Son about father.
September 26, 1988 at the Seoul Olympics Sergey Litvinov won the hammer throw competition, putting an end to his long journey to gold at the Games. Today, exactly thirty years after that final, his son, Sergei Litvinov Jr., also a thrower for the national team, remembers his father, whose Olympic record still stands.
Generation of boulders
– Why did father choose a hammer? Not a cannonball, not a spear, not a disk?
– Initially, he was engaged in freestyle wrestling, but at some school competitions Igor Timashkov, an athletics coach, noticed that his father, while still a teenager, took a junior ball weighing either four or five kilograms and pushed it fifteen meters. Without technique, without training experience, just using innate speed and strength qualities. Timashkov began to persuade him to switch to throwing, but his father did not want to leave the wrestling fraternity, there was a completely special atmosphere there. This went on for several months. Then the freestyle wrestling coach began to convince him of the rationale for the transition Vladimir Stashkevich, and in the end they finally persuaded me.
– Did he highlight any particular season when he entered the world elite?
- Yes, 1979. By this time, he was already a fairly strong hammerman, but due to wild competition, he did not shine in the leading roles. In July, my father won the Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR with a score of 77.08, and after that the head coach of the hammer team Anatoly Bondarchuk I sent him to several international competitions to see if he could handle it. He did it - he became second at the European Cup in Turin, won the international tournament in Zurich and the World Cup in Montreal. After this, Bondarchuk began to take his father seriously and subsequently defended him in all controversial issues, although he was never his personal trainer. In this regard, Bondarchuk can be used as an example: his personal students Yuri Sedykh And Yuri Tamm were at the core of the team, but he never singled them out or pushed them through, taking advantage of the position. He was absolutely fair, he could push one of his own if he thought that he was not ready.
Photo: © personal archive of Sergei Litvinov
– How was Sergei Litvinov Sr. unique and different from his competitors?
“They were a truly stellar generation; the USSR national team brought together the hammer throwers. There were years when in a season more than 20 Soviet athletes threw over 80 meters. In this intense competition, those results were forged that no one can reach now. My father’s main rivals both in the national team and on the world stage were Yuri Sedykh, Yuri Tamm, Igor Nikulin. This was a unique confrontation, it has no analogues. They not only encouraged each other, but also shared training methods, were constantly at the same training camps, and communicated very well. This exchange of information and findings helped everyone progress.
But they were completely different physically. My father is the shortest, only 180 centimeters, while Sedykh is 185, and Tamm is 191. Speed has always been considered my father’s advantage; he was very fast and explosive. Well, plus technology, which the current generation of throwers is far from achieving.
– Was silver at the Moscow Games a victory or a defeat for him?
– My father was only 22 years old, extremely young by the standards of throwing. He approached those OGs in excellent shape, but due to a lack of experience, he made a mistake that may have cost him gold. Two weeks before the Olympics, in training, he threw at 84 meters, despite the fact that the world record, which belonged to him, was 81.66. But then I decided that I needed to add a little more, to practice. Having qualified quite easily, the day before the final I did a full training session and, without having time to recover, found myself completely exhausted at the main competition. Came out, made only one normal attempt at 80.64, and it brought silver. Given the potential, of course he was disappointed.
Photo: © personal archive of Sergei Litvinov
– Where were the coaches looking?
– At the Moscow Games, my father was practically alone. His personal trainer Timashkov took to drinking and dropped out before the end of the year. Bondarchuk was busy with his students. Actually, it was then that the turning point occurred, after which my father, according to him, began to train on his own, without a mentor. I don’t know how everything was there, probably someone did help him after 1980, but he already believed that he was working on his own, he wrote the training plan himself. And I didn’t repeat that mistake again.
