list and I bought it.

- 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 about it. It’s like one organism, but I didn’t think it would reach such devastation. Who benefited from this? The kings who stood at the helm have become selfish, and they don’t care that it won’t bring any benefit to the people, and yet everything that is done doesn’t make them any better.

- What sports, besides weightlifting, do you like? What competitions do you watch reports from?

I'm not crazy about boxing and its consequences, but I watch it all the time. True, now I’m tired of these fights without rules - it’s the same thing! - and I don’t see any point there. I watch hockey and volleyball because I’m a volleyball player myself.

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

How how?

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

Oh, we were told in Ryazan (this is, however, most likely an anecdote) about a similar story about the chairman of the regional sports committee, who worked as the 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 called him: “We can’t leave for the competition - only you and your position...”. - “What kind of sport do you have?” - asks. "Biathlon". - "What is it?". - “Well, skiers and shooters...” He scratched the back of his head: “Let’s do this: I’ll send the shooters today, and the skiers tomorrow.”

- Did you love hockey, and were you friends with hockey players?

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

- Admit it, someone was able to score for you?

Yes, three goals - we played 3:3.

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

Oh, Lord! This happened on a children's beach in Yevpatoria - there the stadium was like reinforced concrete, you couldn't fall.

- But can you close the gate with yourself?

He closed it, threw himself at one person’s feet - in my opinion, he even twisted one, and from the stands they shouted: “Idiot, that’s a weightlifter standing there!” - because when they run and see me, they are afraid. I look pretty good in goal. “This is a weightlifter, not a football player - hit him!” Well, they scored two goals for me from an offside position.

Are you satisfied with your sporting fate today? In your opinion, did everything work out perfectly or could adjustments be made?

Oh, Dima! - if now, with my head, I could start from the day I first got into the gym, I would have done such miracles! Well, on the other hand, if I hadn’t broken my back or gotten injured, maybe nothing would have happened. I became smart because I overcame its consequences on my own.

No, I had already achieved a lot with my own mind, I trained normally, but I turned my back because I found a new barbaric technique. With her, having an eventing sum of 500, in five months I made 540, became an international athlete - this is such a leap! I was also invited to the national team so that they could examine under microscopes who I was and why I raised so much.

- Have you considered it?

Yes, and they immediately gave me a kick, because there was nothing outstanding - not all coaches are smart. Pulling 40 tons, they say, you can’t set records, but I was threshing... In the morning I go to the gym where the wrestlers have a barbell, there I lift myself up and then, already plowed, I go into another gym where Jabotinsky trains with friends. In the evening I am there again, but already alone: ​​there is no one, and therefore no one bothers me. When there are such loads, you can’t lift a record weight, but they are used to it - as soon as they come, so-called penetrations, penetrations, penetrations... I did not recognize this matter. “Sinkholes,” he said, “are only good in a mine when coal is mined.” My coaches and I had different training methods, and, of course, no one could convince me - and, by the way, they didn’t try.

- Have they ever tried to hurt you, to get under your skin? Have there been moments when resentment squeezed your heart?

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

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

My father didn’t live long and died in ’71, but by that time I was already a world champion.

- Was he proud of you?

I didn’t ask, it’s not customary here, and my parents lived separately - in the Arkhangelsk region. My mother passed away after the Moscow Olympics, after this poisoning. Our family was very hardworking, and all my brothers and sister were workaholics.

“IT’S JUST THE LOOK I HAVE – IT’S NORMAL”

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

When we guessed each other, I still didn’t raise much. He got married early, in ’62.

- Nevertheless, the name for the wife of a 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, due to a back injury, I was kicked out of everything. When I figured it out with her, invented the machine, I told her: “Hold me for six months - if it doesn’t work out, I’ll climb into the mine and won’t come out: you’ll only get a salary for me.” For six months I sat, yes, on 72 or 78 rubles of her salary.

- Didn’t you grumble?

Why grumble? - We went through such a life with her...

- Did she love you?

She still hides 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 that I look so normal...

- ... and then Olympiada Ivanovna minces around and seems to be dragging pancakes from the barbell. Didn't it seem to me?

If there are only pancakes on the plate, like this(shows: with outstretched arms), but I don’t eat during training.

- Has your spouse ever carried pancakes from a barbell behind you?

No, we didn’t get to that point.

