Athletics Base Camp, January 5, 2022
Few people have been able to compete in four consecutive Olympic Games, let alone win three golds and one silver in the same event – Viktor Saneyev did it! He was a soviet triple jump veteran who won gold medals at the 1968, 1972 and 1976 Olympic Games and silver medals in 1980.
He died in Australia on 3 January at the age of 76.
Saniev was born in Georgia on October 3, 1945. Georgia is a former Soviet republic, so Saeneyev represented the former Soviet Union in the World Series.
When he first practiced athletics, Saniev's event was high jump, but later changed to triple jump. This change has achieved brilliant achievements in the future.
In 1968, the Mexico City Olympics, everyone must remember the American long jumper Beamon's amazing jump - 8.90 meters, which is still the Olympic record today.
And the men's triple jump of this Olympic Games is also incredibly exciting!
On October 16 (1968), Italy's Giuseppe Gentile jumped 17.10 meters (0.0) to rewrite the world record.
On October 17, in the final, Giuseppe Gentile reached 17.22 meters (0.0) in the first jump, breaking the world record again.
In the third round of test jumping, the protagonist of this article, Saniev, jumped 17.23 meters (+2.0m/s), just to improve the world record by 1 centimeter. Notice that his wind speed is +2.0m/s.
In the fifth round of the test jump, Brazil's Nelson Prudêncio jumped 17.27 meters (+2.0m/s), breaking the world record again and stealing the top spot.
Presumably, there must have been a sword on the field at that time!
The 23-year-old Saniev , who jumped 17.39 meters (+2.0m/s) in the last jump , not only stole the world record again, but also locked in his first Olympic gold medal!
Four years later, at the Munich Olympics, Sanieyev won the Olympic crown with 17.35 meters. A little over a month later, he raised the world record to 17.44 meters (-0.5m/s), the best result of his career.
Four years later, at the Montreal Olympics, although the world record at the time had been raised to 17.89 meters by Brazil's Jo o Carlos de Oliveira (created in 1975), ginger was still "old" spicy at the Olympics! Experienced and technically stable, Saeneyev achieved the Olympic triple crown with a fifth jump of 17.29 meters.
By 1980, the Olympics were held in Moscow, the "heart" of the former Soviet Union.
At the age of nearly 35, Saneyev participated in the Olympic Games for the fourth time, and finally won the silver medal with the sixth jump of 17.24 meters. The winner was his former Soviet teammate Jaak Uudm e, with a time of 17.35 meters.
After this, Saniev retired and worked for dynamo Tbilisi club. More than a decade later, he moved to Australia, where he had a difficult life and almost sold Olympic medals... Later, he moved into the school as a teacher and then as a coach.
Sanieyev influenced several generations of triple jumpers, and his pictures of jumping techniques were widely circulated and studied.
Zou Zhenxian, a famous Chinese triple jumper, said: "He is our example! ”
Unfortunately, at the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games, the Chinese team, which already had a legal seat on the International Olympic Committee, could have participated, but due to historical reasons, it was ultimately unable to participate. Zou Zhenxian, who was in his current year, was expected to create a good result at that Olympic Games and compete with Saneyev, but the result was not realized.
Finally, let's take a look at Saniev's technical diagram at that time -
Greetings to the seniors!