Vasily Ivanovich Alekseev was born in the Ryazan region, in the small village of Pokrovo-Shishkino, on January 7, 1942. Vasily was the fourth child in the family of a worker in a local distillery producing alcoholic beverages.
The boy grew up a playful and
intelligent child, was gullible to the world around him. A distinctive feature of this boy was inquisitiveness and a desire for knowledge.
Parting with homeland
At the age of eleven, Vasya said goodbye to a school in the Ryazanshchina because his family went to the northern regions of the Soviet Union, to the small village of Rochegda (Arkhangelsk region), where he went to study in the 5th grade of a local school.
The inhabitants of the taiga village lived
by felling with subsequent stacking and rafting along the Northern Dvina. The whole family of Vasily began to do the same thing as soon as she settled in the Arkhangelsk lands.
Logs and trolleys - first rods
In the winter, the boy studied at school, and in the summer he helped his parents in the forest, and this became an occupation from year to year. Logs of dumped spruce and pine trees became the starting bar for Alekseev. Next - the wheels from the trolley.
Once I saw a thirteen-year-old Vasya, a neighbor ten times in a row shaking iron things, and decided to compete with a young man. The first attempt with the axis of the trolley was unsuccessful. Then the future athlete woke up his sporting character: not knowing anything about
weightlifting, Vasya squeezed the axis 12 times. A smart and strong boy was a real discovery for a physical education teacher at a local school. That is why, since 1955, Alekseev attended all youth competitions at the district and regional levels.
Difficult student years
After graduating from high school, Alekseev passed the exams perfectly and was enrolled in the Forestry Institute in Arkhangelsk. Then he remembered the children's weightlifting hobby. A good weightlifting section functioned at the university. But during the school days at the institute, Vasily Alekseev did not have the opportunity to train. Training was rare, not on an ongoing basis. Student meals were poor. But Vasily did not want to expect help from the family because of his pride. That's why he often had the opportunity, instead of training, to work on the Arkhangelsk marina.
Family life
1961, Alekseev finished the sum of three hundred and fifteen kilograms. But he was not destined to increase this result, because he took a sabbatical: a young twenty-year-old athlete fell in love and, as expected, married the same migrant as himself, named Olympics.
In search of a decent income, Alekseev went to the Tyumen region for logging. Wanting to continue his athletic hobby, Vasily dragged all kinds of metal things into the hostel where he lived, equipped them with scrap and began to conduct his workouts in the evening. For this "arbitrariness" the young strongman was called to the executive committee for a conversation, where he was warned with a fine so that he would not rustle with metal when others were on vacation. After such a collision, Vasily returned to his family and to college. I passed the exams well. He had two sons - Sergey and Dmitry. For a strong family nest, a decent salary was needed. And the athlete decides to go to the correspondence department. This gave him the opportunity to move to the small town of Koryazhma and become a master of the Kotlas plant for the production of pulp and paper products. Due to the excellent reputation of the correspondence student, he was promoted to shift supervisor. Wealth in the family grew, and then Alekseev continued weightlifting training. Basil made the master’s norm in just a year. But sports experts in Arkhangelsk could not believe that a master weightlifter could grow up in a small village, and, accordingly, the title of master was not credited to him. And so he and his family decided to leave for Shakhty (Rostov Region), where Rudolf Plukfelder, the Olympic champion, coached weightlifters. To begin with, he went there without a family to find work and housing.
In this regional city, Vasiliev found a position at the mine, and training in a specialized hall. And on top of that, he submitted papers to a branch of the Novocherkassk Polytechnic, to the mining faculty. And only with the champion of the Olympics could not find a common language.
First victories in the national team
And then he decided to train on his own and also achieved rare indicators.
Weightlifters training for the Olympics in Mexico City was held in the Caucasus Mountains - in the Tsei Gorge.
He represented the national team in the international competition "Friendship Cup". At the championship in Kiev in March of the 69th year, he was ahead of the second champion of the Olympics in Mexico City Reading (Belgium), lifting 530 kg.
First failures
Vasily would need to maintain strength in his back in 1969, but he constantly competed. In the end, at the Rostov Championship he found himself outside the line of winners.