At the peak of your crazy fame, you probably weren’t deprived of female attention. Admit it: the girls were making eyes at you, trying to get acquainted, maybe seduce you?

- (Embarrassed).Talking about this is long and inconvenient... I remember when in America they offered me two Miss Las Vegas, I was indignant: “Are you crazy, idiots? “I’m a communist and a family man.”

- Give me at least three or four...

-(Laughs).And this serpent-tempter responded: “So what? Here in America there are also a lot of communists - including married ones.” Me: “No, guys, this won’t work with us,” so then they were told three times on “Golos” that they had offered Alekseev and he refused. What if you agreed?

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

- Has it ever happened that you didn’t really want to hold 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 - Sergei and Dmitry: what do they do?

Both graduated from the Law Faculty of Rostov State University (I don’t know why the second one went there - 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 has now moved to Rostov.

- Also a prosecutor?

No, I asked him to leave the prosecutor’s office because this life was not in his nature.

- And the youngest?

He is engaged in business. Lives in Shakhty.

- Did you want your children to do weightlifting?

The youngest son lifted and was fourth in Kharkov in 1988, I think, at the Union Championship. A very capable guy, but here it’s my fault - I didn’t let him advance further. When I became the head coach of the Union national team in 1989, I told him: “Dima, quit 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 like barbells?

He fulfilled the norm of an international master - he pulled 180, pushed 240. More talented than me...

- Seriously?

Yes, but he had an honored coach of Russia - me.

“ALCOHOL IS FAKE, MEDICINES ARE TOO - ONLY DRUGS ARE REAL...”

You recently said: “Young people have always been bad - the ancients spoke about this, but now they have become even worse” - why do you think so?

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

- It was, but bad...

In any case, the ancient Greeks and Romans drank noble wine, but today there is a lot of low-quality alcohol. The other day I came from Sochi, where they discussed the alcohol problem in Russia - Medvedev and Putin were there, and Mutko, our Minister of Sports, and Golikova, the Minister of Health and Social Development.

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

-...only real drugs...

And the country was flooded with them. Now, if someone punched a person in the nose and started bleeding, he will be put in jail, but if he was poisoned with fake vodka or counterfeit medicines, no problem: scold him and move on. Anything that causes harm to health should be given a life sentence. Well, what do you want? - every year half a million people disappear. I don’t know how it is there in Ukraine...

- Less...

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

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

Oh, Lord! This summer, almost nothing, because it’s hot. I practically never left the house.

- We were lazy...

I was lazy and trained, but I didn’t go especially fishing or hunting: I only went out three or four times (by the way, I never liked it if someone said: one-two or three-four - count and tell me, but here I took it myself and repeated it, so I’ll clarify: I went fishing three times and hunting once).

- You once admitted: “I have gold arms up to my elbows and my head is in place - I invent” - but what exactly?

Well, I have designed a lot of weightlifting machines. Here is at least a machine for restoring my back, which at one time was broken and because of which I was kicked out from everywhere. Now in Sochi, where a hall for the national team has been opened, I have to give at least two machines, and two in Anapa too. I think this is a help for Ukrainian weightlifters too - whatever you say, the barbell is harmful to your health, but if you start pumping up 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, and shoulders, of course. The 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 I have completely changed the methodology. I no longer train to compress the spine, but to stretch, although the muscles work the same way.

- So you’re lifting a barbell?

No, I replaced it with rubber and other weights.

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

It’s hard to say - you need to prepare specially for this, but I think that if I had competed against veterans, I wouldn’t have made a mistake. About five years ago, if I practiced, I could stand up 190.

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

Sometimes this way and that way...

- Does it happen in the weather that it turns?

Nowadays, even under 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: VLASOV HAS A FIGURE, THIS FIGURE, THIS FIGURE, AND I HAD RESULTS.”

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

My advantage lies precisely in the fact that I have never worked on my figure. They said: here, Vlasov has the figure, this one, this one, and I had results. I was just thinking about them - they don’t pay for their figure and they don’t give food rations.

- You have amazing looks - 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 on airplanes, how do you fit into narrow seats with your size?

Well, it depends on what kind of plane and how many passengers are flying. Ticket prices are crazy right now...

- Do you have to take business class?

Yah! - who will pay for it? I always sit with people, although, as a rule, I’m alone in three chairs, because there are enough free seats and the salon is not crowded.