Speaking about the signs of that time, I’ll tell you a funny story. Despite the fact that in Montreal-76 the Soviet hammer fighters occupied the entire pedestal (Sedykh, Spiridonov, Bondarchuk), the management decided that additional control was needed before the home Olympics; they were afraid of competitors from the GDR. Everyone was required to fill out long-term training plans, which were then evaluated somewhere in scientific offices to determine their effectiveness. Father filled everything out as it is, honestly. He was called in for a conversation and told that the volumes were insufficient, according to available information, some East German thrower was working more, so the plan needed to be revised. There was no discussion. Bondarchuk told his father to simply multiply all the volumes and indicate in the plan, maybe they will fall behind. He did just that - they fell behind. But at some point, my father got carried away with multiplying the actually performed loads for reporting and indicated so many that when they began to calculate them, it turned out that he would not have had enough days to complete the daily norm. There was a conversation again. And many years later, this story acquired a completely comical tone: already when we lived in Germany, German coaches came to my father, and it turned out that those figures for the training of Soviet athletes somehow ended up with them and were taken at face value. They even tried to work on them. It didn't turn out very well.
From ashes to gold
– The Union hammer team is a crowd of men weighing over a hundred. How did they relax?
– These guys were real rock and rollers, I heard absolutely incredible stories, next to which all the current ones simply fade. But at the same time, they were characterized by the highest professionalism. If it came to competition, they could just sit, drink wine, talk about something and go to bed. Without any spree, because no one wanted to give victory to the opponent. But after the competition, all sorts of things happened, including physical measures of influence on sports leaders who were not polite enough.
– How did the 1980-84 Olympic cycle turn out?
- Brilliant. My father won the 83 World Championships in Helsinki, and by May 1984 he brought the world record to 84.14. And then the USSR boycotted the 84 Olympics, the one where it was supposed to take gold. Having learned about this, my father stopped training altogether and said: “Fuck it all...” At “Friendship-84” he performed without a fuse. There was a certain depression, he almost completely missed the 1985 season, performing only at one start in Rome.
– I rested and became a father for the first time.
– The first is true, the second is not entirely true. Rest was needed, he did not know how and did not like to consciously let go of the load, skip some seasons, throwing half-heartedly. Every year was a shock year for him, and the combination of 83rd, when they were preparing for the World Cup, and 84th, when they went to the Olympic Games, not yet knowing that they would not go, turned out to be very difficult. After a break, he had his best season in terms of results in 1986. Then in Dresden he won the competition with a score of 86.04, setting a personal record and falling 30 centimeters short of the world record. Later, at the European Championships he scored 85.74, becoming second. And during training I showed 87.30, which exceeded the world value by almost a meter.
Regarding paternity, he took a girl from an orphanage back in 1984, two years later I was born, and in ’87 my parents took two more, a boy and a girl.
Photo: © personal archive of Sergei Litvinov
– Three adopted children is a serious step, why did he do this?
“At first it wasn’t possible to have a child of our own; she and her mother tried for a long time. We decided to raise an adopted child. Then I showed up. A year later, the parents received a call from the maternity hospital and were told that there was an opportunity to take another child, and they offered to come and see. The father went, looked and took the two. From this act, by the way, you can understand a lot about his nature.
– Raising four small children is not easy.
“Back then everyone lived about the same, but the champions were a little better.” He had his own apartment, car, stable income. Nobody knew that the USSR would collapse. And I don't think the father cared about the material circumstances of raising children. He thought a little differently.
– What happened before Seoul?
“My father fell ill with something, it took a long time to get a diagnosis, he lost a lot of weight, lost about fifteen kilograms, which is a disaster for a thrower. In fact, he was dying; there were problems with blood. Finally, in Moscow they were able to figure out what was wrong, and he was cured, but his form went away. At the first training session after illness, he threw 63, that is, twenty meters less than required. There were two months left before the Olympics, the management wrote him off and decided to replace him with another athlete. Here Bondarchuk intervened and, under his personal responsibility, convinced the bosses that they should be given a chance. They left my father in training, but with the condition that at the control start in Vladivostok, shortly before flying to Korea, he would throw no worse than 83 meters. September 14th arrived, my father came out and threw 83.62. The questions were removed, there were eleven days left before qualifying for the Games, and he was included in the squad.
