Zaikin, Ivan Mikhailovich

Beginning of the path

Born on November 5, 1880 in the village of Verkhnee Talyzino, Kurmysh district, Simbirsk province (now Sechenovsky district of the Nizhny Novgorod region ).

In childhood and adolescence he experienced need and poverty. I had to work from the age of 12. In his youth, he dreamed of becoming as strong as his father, a fist fighter known on the Volga.

Soon Zaikin got a job with the merchant Konstantin Ivanovich Merkuliev , who kept the athletic arena in Tsaritsyn ^[3] . Champion wrestler Ivan Zaikin went from this arena to the “people”.

In 1904, Merkuliev sent him to the All-Russian Amateur Championship, where Zaikin won the first prize in weights . Since this year, he has become a professional athlete and fighter . His wrestling debut took place in Tver .

Together with Ivan Poddubny

Ivan Mikhailovich was considered a student of Ivan Poddubny . Many strong fighters, having met this champion champion - Poddubny, then avoided this “pleasure”. The wrestler Zaikin met with Ivan Maksimovich on the carpet 15 times, starting from Voronezh in 1904 to Tiflis in 1916 . Poddubny, as you know, taught by a simple method: "For one beaten, two unbeaten are given."

Contractions took place in different ways. In Orel on February 7, 1905 she was described as follows: “... Poddubny fought with Zaikin in the Swiss struggle (“ on the belts ”). Poddubny picked up Zaikin, took it “to the mill” and threw it on his shoulder blades. It was their first battle. ”

At the World Championship in 1908 in Paris, Zaikin and Poddubny, triumphantly coping with their rivals, pushing them to the background, met in the final battle. It lasted 66 minutes. After such a grueling duel, Poddubny came forward.

Stubbornly held a duel between them in March 1909 in St. Petersburg in the New Circus. Here is how he was seen and appreciated by sports commentators of that time and left as a souvenir of a new generation of wrestlers: “Both opponents are attacking in turn. At the 12th minute Poddubny takes Zaikin to the ground. There is a tense struggle. Receptions are almost exclusively power. At the 47th minute, Zaikin exits the stalls with amazing force and swiftly attacks his powerful opponent. The situation is constantly changing. Both wrestlers show great strength and excellent school. The final fight is of exceptional beauty. At the 56th minute, Poddubny again takes Zaikin to the ground, takes him to the back belt and throws it. Zaikin leaves with a pirouette, grabs Poddubny with his back belt and, having made a mill, throws it into the ground to put it on the shoulder blades. Poddubny across the bridge leaves the orchestra and instantly catches an opponent on bra-brul and puts him on his shoulder blades. ” Of 15 fights, Zaikin 10 loses, and five draws.

In addition to the actual wrestling fights, Zaikin also performed with athletic numbers. He wore an anchor at the back on the pond for 25 pounds (409.5 kg), a barrel for 40 buckets of water, raised the bar with a dozen spectators, and so on. He lay down on the arena, and a car with passengers was driving through the boards on his chest. A double-tee beam was bent on Ivan's shoulder, and from the sheet iron he wore ties. With these numbers he toured in Europe , Africa , America and even Australia .

Celebrity

A versatile person, friends with Kuprin , Gorky , Chaliapin , Blok , Alexei Tolstoy , Kamensky .
Zaikin was also friends with Rasputin . He met him through the Tsaritsyno priest Iliodor, who was building the Holy Spirit Monastery. When Rasputin was injured by a knife, a resident of Tsaritsyn, Khionia Gusev, Zaikin sent him a letter: "I pray to God to strengthen your mental and physical health."

Aviator

Once on a tour in Odessa, Zaikin saw an airplane soaring in the sky, and decided that he would definitely become an aviator. At that time, pilots in Russia could be counted on the fingers. On demonstration flights it was possible to earn and Odessa merchants Ptashnikovs became sponsors of Zaikin.

The athlete completed aviator courses in France . In 1910, Ivan Zaikin made a series of demonstration flights through the cities of the Russian Empire on an airplane owned by the Ptashnikovs. He was attracted by risk, a new sensation in aviation. And, perhaps, he would have continued his successful ballooning career if it had not been for the fateful chance promise to ride the familiar writer A.I. Kuprin , the holder of the same large figure and great weight, on the fragile airplane.

They met again in Odessa, where Zaikin was no longer acting as an athlete, but as an aviator. He wrote out circles over the airdrome to the delight of the public, rolled brave men. The writer Kuprin also appeared on the podium.

“At this time, God knows why, I raised my hand up and waved my hand. Noticing this, Zaikin naively and good-naturedly stretched out the crowd, came up to me and said: “Well, then, Lexantra Ivanovitch, will we fly?” ”- later wrote the miraculously rescued Kuprin in his essay“ My Flight ”.

Someone put a fur hat on the writer, and now Zaikin and Kuprin go to the airplane. Take off, turn and suddenly ...

“At first I saw Zaikin just below my head. Suddenly I saw his head almost at my knees. Neither I nor him (as I later found out) had a feeling of fear for one second. I saw with some strange indifferent curiosity that he was carrying us to a Jewish cemetery, where there were in the narrow space of thousands to three people ... ”- said Kuprin.

At that moment, Zaikin turned abruptly, leading the airplane away from the crowd, obviously deciding to sacrifice two lives, but save a few more. If an airplane fell into the audience, victims could not be avoided.

