Skoblikova, Lydia

Lydia Skoblikova

Russian speed skater Lydia Skoblikova (born 1939) became the first athlete to win four gold medals in one Olympiad, in the 1964 Winter Games at Innsbruck, Austria. Her six golds overall for the former Soviet Union remain a record in the sport. The "lightning from the Urals" also won numerous medals in the World Championships.

Had Cold Winters in Siberia

Skoblikova was raised in a metallurgical engineer's family in Zlatoust, in Siberia, a sword-making community in the Ural Mountains that was also the home of world chess champion Anatoly Karpov. Thanks to the long winters, outdoor rinks were abundant, and the sports-minded city built many athletic facilities. Skoblikova began skating at age 10 and racing at 12. An Associated Press article in the New York Times wrote, "In an atmosphere where the winters are long and the skating rinks plentiful, she rapidly mastered the techniques of the sport."

Skoblikova worked up to five hours a day fine-tuning her style, and built her endurance through bicycling and skiing. "In the European countries, skiing and skating is started in babyhood," Arthur Daley wrote in the New York Times. "In Innsbruck, for example, the kids gulp down their lunch at the noon recess and snatch a couple of runs down a nearby Alp before returning to classes." And in the Netherlands, many Dutch people get from place to place by skating across the country's frozen canals.

Golden Breakthrough at Squaw Valley

At age 19 Skoblikova qualified for the Soviet team in the 1959 World Championships in Siberia and earned a bronze medal for her third-place finish. Ironically, given her international success, she never won a national championship. She captured two distance events at the Worlds the following year, and won the 500-meter sprint at the Worlds in 49.5 seconds; in the latter event, she led a Soviet sweep of the top four finishes.

In 1960 she qualified for her first Olympiad, the Winter Games in Squaw Valley, California. Skating, including all its subcategories, was one of four winter sports at Squaw Valley. Skoblikova, largely unknown internationally at the time, drew headlines with her Olympic victories in the 1,500 and 3,000 meters; she set a world record in the 1,500 meters. She barely missed another medal in the 1,000 meters, finishing fourth.

Squaw Valley would be a mere opening act for Skoblikova, who balanced her sports regimen with a job teaching anatomy and physical education at the Physical Culture Institute in Chelyabinski, Siberia. She and her Soviet teammates continued to excel in the Worlds. After near misses for golds the previous two years, Skoblikova dominated the 1963 Worlds in Karuizawa, Japan. She won all four events—the 500, 1,000, 1,5000, and 3,000 meters—gliding over what the New York Times called "one of the finest 400-meter skating layouts in the world."

Won Four Golds in 1964

One month before the 1964 Olympic Winter Games at Innsbruck, Skoblikova, an Iron Curtain athlete who spoke infrequently and measuredly, suddenly predicted the Soviet Union would sweep the women's figure skating events. "We will pick up silver and bronze medals, too," she said at a Moscow press conference held by the Soviet State Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, according to Theodore Shabad of the New York Times. The Soviet team was strong in speed skating, entering eleven men and six women at the Innsbruck games, but no female solo figure skaters competed there.

The USSR emphasized nationalism in advance of the Games. According to Shabad, Yuri D. Mashin, the country's leading sports official in his role as chairman of the Central Council of Soviet Sports Societies, said that patriotism "may play a decisive role" in Olympic results. He added that 55 of the 74 Soviet athletes belonged to the Communist Party or the Young Communist League. The 1964 Soviet squad was fairly new; only about one-third of the athletes had Olympic experience, Mashin said.

Skoblikova was considered a solid favorite to prevail in the 1,000, 1,500, and 3,000-meter races at Innsbruck, but beatable in the 500-meter sprint. Skoblikova, however, won the 500 in 45 seconds, and led a Soviet sweep in that event. She won her 1,500 meters in 2 minutes, 22.6 seconds and prevailed in the 1,000 in 1:33.2. The skater, meanwhile, remained self-critical. "I know I was somewhat slow," she said in the New York Times. "I didn't take all the advantages I could have."

In the 3,000 meters, her biggest competition appeared to be mushy ice; warm weather made the ice puddly throughout the competition and the lack of snow jeopardized such events as the bobsled, forcing the Austrian army to carve snow out of mountains and transport it to the luge and bobsled runs. Still, Skoblikova made Olympic history, finishing the 3,000 in 5:14.9, to become the first athlete of either gender to win four gold medals in one Olympics. Despite a hot sun and sub-par ice, she missed breaking her own world record by merely a fraction of a second.

"Mrs. Skoblikova had her mind on great things today," Fred Tupper wrote in the New York Times. Already possessing World (5:04.3) and Olympic (5:14.3) records in this event, she had hoped to finish in less than five minutes. "But the sun was against her," Tupper wrote. "The early skaters found the ice firm and fast, but by noon pools of water dappled the rink." Skoblikova led by half a second midway through the race, "then she really poured it on," Tupper wrote, adding: "In a furious final lap, her head down and her arms swinging, [she] roared across the finish as the crowd waved and screamed."