– How can you choose twenty meters of regression in two months?
- You need to know my father. For him, hard work was a real thrill, he completely immersed himself in it, subordinating everything to preparation for that start. Every step, every nuance was calculated, verified, weighed. I won’t give the exact details, because he wasn’t a big fan of talking about himself in a heroic way, and he didn’t pretend to be Rocky. But the approach to Seoul was no longer the same as to Moscow; it foresaw absolutely any risk.
- For example?
“My father knew exactly when and how he would fly to Korea, and how he would sit during this flight. On the day of the final, I didn’t go to the stadium by shuttle from the Olympic village, but booked a car in advance. As a result, this was completely justified - the shuttle was late, and the main rival Yuri Sedykh barely made it to the start of the competition, without even really warming up. But my father had everything under control, he should have taken this medal eight years ago and now he no longer allowed circumstances or force majeure to influence the course of the fight.
12 years old with one heart valve
– Did Olympic gold reduce further motivation?
“Father walked towards this victory for a very long time, and when it happened, there was devastation, a lack of understanding of what to do next, where to move. He missed the season, returned, but already had problems with his back, minor sores had accumulated. I prepared well for Barcelona 92, but there was no longer a bright fuse.
Nowadays, Olympic gold is just the beginning of making money, and then there was no monetization of titles. Victory at the Games was the crowning achievement of a career; many simply quit after that.
– But your father tried to qualify for Atlanta-96.
“That was the swan song.” My mother and I went to Germany, and my father remained in Russia. I did winter training, in the spring I threw it at sixty-something meters and realized that this was it. His back hurt and he was physically unable to perform. After that he came to us, although in principle he was not happy with the move. But it was necessary to raise children, so there was no choice.
Photo: © personal archive of Sergei Litvinov
– How did they greet the Olympic champion in Germany?
- Nobody cared. We lived in Bremen, it is a non-sports city, nothing much is being developed there. My father went to work at a factory, and no one knew who he was or what he won. I started practicing judo, but in Bremen there was no strong team, no good sparring partners. I had to travel to another city. My father switched to the night shift so that he could take me to training during the day. This went on for quite a long time, because I was very passionate about the fight. But at some point, several factors came together: I broke my finger, which is serious for judo, traveling became completely tiring, training in Bremen made no sense, and I asked my father: maybe we should throw a hammer? And when I started performing as a thrower, German experts learned that my father had actually been living in Germany for a long time. The head coach of the throwing team began calling us to training camps, gave my father students, and wanted to introduce him into the German coaching system. For this reason, the father quit his job, and the German continued to feed him “breakfast”. The family lived only at the expense of my mother, and we had a mortgage on the house. By that time, my father had already started training the Belarusian Vanya Tikhon, our people found out about this, they called: “Come on, come back, you will be the senior coach of the Russian hammer team.” We packed our things and returned.
– When did you understand the scale of your father’s achievements?
“I knew, of course, that he was an Olympic champion, but until I started throwing myself, I didn’t understand the level of results.
Photo: © personal archive of Sergei Litvinov
“It all started long before that.” In 2006, the youngest daughter was born; her father was 48 years old. Before this, he had a massive heart attack, after which only one heart valve worked. But my father survived for another 12 years, which is generally not bad, because the doctors gave much more pessimistic forecasts.
After the heart attack, my father treated death quite simply, because in fact he had already experienced it - the doctors brought him back. I realized that there is nothing terrible about death as such, there is no need to be afraid of it. All he cared about was the fate of his two little daughters; they needed him. To stay with them longer, he did everything possible, looked after his health, but was ready for death. That day he was riding his bike home from training, and his heart finally gave out.
Sergey Nikolaevich Litvinov / Photo: © RIA Novosti/A. Denisov
– Why can’t his results be repeated today?
– You know, this is a paradox. Of course, first of all, everyone starts hinting at doping, steroids, and so on. But the fact is that modern throwers are physically more powerful, they throw with force, but those guys were incredibly technical. So far no one has been able to repeat this technique, even I can’t do it, although I am considered one of the most correct in terms of movements.