The airplane crashed, but, fortunately, both the pilot and the passenger remained alive. But Zaikin no longer rose into the sky. The sponsors of the Ptashnikovs took his aircraft, the failed aviator was forced to return to the arena. And the writer Kuprin reproached himself for a long time and publicly admitted that he and only he was to blame for the crash of the airplane, and hoped that Zaikin was not offended by him.

Recent years

From 1928 until the end of his life he lived in Chisinau , in Bessarabia , then belonging to Romania , and annexed to the USSR in 1940. He organized the "Sports Arena" - an ensemble of professional athletes-wrestlers. Their performances, which took place on the territory of Bessarabia and Romania (in Chisinau, Bender (Tighin), Orhei , Gancheşti , Iasi , Galati ), carried a spectacular and educational orientation. Superbly built, strong and dexterous heroes were excellent agitators of physical culture and a healthy lifestyle. On July 20, 1930, while performing the Live Bridge stunt in Gancheshti, he suffered a serious injury to his shoulder and head; suffered another serious injury in Ploiesti . ^{[4] [5]} Took part in the 1934 wrestling tournament in Riga .

In December 1945 , when the 60th anniversary of national athletics was celebrated, the famous hero was invited to honor in Leningrad . Here he met with the famous fighter and referee I.V. Lebedev , which made an indelible impression on the audience.

On November 22, 1948, at the 69th year of his life, Ivan Mikhailovich Zaikin died. He was buried at the Central (Armenian) cemetery in Chisinau . In memory of grateful descendants, he remained a pioneer of aviation, the brightest representative of national athletics.

• Weightlifting Champion of the Russian Empire (1904)
• Two-time world champion in French wrestling (1908; 1913).

Anthropometric data

• height - 186 cm
• weight - 120 kg
• chest circumference - 128 cm,
• neck - 49 cm
• biceps - 43 cm
• forearm - 35.5 cm
• hip - 67 cm.

• The Ballooner is a Soviet feature film, a biographical drama about the Russian wrestler Ivan Zaikin (director Anatoly Vekhotko; in the role of Ivan Zaikin - Leonard Varfolomeev ).
• A museum was opened in the house where he lived in Chisinau. Kamenolomnaya Street, on which the house was located, became Zaikin Street.
• In 2007, in the village of Sechenovo (near the sports complex), a bust was installed on the world-famous athlete-aviator I.M. Zaikin, a student of the famous wrestler I.M. Poddubny. It hosts sports tournaments dedicated to the eminent wrestler.
• In 2010, Moldova issued a postage stamp with the image of I. Zaikin.

I. Zaikin, had two nieces of Zaikin, Daria Alekseevna and Tamara Morgunova, was married to the physicist, academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Moldavian SSR Tadeusz Malinowski (1921-1996). ^[6] .

• The popularity of the wrestler Zaikin was huge. As his student recalls, circus athlete V. Herz: “The huge, out-of-the-box power of Zaikin, his highest skill, artistry and irresistible charm invariably ensured him great success.” When it came to basic, drilling battles, Zaikin did not make any compromises.
• A. Kuprin , who was friends with Ivan Mikhailovich, wrote in the journal Hercules : "Every sport should contain at least a shade of risk, neglect of pain and contempt for death." All this was enough in the fate of the fighter-aviator I. M. Zaikin! ”
• The expert on the fight I.V. Lebedev praised him very highly: “One of the smartest wrestlers in the world, merciless in the fight and using his colossal power at such moments when the enemy least expects his attack ... Terribly strong, very agile and very cunning in the fight” .
• The artist Tsitovich on August 15, 1920, in the year of the 40th anniversary of I. M. Zaikin, in the almanac “The Himalayas” ( Singapore city), under the reproduction of his painting, which depicts a plowman-hero, wrote: “Ivan Zaikin, emerging from the very thickness the great Russian people, itself is its bright, as if symbolic, reflection: inhuman strength, lion's courage, sharp wisdom, indestructible energy and in all its wide scope - combined in it with a tender and open soul, with a meek, humble heart. That’s why Zaikin is so fond of the Russian people ... "

• In 1909, the famous Pole champion Stanislav Zbyshko-Tsyganevich who fought there in the Ciniselli circus made a challenge to all the fighters: “Whoever stands against me for half an hour, I pay 500 rubles.” Zaikin accepted the challenge. Stanislav Zbyshko, no matter how he tried, could not do anything with Zaikin. Only once he managed to take Ivan to the front belt, but that force of the back instantly broke the grip of his powerful rival. The fight ended in a draw and Zaikin won 500 rubles.
• Despite the very difficult beginning of his life, Ivan Mikhailovich did not grow up a gloomy man who fights with the “brow of frowning eyebrows”. Here is what eyewitnesses told about him: “High growth, proportionately folded, with powerful wrestling muscles without relief. The constantly good-natured expression on a broad face with bright eyebrows and cheerful gray-green eyes was in good harmony with the general manner of Zaikin's struggle - without fuss, with smooth movements of his hands, with a constant forward movement towards the enemy. Only at a decisive moment did a subtle, like an explosion, lightning-fast movement occur and the enemy lay on his shoulder blades ”.

• Boris Porfiryev . Wrestlers. Gorky: Volga-Vyatka Book Publishing House, 1974. 100,000 copies. [1] .
• Alexander Svetov . Ivan Zaikin. Moscow: "Physical Culture and Sports", 1957. 90,000 copies. (part of this book was included in the collection "Russian Athletes", M .: "Soviet Russia", 1960, 32,000 copies.)

• ZAIKIN Ivan Mikhailovich (1880-1948)