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

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

- So you get behind the wheel?

- How did you travel before, in Soviet times? They probably gave you a Volga and a Lada?

Well, I bought it and went. Back then, the Volga 24 was more spacious, and I fit in it just fine, but now the doors have been made thicker - sound insulation 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 fit behind the wheel anymore.

- Do you like hunting?

What normal person doesn’t love her?

-Who are you hunting?

Wild boar, hare, duck are 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 bear hunting in Tver, but as soon as we get ready, it’s a fry.

- They say you are a lover of strong words...

How is it strong? So that it doesn't wobble?

- Yes, so that it is 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 Irtenyev’s poem:

And after that she added weightily
A word that you can’t immediately insert into a verse,
This word is familiar to everyone,
We find family with him everywhere.
I don't know any other country like this
Where is it so common?
And the samurai fell to the ground,
The kimono was torn on the chest.

(Laughs).So, when necessary, yes, we say it. We can.

“WHAT DOES “UNCLEAN POWER” MEAN? IT'S ALEXEEV GOING TO THE BATH"

- You are a recognized master of aphorisms - has the thought of writing them down and publishing them ever occurred to you?

Nobody wants to write it down, although they should... They often say: “Do you remember you said such and such? - we laughed...". I answered: “What should I remember? Write it down and tell it."

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

Well, this is not about me, but about Jabotinsky, 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, one day I was sitting with Marat Gramov at the Sports Committee, and he decided to help me buy a uniform for the USSR national team. He calls one Gavrik. “Do you,” asks, “do you know Alekseev?” He: “Oh, this evil spirit...” Marat turned pale: “What does ‘evil spirits’ mean?”, and he answered: “It’s Alekseev going to the bathhouse.”(laughs).

You have a wonderful sense of humor, and I know that you love to tell jokes. What would you like to share with your readers today?

No, my jokes are not for the public - these need to be specially selected.

- Then maybe you’ll read some of your poems?

I also keep this to myself.

- But you write, right?

Well, if you have ink...

- Have you accumulated a lot of poems?

Everyone has already been strangled: publish, publish, but I abandoned my PhD, didn’t defend it - why do I need these burrs on my biography? True, I always correct them when they say: I have set so many world records, I am such and such a champion, a two-time Olympic champion... “Why don’t you show me my intelligence? - I ask. - Don’t you point out that, in addition to the Honored Master of Sports, I am also an Honored Trainer of the Soviet Union and Russia? This confirms something."

Poems... Ask about songs... I was once with a delegation in Germany, in Schacht’s sister city Gelsenkirchen, and there was one German saying: “Herr Alekseev, 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: “Quit it!”

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

Thank you, and finally I want to appeal to parents: don’t keep your children at home, don’t send them outside! There are so many gyms and stadiums around - take your children by the hand and lead them there, because sport is great happiness. The main thing, as I already said, is to endure the first two or three months, in any case, if a person gets into weightlifting, he becomes attached to the barbell for the rest of his life. I know this from myself, from those who trained nearby, and I wish the Ukrainians happiness, goodness, 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, 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!

Vasily Alekseev rightfully bore the title of legend of Soviet sports. The weightlifter broke record after record, which were included in the Guinness Book of Records. He dedicated the song “Weightlifter” to the Russian hero, who managed to develop his own training method and show it in action.

Childhood and youth

The strongest man on earth is a simple village guy, 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, his parents, for family reasons, decided to move to the Arkhangelsk region and settled in the village of Rochegda.

Free time from school and summer holidays were spent working. Little Vasya helped his father and mother prepare timber for the winter; they had to lift heavy logs. Once I organized a competition with the older boys to see who could squeeze the axle of the trolley.

The opponent managed to do this 12 times, but the future champion did not succeed. After the defeat, Vasily began to intensively engage in sports under the guidance of the school physical educator. Soon, not a single competition on a regional or regional scale could take place without Alekseev.

In 1961, a student at the Arkhangelsk Forestry Engineering Institute received first category in volleyball. At the same time, Vasily began to become interested in athletics.

It seemed to Vasily Alekseev that education alone was 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 rank of shift manager.

Weightlifting

Weightlifting entered Alekseev’s life with coach Semyon Mileiko - under his leadership he took the first steps towards the championship. A 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 weightlifter’s achievements, so he went to the city of Shakhty.