Hammer throwing is a relatively young sport, it is only three hundred years old, but the way we throw it is not even a century old. The period when my father spoke was especially stormy; that generation turned out to be real passionaries who advanced the results very far. My father was sure that he could throw further because he had made some mistakes in his career. I thought that the results for 90 meters would not take long to arrive. The fact that his Olympic record still stands greatly upset my father; he was in love with hammer throwing as a discipline and was worried that it was in some kind of stagnation. If not to say - in a rollback.
Sergei Nikolaevich Litvinov is one of those people who brought glory to Soviet athletics. He is a guru in hammer throwing - 1988 Olympic champion, silver medalist at the 1980 Moscow Olympics, two-time world champion. His son Sergei Sergeevich Litvinov is a bronze medalist at the 2014 European Championships. Now Litvinov Sr. works as a coach in Mordovia. R-Sport agency correspondents Maria Vorobyova and Andrei Simonenko began their conversation with the great athlete with a question about success in this field.
There are some successes; in the primary and reserve ages there are quite good boys and girls,” Litvinov began. - They become winners of all-Russian competitions. Several Belarusians came with me from Minsk, where I worked before, and took Russian citizenship here. One of them was fifth at the Junior World Championships. This season, Ilya Terentyev became third in America at the World Junior Championships. Well, a year and a half after me, my son returned from Germany. In general, I must say that in hammer throwing, and indeed in all throwing, athletes mature late. Heyday begins at the age of 25, but realistically, plus or minus, at 30 years. That is, in the men's hammer, an athlete will not achieve success until he becomes a man in character and mentality.
- So we have to wait until our boys mature?
Yes. It is also important that other types of athletics have simpler movements. Probably all the people ran a hundred meters, a lap or two around the stadium. That is, these types are natural for any person. How it turns out, that’s another question. And the hammer throw is a complex technical event. Like pole vaulting. In life, no one especially needs to jump over a fence with a stick. Likewise, for a long time now, no one has been attacking bastions, spinning shells, or throwing sledgehammers, as they once did in Ireland. I don’t even know how this entertainment ended up in athletics. What I mean is that our movement is very complex, which requires painstaking development every year. And only experienced, mature people can withstand the psychological stress of medal showdowns. Like I said, guys.
Approximately how long does it take to train a real hammer thrower? And when should you start playing this sport?
You need to spend at least ten years on all this, as in many other professions. If you have talent and character, then this is the minimum period to become a competitive athlete. In other words, a star. But in Soviet times we had such a precedent - Anatoly Bondarchuk, an Olympic champion and coach of Olympic champions, a recognized authority in our sport, began to practice hammer throwing at the age of 28. And he achieved great success in doing so, despite the fact that there were a lot of strong throwers in the USSR, the competition was very high. There are other similar examples. But now the situation has changed: our sports leaders, administrative authorities at different levels want children to achieve success as they wished yesterday. There is neither patience nor understanding that this is not done quickly, especially in our sport. They need it faster, faster, faster. This is a big obstacle to development, and in many sports in Russia. And in hammer throwing in particular. If you now take a 20-year-old person into hammer throwing, who has the prerequisites for progress, then it is very difficult to expect support.
- It’s difficult to explain such things to children - that they are expected to succeed yesterday?
Children, fortunately, are simply interested in playing our sport. All your achievements in almost every training session are visible - where the hammer falls. Our sport is a very gambling thing. But it is difficult to explain why management wants to invest in some children and send them to training camps, while not others. When we have to explain, we try to do it in a gentle manner.
The main thing for me is that students know how to make decisions
- Previously, in the same Soviet times, there was no such problem?
There used to be many different sports societies. Everyone had their own interests, every society, every school strived for the best results. Therefore, every first-class student counted. And now comes the requirement: weed out the unnecessary. We begin to argue: how is it possible to “weed out”? Children go to classes, they like it, human relationships have already developed in the team. What, tell them they have no prospects? Unreal. And then, in any case, “extras” are needed. And in Soviet times, only a few became stars, while the rest were good, healthy, developed people. Candidates for masters, first-class students... This was the foundation of a generation of healthy people who, until the age of 50, by and large, did not need to take care of their health.
