Athletics at the Summer Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR 1971

Athletics competitions at the V summer Spartakiad of the peoples of the USSR were held from July 16 to July 19, 1971 in Moscow at the Central Lenin Stadium . The competitions simultaneously had the status of the 43rd USSR Athletics Championship . Over the course of four days, 40 sets of medals were played.

USSR Athletics Championship 1971
Host city	Moscow
Medals	40
Opening	July 16, 1971
Closing	July 19, 1971
date of
Stadium	Central stadium named after V.I. Lenin

Four athletes participated in all five Spartakiad Games:

• Igor Ter-Hovhannisyan (long jump, relay race, sprint)
• Vladimir Lyakhov (discus throw)
• Lamara Tugushi (discus throw)
• Antonina Ivanova (shot put)

Igor Ter-Hovhannisyan won a unique achievement: he won the long jump in the fourth consecutive Games. With two victories in the relay race (1959, 1963), in total, he won six gold medals of these all-Union competitions. In a long jump since 1957, Ter-Hovhannisyan won 12 of the 15 possible national titles. He repeated the record of Nikolai Ozolin (pole vault) in the number of victories at the national championship in one discipline. In the future, nobody succeeded in improving their achievement, and only the javelin thrower Janis Lusis was able to repeat in 1976 .

Sprinter Valery Borzov won his first three gold medals at the Olympics. In the 200-meter run, he managed to set a new European record - 20.2 (manual timing). The previous achievement was 0.1 second slower. Borzov won other victories at a distance of 100 meters and in the relay 4 × 100 meters as part of the national team of Ukraine.

A similar success among women was achieved by Muscovite Nadezhda Besfamilnaya , who won three gold medals in the sprint race (100, 200 meters and the relay).

Rashid Sharafetdinov won two flight distances, 5,000 and 10,000 meters. On the shorter, he showed the same time with Vladimir Afonin , ahead of that by a few moments. Both athletes became the new record holders of the USSR with a result of 13.33.6.

The ninth victory in the championships of the Soviet Union over the past 10 years was won by Janis Lusis in javelin throwing. For the fourth year in a row, Vyacheslav Skomorokhov (400 meters with barriers) and Viktor Saneev (triple jump) became the best in the country in their views. Discus thrower Vladimir Lyakhov won the USSR championship for the third time in a row.

The best result in the history of the national championship was shown by 21-year-old Rustam Akhmetov in the high jump - 2.23 m. Yevgeny Arzhanov, the 800 meter runner, was the first to run two laps in the stadium in the national championship faster than 1 minute 46 seconds - in 1.45.8 , only 0.3 seconds worse than the Union’s own record.

Competitions of the USSR championship in cross-country took place on April 4 in Essentuki (they were not included in the program of the V summer Spartakiad of the peoples of the USSR).