From WWII to the Olympic podium:
the champions of the first Team USSR
Champions of the Spirit
The Soviet Union made its Olympic debut at the 1952 Summer Games in Helsinki, after decades of political isolation. The last time the country took part was in 1912, as the Russian Empire.
WWII ended only 7 years prior. The country lay in ruins and 27 million people perished – more than in any other nation. Soviet athletes had never before participated in international sporting events. Many expected Team USSR to fail miserably.
But Team USSR shocked the world, coming in second in medal count only to the USA. Yet very few knew the stories of the champions from behind the Iron Curtain.
Team USSR included frontline soldiers, survivors of the 900-day Siege of Leningrad, and former prisoners of Nazi concentration camps. Against extraordinary odds and through sheer enthusiasm, Team USSR won 20 Gold, 30 Silver and 19 Bronze medals, cementing its leadership in sport competitions to come.
Through the firsthand accounts of two of the Team’s last surviving gold medallists, Galina Zybina and Yuri Tyukalov, we witness a fleeting era and an ‘old school’ unlike any other – the Soviet school of sport.