- At some point you can understand that a child will become a star?
This is the question parents often ask me: will my child become an Olympic champion? And you have to explain boringly about at least ten years of work, competition, and so on. About the fact that no matter what talent you have, after 20 years a period begins when progress slows down or even stops. And then you have to go further only through character, using special techniques in order to scoop up a few more percent. After all, even star athletes work at only 3% efficiency. This phenomenon, by the way, was once explained by Academician Amosov, a famous surgeon. He said this: our body has naturally learned to be conservative so that in the event of some extreme illness or injury, it can devote all its strength to salvation. But he doesn’t care about everything else, including hammer throwing, and he doesn’t want to take part in it. Follows the line of reasonable laziness. So we have to deceive him with all these methods, regime, character and will.
I would like to ask you more about your son. Sergei Nikolaevich, you won your Olympics at the age of 30. Your son is now 27...
Of course, both he and I have Olympic hopes. In our country, Bondarchuk became an Olympic champion at 28, and Yuri Sedykh, being his student, at 21. It is important to understand here that an athlete can be a follower, or maybe a leader. Bondarchuk created himself, he is unique without a coach. Along the way, I gained decent experience, so I quickly developed myself as a coach. And Sedykh was lucky - he himself is smart, characterful, talented, plus he had a coach with the same characteristics. My coach lost interest in all this early on, and I had to do everything myself. Therefore, I made many more mistakes than these two guys together. But gradually I gained experience, and sometimes I managed to turn the situation around. But as a pair, Bondarchuk and Sedykh were indestructible. Returning to my son, I will say that he is really only approaching the promising age line. And then we'll see how everything turns out.
- Did your son immediately have the makings of a thrower?
Once, as a child, he himself came and declared that he wanted to throw a hammer. To which I replied: let's see what you can do. He had the prerequisites. I slowly led Seryozha from age to age, knowing how everything works slowly in a hammer, that you can’t jump over just desire and you can’t speed up the process. So he grows... And I have hope that something good will come out of him. But from his generation, with whom he started, there is not a single thrower left! Neither in Russia, nor in the near abroad, nor in the world - all those who were world and European champions in youth, youth or juniors - are gone. Taking an athlete from a boy to an adult level, and also arranging everything so that everything works out for him in big sport, is very difficult. I imagine this concept, but, again, not every boss wants to wait until the boy turns 30 and can show something. It's prosaic and boring. I don't give any guarantees.
- Is Sergei similar to your character?
He's different. There are some echoes of the traits of dad and mom, grandfather and grandmother, but overall this is a different person. Here, too, there is a universal remedy that everyone knows, which, in fact, the main thing for me is that all my students, including my son, become independent in their sports path and learn to make decisions. To be or not to be, to go here or there, and to go at all or not? Not many people are able to boldly make one decision or another in difficult life situations. At the same time, there are many coaches who educate talented athletes and lead them to great success, but they still remain followers. When they leave the sport, they don’t know how they did it and what to do next. But independence can and should be cultivated, because leading athletes, when they leave sports, do not sit with nothing. With my son, I pursue this policy as much as possible, he likes it more and more. And those who are younger see that independence is a good thing. Even for five minutes, you can become proud of yourself from solving a problem! And self-esteem is very important.
- Why does a coach need to train a follower student?
This is done deliberately so that students do not leave for another coach. This is protection from competition, but this technique makes athletes flawed. Preparation plans and even individual training plans must be discussed from the very beginning, giving students the opportunity to think. The fact is that our brain begins to overheat from the thoughts in our head and quickly switches from one to another. Probably everyone has noticed how they watch a movie or read a book, and think about something else. So, you can train this tension of thought, because the longer and more efficiently you think, the greater the likelihood of finding a solution.
