Ukrainian woman at the Olympics overtook US stars for $3,000 and took equipment to the USSR to have a house

Titled Ukrainian track and field athlete and three-time Olympic champion Olga Bryzgina won two medals at the 1992 Games in Barcelona. In Spain after the collapse of the Soviet Union, athletes from the former republics competed for the CIS team, but in individual events, the flag of their country was raised in honor of the prize-winning athletes, and the national anthem was played for the winner.

At the Olympics in Barcelona, Bryzgina became the champion in the 4x400-meter relay and was a silver medalist in the 400-meter dash, where she had won gold four years earlier in Seoul 1988. And in London 2012, Olga's eldest daughter Elizaveta already climbed the Olympic podium.

25 years after the 1992 Games, Bryzgina Sr. honestly admitted that she could no longer remember what flags were flown at the time because all her time was taken up by "sports and training and there was simply no time to pay attention to it." During the preparation, however, everyone knew that the political situation had changed.

"In my life it was the second Olympics, there was no longer such excitement as in Seoul-1988. We, the athletes, were immediately warned that we were the CIS team. In the "golden" 4x400 relay I always had a very responsible last leg. Do I remember what I was thinking at the finish line? We have to win! If you have strength, you run, if not, you lose. And, probably, at that moment we were a bit stronger than other countries," Olga told sport.segodnya.ua.

But while Bryzgina snatched victory from the Americans in the relay, she was unable to win her second gold medal in the 400-meter individual medley.

The coaching staff lamented the athlete's illness three months before the Olympics, which affected her form: "For two weeks we didn't train at all. The coach was convinced that this was what deprived me of the gold medal. Although I believe that Marie-Josée Perec was simply stronger than me at that moment. Faster, that's all. Yes, I lost half a meter to her, but it was hard for me to run.

After the Games in Seoul, Olga and her husband Viktor Bryzgin, the 1988 Olympic champion in the 4x100 relay, were able to buy a 24 Volga, which at that time in the Soviet Union was quoted as an elite foreign car today, and drove it to Kremenna for training. And in Barcelona, bonuses for awards remained at the same level as they were in Korea.

"For example, in the Baltics they were already more than in Seoul, and we still have the same: 3000 dollars - for first place, 2000 - for second and 1000 - for third. Of course, we were a little bit offended. But that's okay, money is second. I was not greedy," Olga told me.

The track and field athlete did not hide the fact that Soviet athletes received small prize money compared to their foreign colleagues: "Americans were millionaires in general. I think that at official competitions the state took a part of the prize money from us, and at commercial starts we shared it with the manager. A percentage for him and the rest for ourselves.

And in order to build a house in the USSR in the Lugansk region, the two Olympic champions had to put a lot of health and still work part-time - they brought video cameras and tape recorders under the order from abroad.

"My husband and I started to build a house. And in Soviet times, in the era of total scarcity, it was a wildly expensive pleasure. We overpaid for everything: for tiles, for cement, for bricks. We earned our health for this house. But the equipment was transported within the permitted limits, which customs "gave the okay" for, there was no smuggling," Olga told lb.ua.

Just in 1992, after the proclamation of independence of Ukraine, Bryzgina earned the largest fee in her career: "It was October, we were all already tired beyond belief, on the limit just. I refused to go to Japan until the last minute. But the manager said: "Olya, they pay the biggest money there. Just for coming." I won and got 6,000 dollars in total. It was very decent money at the time.

After a busy season in 1992, Olga decided to end her career, despite the fact that she was in excellent shape. Runner began to worry about pain in the knee, and the body as a whole after 10 years of titanic work began to fail, and lie down under the knife champion did not want to. She had never had any sports-related surgeries, for which she was grateful to her coach and masseur.

The coach discouraged the two-time world champion and record holder and suggested she take a year off. But even after the pause, Bryzgina was not going to return to the track because she really wanted to give birth to her second child and spend more time with her eldest daughter Elizaveta, who was born a year after the 1988 Olympics in Korea.

As a result, Olga Bryzgina's daughters Elizaveta and Anastasia followed in her footsteps. However, Elizaveta chose not the 400-meter race, but the more commercially profitable sprint, won the European Championship and became a medalist at the 2012 Olympic Games in the 4x100 relay. The younger Anastasia runs her mother's distance, where she won at the European Junior Championships.

"We have a unique family in general, we are all runners. It would be funny if our daughters didn't go out on the track. Well, although they could have been models...," believes Bryzgina, who worked as a senior coach of the Ukrainian national track and field team and was vice-president of the FLAU.

The war with Russia was a blow to the Bryzgins family. After the occupation of Luhansk in 2014, Olga and her husband had to move to Kremenna and train athletes there. The champion noted that on the one hand the athletes were used to living out of suitcases, and on the other - it was a pity to lose their family nest and leave the famous base in Lugansk, where excellent conditions were created for Ukrainian Olympic athletes.

"But, it seems, such a fate. The main thing is that we are all alive and well, and the daughters continue our family business," - noted in 2021th track and field athlete. However, in 2022, the "Russian world" came and in Kreminna ...

Earlier OBOZREVATEL reported that the Ukrainian record holder was punished for beer: after suspension from tournaments, the track and field athlete became fifth at the world championships.

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