Irina Natanovna Press ( March 10, 1939 , Kharkov - February 22, 2004 , Moscow ) - Soviet athlete , two-time Olympic champion, world record holder. Honored Master of Sports of the USSR (1960), Honored Worker of Physical Culture of the Russian Federation [4] ( 2001 ).
 Irina Press | ||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| general information | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Full name | Irina Natanovna Press | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Date and place of birth | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date and Place of Death | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Citizenship | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Height | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| The weight | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Club | Dynamo Moscow | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Sports career | 1955-1968 | |||||||||||||||||||||
| International medals | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||
Repeated champion of Europe (7 times in 1959 - 1965 ) and the USSR (13 times in 1959 - 1967 ). Twice holder of the Order of the Badge of Honor ( 1961 , 1965 ) and the Order of Friendship .
Content
- 1 Biography
- 2 notes
- 3 Literature
- 4 References
Biography
Irina, like her older sister Tamara , began to practice athletics in Samarkand, where she and her mother, Lydia Vladimirovna, were evacuated from occupied Kharkov. Father, Nathan Isaevich Press, was drafted into the army and died near Leningrad in 1942 .
The example of the elder sister, who made progress, played a huge role in deciding to become an athlete, in addition, the Press family lived next to the stadium, you want to do it all year round: in the understanding of the natives of Ukraine, there was no winter as such. Irina Natanovna, like her elder sister, was lucky with the coach, her first mentor - Konstantin Iosifovich Kapustyansky tried to find her own “path” to the world of sports, identifying her on a treadmill.
At the age of 16, Irina took part in the All-Union Olympics for students for the first time, completed the second adult 400 meters race, and a year later, in 1956, she tried her “crown” in the future pentathlon and won the right to participate with Tamara in the First Olympics of the peoples of the USSR .
In 1957, Irina, again following the example of her older sister, moved to Leningrad, where she entered the Institute of Railway Engineers, began to train at the famous school of Viktor Ilyich Alekseev . And then she glorified her university: she won the next All-Union Youth Spartakiad in the all-around and shot put.
The next two years brought new joys: Irina became a master of sports , first in hurdles and then in pentathlon. It is symbolic that Irina Press set her first world record at the Dynamo All-Union Competition at the end of the 1959/60 season , gaining 4880 points. It was in this sporting community that she was still a “young Dynamo” who began athletics and never cheated on him. Since then, until 1966 inclusive, not a single protocol of the largest competitions without the last name Press did not do on the top line. Surname Press has become synonymous with the word “victory”.
In August 1960, Irina Press won the title of Olympic champion. In Rome, she overwhelmed the judges, and rivals, and the audience with the unprecedented power and swiftness of her run. Already in the semifinals, Irina repeated the world and set an Olympic record in 80m hurdles [5] . And in the final, even despite a bad start, she only consolidated her success.
During the preparation for the Tokyo Olympics, Irina Press three times repeated her personal world record in hurdles (10.5 seconds), complied with the standards that gave the right to play for the USSR national team, became the winner and winner of the country's championship at smooth sprint distances. She could claim the Olympic medal in the shot put: her result in shot put - 17 meters 21 centimeters - was the fifth in the world and lagged behind the sister's highest achievement by only a meter. In every pentathlon, she confirmed the glory of the champion - only athletes from narrow specialists could surpass her performance, and even that wasn’t all.
In Tokyo, she won a gold medal with a phenomenally high result for the pentathlon - 5246 points, in addition, she took sixth place among the shot putters.
Irina Natanovna’s Tokyo achievements remained “eternal”. After the 1964 Olympics, a change occurred in women's all-around: Irina Press's crown distance of 80 meters with barriers, where she brought the world record bar to 10.3 seconds, was increased to 100 meters.
Member of the CPSU since 1964. After retiring, Irina Press was invited to the State Committee for Physical Culture, Sports and Tourism as the head of the department, where she worked until November 2000. Since the end of 2000, Irina Natanovna worked as the head of the department of the Committee for Physical Culture and Sports of the Moscow Government.
Irina Press died on February 22, 2004, the urn with its ashes is located in the 18th columbarium of the Don cemetery .
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 Press Irina Natanovna // Great Soviet Encyclopedia : [in 30 vol.] / Ed. A. M. Prokhorov - 3rd ed. - M .: Soviet Encyclopedia , 1969.
- ↑ 1 2 Encyclopædia Britannica
- ↑ http://www.universalis.fr/encyclopedie/irina-press/
- ↑ November 4, 2001, by the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation V.V. Putin, Irina Press was awarded the honorary title “ Honored Worker of Physical Culture of Russia ”.
- ↑ Pentathlon was not yet included in the Olympic program. He was included in the athletics competition only four years later, at the Tokyo Olympics. By this time, the Press had already set world records for this kind of all-around 5 times, the first in the world to score more than 5,000 points. And here is the first Olympic start of the pentathlon. Irina spoke then in Tokyo, as they say, in one breath. Having taken the lead after the first appearance, she did not give him up to the finish line. In five all-around events, Irina scored an amazing amount - 5,246 points - the world and Olympic record. The closest rival is more than 200 points behind her. [one]
Literature
- Press Irina Natanovna // Olympic Encyclopedia / Pavlov S.P. - M .: Soviet Encyclopedia , 1980 .-- 415 p.