Throwing fishing gear is not a problem for me
Sergey Nikolaevich, do you even have confidence that the old traditions that the hammer men laid down in Soviet times will return to our country?
I’m already pessimistic about this, but before I was terribly worried. And then I realized that it was only because of my own ambitions. When our generation performed, there were also occasional successes, and not so that we occupied the entire podium every year. I am glad that I stood at the origins of the movement when we seized a monopoly on the pedestal. And now we have to come to terms with the fact that the decline of hammer throwing has come in our country. I have made many proposals, but no one is interested in this topic under any circumstances. Why? Once again I will say: the result is needed yesterday. And you can take any industry in our country with a similar history. If we did it ourselves, the country could make itself rich and provide for itself for many years to come! But at some point it became easier to buy. And now laziness kicks in - you have to start somehow, someone has to do it, but no one wants to. In my form, I take all possible steps, but it’s impossible to move everything from a dead point in volume.
We will, of course, extend our tradition of asking a frivolous question at the end of an interview to you. Has the ability to throw a hammer come in handy in your life?
When do you need to unwind something? I have been interested in fishing for a couple of decades. So, throwing gear is a nice thing for me! It was not difficult: you navigate in space, feel the weight of the sinker... But this answer is in the style of a joke. And so I’ll get a little smarter: any sport, any hobby is subject to certain laws. Even the banal collecting of stamps teaches one to be disciplined and develops character. Why does any state invest money in sports? There's just no choice. If a child doesn't have a hobby, he'll just be on the street. And from here troubles will come... And we get a simple scheme: family (if there is one, of course), public organizations (kindergarten, school, institute) and hobbies. That's all that can be listed. You can bring in religion, but different regions attach different importance to this matter. But in essence, a person has no more opportunities to become a person. And, in my opinion, this is the practical purpose of any sport, not excluding hammer throwing. Plus, in my form, there is also a huge safety margin in terms of health: I still manage to lift, throw, and carry many things not so badly! I’ll say this: sport doesn’t prolong life, but it definitely can make it active rather than passive.
The 1988 Seoul Games hammer throw winner died today in Sochi while cycling at the age of 60.
The legendary Olympian was returning from training when he suddenly fell off his bike. The arriving doctors did not have time to save Litvinov.
Sergei Litvinov was born in a small village located in the Kushchevsky district of the Krasnodar Territory. However, at a young age he moved with his family to Rostov-on-Don. Here he first played football and boxing, and then came to the hammer throwers section, where he began to train under the leadership of the future Honored Coach of the USSR Igor Timashkov and play for SKA.
Litvinov won his first international award in Athens in 1982 at the European Championships, becoming a bronze medalist. A year later, Sergei Nikolaevich will win the World Championship, and 5 years later Seoul gold, setting an unsurpassed Games record of 84 m 80 cm to this day.
Sergei Litvinov was married to Svetlana Sherina, and in her marriage the legendary athlete had six children: Alexandra, Angelina, Angelica, Egor, Olga, Sergei. In 1995, Litvinov’s wife and children moved to Germany. Sergei Litvinov Jr. is also involved in hammer throwing. In 2010, he returned to Russia and began competing for our country in international competitions. In 2014, at the European Championships in Zurich, he became a bronze medalist.
Russian track and field athletes are not allowed to participate in the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Bronze medalist of the European Hammer Throw Championship Sergei Litvinov said in an interview with Die Zeit that he was ready to prove his innocence - but no one was interested in this.
Commenting on statements by Russian President Vladimir Putin that the decision to exclude Russian track and field athletes from participation in the Olympics was politicized, Sergei Litvinov points out that “at the beginning of the scandal, journalists conducted a high-quality investigation and revealed many problems. But where there is a fuss, they immediately intervene "politics - some athletes are convinced of this. Some also believe that this story did not develop by chance: Russia is already going through times of political isolation."
“I’m the last one to tell you that there are no problems in the Russian sports system. We need to change a lot,” the athlete added.
