SPEED-ELEGANCE-RECORD

These are three words which describe the sportsman in the picture – Evgenii Grishin. He was described like that in the national team.

His childhood was in difficult time for the country. His father was dead at the war and Evgenii was left to himself. From the early morning he was running with his friends, skiing and playing hockey. But most of all he loved to hook to passing cars. He had a great collection of different hooks! He was stronger and braver than other children and that’s why a local ring of thieves invited him to join. So he couldn’t refuse.

When it was war, he had to come through the hunger and bombing. He even took paint off after one. His wounds were serious, but the operation helped him to survive.  Then the police took all his hooks and Evgenii started going to ice. He saw the ice-skaters. His friend gave ice skates to him and it was difficult to accustom to them at first.

He trained as possessed and soon he was invited to the community Zenit, where his trainer became Yakov Yakovlev. Then there was the first success and he became the strongest at the competition. He got the woolen costume with the letters USSR and became the only student wearing the costume of USSR national team.
He started to work in the factory and soon he became a record holder at the competition. The strongest ice-skaters were surprised and started studying his ice-skaters, which were his friend`s gift. After success he was helped to collect money to buy good skaters. The unique situation in USSR sport history was that he was entered to a national team when he was just 16 years old.

A year later Evgeni was the first in the list of the best sprinters in the world, when he showed the record result of 500 metres. But he also learned to cycle: he used a bike which was made by his uncle, the master of sports, N. Dronov. And then he became one of the best at track cycling.
National USSR team showed poor results at the championship in Helsinki in 1948 and Stalin was interested by it and said that sportsmen would go abroad only if they broke all the world records. So the highland rink Medeu played a great role in improving their skills. Evgeni and other ice skaters worked hard to build it. So sportsmen broke a lot of records there and Stalin allowed the national team to go abroad again. So in Japan he won several times and in Norway got to windward of Yalmar Anderson.
When Grishin became successful in cycling Stalin paid attention to him and Grishin was invited to the commissioned staff. And he became the first sportsman in USSR history who became the Olympic champion in Cortina d Ampezzo: his world records were 500 and 1500 metres. When he finished Higher School of trainers he met the USSR champion in figure skating, who told him: “If you win 3 gold medals, I will marry you!” So he did it!