Cold War Games by Harry Blutstein

Author:Harry Blutstein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: non-fiction, Melbourne, Olympic Games, Summer Olympics, Winter Olympics, 1956, Freedom Tour, Hungarian revolution, Cold War, spies, Ervin Zador, Gyamarti, Nikolai Romanov, IOC, Sport in Art, Vladimir Kuts, Vladimir Petrov, Olga Fikotová, Hal Connolly
ISBN: 9781760408299
Publisher: Echo Publishing
Published: 2017-07-04T00:17:13+00:00

Nina Ponomoreva competing against Olga Fikotová in the final of the discus competition.

Back in the dormitory Olga told her teammates about the meeting. They told her not to trust any Russians. The experience of Czechoslovak athletes was that for sports in which they were world champions, they were expected to share their training secrets with their Soviet comrades, but they were never given any help in return.

Olga and Nina met again the next day at 10 am and Nina spent two hours with Olga, giving her tips on training, conditioning and technique. ‘Ninotchka, I don’t know how to thank you. Yesterday I thought I couldn’t do anything!’ Olga said as they parted. ‘Vsevo kharoshevo, all the best, Olga,’ Nina replied. ‘One year is a short time for you but I believe we will meet in Melbourne.’

As Nina had predicted, Olga was in Melbourne and winning gold would mean having to beat her mentor. Nina had thrown a world record of 53.61 metres a month after the Helsinki Olympics, and Olga would have to do much better than her personal best of 51.79 metres if she wanted the gold medal.

The first round was held in the morning. A white tape marked 42 metres, which the competitors needed to exceed if they wanted to progress to the final two rounds.

Coming up first, Nina casually moved up to the ring. Not even bothering to remove her jacket, she casually tossed the discus just over 50 metres as if it were a warm-up exercise.

When it was Olga’s turn, she lost her balance during her spin and her discus fell well short of the qualifying mark, an embarrassing 28.6 metres, the worst throw of the day. Taking deep breaths, Olga did her best to relax before her second throw. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the discus land well beyond the white tape. What’s more, with a throw of 50.75 metres, she surprised herself by just beating Nina’s earlier throw.

After she qualified, Olga pulled out from her sports bag Meedia, her good luck mascot. ‘We’re half done,’ she told her stuffed bear and tenderly returned him to her bag. The stuffed bear was a gift from her father who had put it in her crib the day she was born, and over the years it had become a constant companion, her confidant and good luck charm.

The final round began at 4.10 pm the same day, and the field had been trimmed from 22 to 13. After three throws, the field was further reduced to the six who would compete for the medals.

As Olga joined the other competitors she silently started to recite the Lord’s Prayer. After reciting ‘Our Father, Who art in heaven’, she became a little too absorbed in her own situation and beseeched the Lord to ‘give me very fast and perfect footwork and a good release at the end’. After a little more thought, she added a postscript asking the Almighty to provide her discus with a favourable wind.

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