Litvinov considers the most important problem to be the lack of a transparent anti-doping system that covers all athletes without exception: “We need external control. And a change in mentality. Athletes who use doping are still celebrated in our country as heroes and receive awards. This should change. But such changes cannot happen overnight - this applies not only to Russia, but also to Germany."
As for the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and WADA, both organizations, according to Sergei Litvinov, have stopped playing by the rules. “And this is the worst thing! The requirements and rules have changed. When our suspension was extended on June 17, it suddenly turned out that for the last two years we had no right to train in Russia. Yes, if I had known about this, I certainly would not have done this.” , - the athlete is perplexed.
"I begged the IAAF to be tested [for doping]. They removed me from the list of athletes undergoing systematic testing several months ago. I should have been controlled by RUSADA. How can you trust it if it is involved in a doping scandal? I filed a lawsuit and demanded that the IAAF put me back on the list. But they didn’t want to. Seven months of no doping tests. Incredible negligence,” says Litvinov.
Back in 2012, he continues, one athlete, a discus thrower, accused the director of the anti-doping laboratory, Rodchenkov, of allegedly destroying her doping samples for money. And no one responded to this statement. And only when the films of the German journalist Hajo Seppelt about doping in Russian sports came out and the accusations became even more serious, the IAAF gradually began to move. “Now the association wants to save its reputation, we, the athletes, are being thrown into the lion’s mouth, and everyone is watching,” continues the Russian athlete.
Litvinov does not deny the guilt of Russian athletes. But there was information in 2012 about destroyed samples - why didn’t WADA do anything then? She referred the case to the Russian anti-doping agency. The athlete believes that after this the entire WADA leadership should resign.
The blame, in his opinion, lies with everyone - “with the Russian athletics federation, with the Ministry of Sports, with the athletes, but also with WADA and the IAAF.” "They turned a blind eye to many things for too long. Rodchenkov worked at the Sochi Olympics in 2014, while serious charges had already been brought against him. How is this possible?" - asks Sergei Litvinov.
According to the athlete, Stepanova’s confessions do not automatically make her an enemy - “the loaded pistol was already lying in front of her, she simply pulled the trigger.”
"Every athlete has at some point in their sports career weighed whether they should take doping. Everyone knows their limits. A shot thrower relies on technique, which plays a big role, but a runner or cyclist cannot train indefinitely. You give your best and come to finish 40th. If at the same time you beat yourself in the chest and say that you are “clean”, no one is interested in this. Everyone wants to see the result. And then doping becomes the only opportunity to cross the borders. And this is not a purely Russian problem. Speech it’s about money and honor,” notes the athlete.
“An athlete who takes doping must understand that he will have to hide all his life and shake in fear that he will be exposed,” says Litvinov, saying that this idea was first conveyed to him by his father, who trains him. "I can live with the fact that I don't always take first place. When you have that mindset, it's easier to make a choice not in favor of doping."
Answering a journalist’s question about the attitude of other athletes towards Russian track and field athletes, Litvinov said that “at the European Championships in Amsterdam everyone was glad that the Russians were left behind. They said that finally the competition would be clean. Nonsense. Someone who really wants to fight doping , must maintain a distance from such populism."
Litvinov speaks in an interview about “professionals in doping structures” who work unnoticed, which is why many Russian athletes do not believe the accusations and believe that they were punished unfairly. “It’s not easy to call a spade a spade. Back in December, I was the only one who dared to talk about it. Today many athletes support me. A lot has been done in 9 months,” he believes.
In Russia, the athlete believes, there is no public pressure and tradition of exposing problems associated with the use of doping. “In Germany, the control system is much better than the Russian one. Public pressure on anti-doping authorities is much higher. But we need time to get to this point. And now everything is limited only to correct statements: everyone is against doping, including those who use it.” , he noted.
At the end of the interview, Litvinov shared what he himself would do to improve the anti-doping system in Russia: “The best thing is to introduce a rotation system. For all countries. Anti-doping control should be carried out by representatives of another state. But today no one is thinking in this direction.”
