Today at 13:19
The National Olympic Committee of Ukraine brought the Olympians together for the reunion. At the Games in Mexico City in 1968, Ukrainian athletes, who competed as part of the Soviet Union’s team, won 31 medals, 14 of which were gold. Fifty years later, they still remember the hospitality of Mexican fans.
“What shocked me most were people who spent their nights near the Olympic Village to get an autograph or souvenirs in the morning. They slept there, they came with their children and brought pillows and blankets to stay warm,” Hryhoriy Kriss, an Epee Fencing champion at the 1968 Olympic games said.
Gymnast champion at the 1968 Olympic Games Liudmyla Turyshcheva won nine medals at three Olympic Games. She debuted at the competition in Mexico City at the age of 16. Turyshcheva said that Mexicans serenaded by the windows of Soviet gymnasts in the Olympic Village.
“It was my Olympic baptism. Those Games were the most fun, the most musical, with serenades. And, of course, it was the beginning of my professional career, I won a gold medal in the team round,” Turyshcheva said.
Rudolf Povarnitsyn was the first athlete to reach two meters and 40 centimeters in a high jump competition in 1985. Three years later, he won a bronze medal at the Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea. He brought a unique souvenir from the competition – a flag of the Soviet Union’s team. He took it down from the pole after the closing ceremony, right in front of a shocked volunteer.
“I started to untie it quietly. A woman asked me: ‘What are you doing?’ I said ‘I’m untying the flag.’ ‘But why?’ I said, ‘It’s our flag.’ She said, ‘No, it’s ours.’ I said, ‘It’s our flag.’ I folded it and the police ran after me. But it was hard to keep up with me at the time, they didn’t catch me. I’ve been keeping the flag since then. The flag of the last team of the Soviet Union,” Rudolf Povarnitsyn, the Bronze winner in athletics at the 1988 Olympic Games said.
The USSR boycotted the Summer Games in Los Angeles in 1984, so for many athletes, the Games in Seoul were the only chance to win an Olympic medal. In 1988, pole vaulter Serhiy Bubka already held 18 world records and numerous champion’s titles. The only thing he lacked was an award from the Olympics
“I was only interested in Olympic gold. And now I only have one. That is why I’m very happy that I became an Olympic champion. It’s unforgettable,” Serhiy Bubka, athletics champion at the 1988 Olympic Games said.
Most of the athletes still work in sports as coaches or executives. After all, one never stops being an Olympian.