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

The attempt to compete for the USSR national team for the first time failed, Vasily was excluded from the squad for health reasons - the weightlifter tore his back during training. Doctors strictly forbade lifting weights, but Alekseev did not listen to the doctors and in the winter of 1970 he broke the records of Joseph Dube and Robert Bednarsky.

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

Then they expected victory at the World Championships in Sofia and the world championships 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 smooth tactics instead of sharp bench presses of maximum weight and set a new record in triathlon total - 640 kg. In addition to global recognition, Alekseev was also celebrated in his homeland by awarding him the Order of Lenin.

The weightlifter performed brilliantly at the next Olympics in Montreal. In 1976, the Russian hero managed to push 255 kg and lift 185 kg and again won the gold medal. By the age of 35, the athlete managed to take the podium of the world champion eight times, and by lifting 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 energy towards educating the younger generation. Vasily Alekseev founded and took the helm of the “600” club, where schoolchildren studied. He also tried on the image of a coach of the USSR national athletics team and until 1990 trained new champions.

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

Personal life

Vasily Alekseev’s personal life, as well as his sports career, was a success. In 1962, the aspiring weightlifter got married. By luck, the wife's name was Olympias. The athlete joked that he won three Olympics, including one with his wife.

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

“My only and beloved wife. We miss you when we're apart. Now it’s good, there’s a phone, you’ll call 12 times a day, and she’ll call 12 times, for a total of 24.”

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 training. From childhood, the younger Dmitry 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 continue training. He justified such an act by Soviet upbringing - he didn’t want anyone to blame him for promoting his own child, for taking his son abroad.

The eldest son Sergei showed no interest in sports, but was endowed with a talent for science. He graduated from the university with honors and received a Doctor of Sociological Sciences degree. For his 70th birthday, Vasily Alekseev dreamed of two things - to memorize “Eugene Onegin” from cover to cover and to start writing memoirs. But I didn’t have time.

Death

In the late autumn of 2011, Vasily Alekseev suffered from a heart attack, and the two-time Olympic champion ended up in the Munich Cardiology Clinic.

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

Awards

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

At the XXII Olympics in Moscow, V. Alekseev retired without making it past the initial weight. This 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 championship in Gettysburg (USA). S. Rakhmanov repeated Alekseev's Olympic record of 440 kg, becoming the Olympic champion of the XXII Olympic Games.
Since 1980, Alekseev has been coaching. For three years he was the head coach of the USSR national weightlifting team in 1990-1992. He used his own method of training athletes, although they said that it was only suitable for Alekseev! And he didn’t lose a single competition, didn’t get a single injury and didn’t get a single “steering wheel”! The USSR national team under the leadership of Alekseev at the Olympic Games in Barcelona (in 1992) won 10 medals (5 gold, 4 silver and 1 bronze). For high achievements in training athletes, in 1991 he was awarded the title “Honored Trainer of the USSR.”
His character, of course, is not sugar. If it weren’t for his unyielding straightforwardness and his tough character, our team would have been trailing behind the Bulgarians. And where did Alekseev start when he was appointed head coach of the USSR national team? Having met the head coach of the Bulgarians, Nurair Nurikyan, at a competition in Australia, he told him in a businesslike and serious manner: “That’s it, brother, your star has set. Now you will be second.” He said as he sentenced. He was offended and complained to his ambassador. The ambassador informed his brothers in the socialist camp through diplomatic channels.

The weightlifter Alekseev met the Bulgarian coach again and said: “Why are you complaining?! I told you the truth! You will be second!” And he became... second. But few people know how much effort such success cost head coach Alekseev. He gathered those who had not yet said goodbye to the barbell, called under the banner of the national team those who had hung up their weightlifting boots, overcame decadent moods, and forced them to “plow” as they once “plowed.” But not at training camps, but at home, between training camps. This was the whole focus of his pedagogical method: so that athletes would come to the training camp not disassembled, but, on the contrary, ready. And the most important thing: the selection was only based on the latest competitions; old achievements did not count.

And the squabbles and office telephone games around the team stopped. You can't argue with Alekseev. Under him - and this is also an absolute record - not a single member of the national team was ever injured (they trained using a special method) and no one received a zero mark in competitions. Alekseev left the Union team only when the Union collapsed. “We left together with Gorbachev,” jokes Vasily Ivanovich.