From WWII to the Olympic podium:
the champions of the first Team USSR.
Champions of the Spirit
The Soviet Union made its first Olympic appearance in the 1952 Summer Games in Helsinki after decades of political antagonism. Many expected the USSR to fail miserably. WWII ended only 7 years prior. The country was in ruins. 27 million people perished in the war, more than in any other country. Soviet athletes had never before participated in international sporting events, with the last Olympic Games attended under the flag of the Russian Empire.
But Team USSR shocked the world, coming in second in medal count only to the USA in its first Olympic Games. Yet very few knew the stories of the champions from behind the Iron Curtain.
Team USSR included frontline soldiers, survivors of the 900-day Siege of Leningrad, and prisoners of multiple Nazi concentration camps. Against all odds and through sheer enthusiasm - a motto applicable not only to sport - Team USSR took 20 Gold, 30 Silver and 19 Bronze medals, establishing its leadership in sport competitions to come. Featuring first-hand accounts of the few remaining gold medalists, Galina Zybina and Yuri Tukalov, we get a feel for a disappearing “old school” unlike any other - the Soviet school.
