How Alexander Tikhonov almost lost gold at the 1972 Olympics. A rival came to the rescue

The current year has already been a bad one for Russian biathlon, as 26 consecutive races without medals at the World Cup is an absolute antirecord. While fans are waiting with bated breath for better results from athletes, we remember the golden age of our biathlon and Alexander Tikhonov – a man who learned through personal experience that everything is possible in sports. And the main competitor in the Olympic race may turn out to be the one who will save you in a critical situation.

Who is Alexander Tikhonov?

Alexander Tikhonov is a Soviet biathlete, whose skill has conquered all sports peaks. He is a four-time Olympic and eleven-time world champion, and he took the gold of the USSR championship as many as 15 times.

Alexander began to be fond of skiing as a child and excelled at school starts. However, even at an older age, when Tikhonov entered college and worked at the Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant, the sport remained a hobby and did not go beyond the boundaries of the track in the local park. Everything changed when Alexander was invited to study at the technical school of physical culture in Novosibirsk. There the student began to prove himself as a cyclist, skater and, of course, skier.

Alexander Tikhonov at a training session

Later, Tikhonov joined the Soviet national team, but he still did not reach biathlon – he did not shoot so well. Only when the official program was expanded by the relay format, where fast riders were needed, Alexander was able to compensate for the misses in shooting with an excellent driving speed.

The first large-scale competitions for the athlete was the World Championships in Altenberg in 1967, where Tikhonov took second place in the relay. The following year he went to the Olympics in Grenoble and there he took the first major gold of his career – also in the relay. The athlete finished second in the 20 km individual race, but even this result was impressive, considering that before the start the biathlete could barely bring down a high fever. He got a bad cold because he wore sneakers not according to the weather.

When Alexander was walking in a noticeable gap from his rivals, an unforeseen thing happened: one of his skis splintered. None of his teammates or coaches were around to help him in such a situation. He had to somehow overcome almost a kilometer on one ski. And suddenly, as they say, help came from wherever he was waiting.

Dieter Speer, an athlete from the GDR team – the main competitor of our national team, saw Tikhonov waddling in the forest, warming up before the second stage. The German could not stay aside and without hesitation gave Alexander his ski. Its bindings were of a different size, but it was possible to continue the race. Later, his teammate shared the appropriate equipment with Tikhonov, and the athlete rushed to make up for the lost kilometers.

In this relay Alexander finished only ninth, and the USSR team was already written off. But Viktor Mamatov, Rinat Safin and Ivan Byakov combined their efforts to bring the team back to the lead and brought gold, while the GDR was left with bronze.

USSR biathlon team at the Sapporo Olympics

Later Alexander won two more Olympics in a row, despite the solid age for a biathlete: at the start in Japan he was 25 years old. After winning the third and fourth gold of the Games in Innsbruck and Lake Placid, the athlete’s name was entered into the Guinness Book of Records, and the International Biathlon Union crowned him the best athlete of the XX century.