The four victories brought her worldwide acclaim. "I like to skate around the stadium after a victory. People applaud and that gives me pleasure," she said after winning the 1,000 meters, as quoted by the Associated Press in a New York Times article. Eric Heiden of the United States won all five men's speed-skating events in the 1980 Games at Lake Placid, New York, but Skoblikova is still the only woman to capture six Olympic golds in individual events. American speed skater Bonnie Blair also won five golds, but they covered three Olympiads, including her three victories in 1994 at Lillehammer, Norway.

Women's Sports in Limelight

Skoblikova's success drew attention to women's sports. The women accounted for most of the USSR's 11 gold and 25 overall medals at Innsbruck, and the Western media took notice. "If Lidiya Skoblikova—with her blonde hair, blue eyes, and dimpled cheeks—does not match some Westerners' conception of a Siberian woman speed skater, her grim application to training regimen and fierce determination to win typify the Soviet approach to the IX Winter Olympics," the New York Times wrote in a "Women in the News" profile. The newspaper added: "Her voice is strangely harsh, coming from a girlish, heart-shaped face." Her husband, Alexander Polozkov, remained in Siberia during the games but sent congratulatory telegrams.

Media coverage of women's sports was outside the mainstream. Writers in that day often called the athletes "ladies," or "girls," and addressed them by the honorifics Miss or Mrs., with Skoblikova interchangeably called both in the New York Times. Arthur Daley, writing an Olympic wrapup column in that newspaper, referred to "dames," "feminine intrusion," "dolls," "distaff," and even track and field "Soviet amazons." He also wrote: "Not only have the dames made the old Grecian ideal crumble, they also have twisted the perspective of the entire operation. Women have been known to do things like that, bless their darling little hearts." Daley called Skoblikova "the speed-skating matron."

Never Won National Championship

Skoblikova won all four events in the World Championships one month after the Olympics, but in the Soviet championships, she did not win a single event. Inga Veronina, her principal competition within the USSR and fully recovered from an illness, emerged as the overall champion. Skoblikova, after a two-year hiatus from the sport, set another record in the 3,000 meters in 1967, but failed to win a medal in the 1967 Worlds or the 1968 Olympics in Grenoble, France. She retired one year later.

After retiring competitively, Skoblikova remained active, joining the Soviet National Olympic Committee. In 1983 she received a silver Olympic Order from the International Olympic Committee for having contributed significantly to the Olympic movement. Skoblikova continued her Olympic involvement after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union. In 2002 she had trouble obtaining a visa to follow the Russian team to the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City in the United States, but obtained one after appealing to the U.S. embassy, along with Vyacheslav Vedenin, who won two golds in Nordic skiing in 1972.

Changed Face of Russian Sports

Skoblikova and other former Soviet athletes witnessed a new generation of Russian stars benefit financially. She attended a 2002 reception in Salt Lake City that honored athletes with old-style honors and new-style cash. "The money was from a grateful state, which in an earlier era showered privileges and riches on its athletic stars—albeit secretly," Serge Schmemann wrote in the New York Times. "But in the new Russia, the state works side by side with generous sponsors, whose posters cover the walls of Russia House, and whose support is critical." Figure skater Anton Sikharulidze told Schmemann: "It's not the Soviet Union, but I think we've kept the good traditions, which is a good thing."

The Slava Academy of Outstanding Sports Achievements in 2005 nominated Skoblikova in the Legend category for a Glory national sports prize. The academy consists of well-known coaches, athletes, journalists, and scientists, as well as others in cultural affairs.

The breakup of the USSR, however, separated Russia from the only skating rink the Soviet Union had built with natural ice—in Kazakhstan, which became independent in 1991. "Russia was a speed-skating powerhouse in the 1960s–80s, but many local skaters have been forced to train abroad for the past two decades, for lack of good facilities," said Russian Life, published in the United States by the Russian embassy. In 2004, thanks to the efforts of Skoblikova and others, Russia opened a state of the art, multi-purpose indoor ice skating center, one of the world's largest, in Moscow's Krylatskoye neighborhood. The stadium hosted the International Skating Union's World All-Around Speed Skating Championships. "We've been waiting for it for 20 years," said Skoblikova, according to the Associated Press. "Now we have everything and there will [be] no more excuses for bad results."

Periodicals

Associated Press Newswires, September 9, 2004.

Australian, January 30,2002.

New York Times, January 31, 1960; February 22, 1963; January 18, 1964; February 2, 1964; February 3, 1964; February 11,1964; February 17, 1964; March 4, 1964; February 17, 2002.

RIA Novosty, May 13, 2005.

Russian Life, March 1, 2005.

Online

"Lidiya Skoblikova profile," SkateResults.com, http://www.skateresults.com/skater/show/986 (January 13, 2006).