The Soviet team trained for the Warsaw tournament, but the young weightlifter was not invited to it. According to the decision of Moscow doctors, he was forbidden to lift the bar, otherwise he would face disability. Thus, Vasily for 6 months left the mind of the masters.
With new forces
And the weightlifter forgotten by everyone in a single evening broke 4 world records. On January 24, 1970, in Velikiye Luki, a Soviet strongman at the age of twenty-eight years pushed out the world list of record holders Dube and Bednarsky (USA) and twice exceeded the level of Zhabotinsky in the sum of triathlon.
In March, in Minsk, the Soviet weightlifter at the Friendship Cup competitions set a one-of-a-kind achievement. From this began a new era of six hundred!
In June 1970, the first European weightlifters gathered in Szombathely (Hungary). Alekseev was a little sick, but went to the platform and for the fourth time in 6 months "walked on achievements." Jerking 219.5 kg, he crossed out the Reading record, then pulled the usual 170 and pushed 225.5. To the latter, he added a new winning amount - 612.5 kg.
At competitions in the United States of America, Vasily pulled a shell of 500 pounds, and he became a pioneer in a similar bar.
After winning the European Championship in Sofia in 1971, he defended his diploma perfectly and graduated from college, becoming a mining engineer.
Absolute World Champion
On the platform in Lima (Peru), Vasily Alekseev repeatedly achieved the title of absolute world champion.
Triumph in Lima further strengthened Alekseevsky prestige. Media workers all over the world again put him on the list of the best athletes of the year. In addition, given the records of Vasily Alekseev, the French Sports Academy gave the Soviet weightlifter the title of “Athlete No. 1 of 1971”. He was awarded the “President’s Prize”.
The main nominees for first places approached the 1972 games in Munich with the following results: Alekseev - 645, Patera - 635, Mang - 630, Serge Reading - 620 kg.
After 2 tests, Vasiliy had 410 kg, and Manga had 395. In the last test he pushed 230 kg and got a total of 640. Jabotinsky's record, which was set in Tokyo, was bypassed by 67.5 kg.
For 2.5 years, weightlifter Vasily Alekseev 54 times exceeded world records. Absolute record holder of 3 European championships, 3 world championships, winner of the 20th Olympic Games.
After the Munich Games, the weightlifter is tormented by previous injuries; he is increasingly leaning toward a measured lifestyle. In order to save power, he is less likely to participate in competitions. The principle of his training has also changed: now it was not necessary to squeeze up to 30 tons of metal daily. He did not take care of increasing the mass of the muscle, but of its qualitative indicator. On top of that, the bench was canceled after the Munich Olympics. The reason for this was the Alekseevsky triumph of power. Vasily Alekseev again set a record in June 1973 in Madrid at the European Championship. In the same period, he wins the World Cup in Cuba (Havana).
In 1974 (in May), the Soviet weightlifter was ahead of everyone in the championship in Verona, took the record in a jerk - 187.5, and again he was the bearer of all world achievements. At the championship in Manila, the Soviet hero defeated 425 kg, throwing Reading back by 35 kg.
Plachkov comes to the platform at the age of 22 (Bulgaria), who showed himself by lifting 192.5 kg in a jerk, immediately exceeding the Alekseevsky achievement by 5 kg. Many fans now preferred the newly-minted strongman.
12,000 fans who came to Luzhniki witnessed the record of Vasily Alekseev: in the clean and jerk - 245.5 and the total - 427.5. Plachkov outstripped the world record in a jerk, but missed the jerk.
Competing in Karaganda, he achieved the title of champion of the Soviet Union for the 7th time. Alekseev Vasily Ivanovich set the 76th world record - 435 kg in biathlon.
At the Montreal Olympics, Bonk started with 165 kg and graduated with a total of 170 kg. Alekseev really wanted to start with 180, but he was convinced with 175 kg. In the 3rd classification, he easily lifted a barbell of 185 kg.
After listening to the coach, Alekseev at the beginning pushed 230 kg. And then - 255. He was held by spectators for a long time. The applause sounded endlessly, and Vasily gave them a Russian bow. He refused the third offset.
The Stuttgart Zeitung on September 26, 2017 reported that for the 8th time the Soviet weightlifter won the heavyweight title.
11.11.77 Mr. Alekseev pushed the barbell in 256 kg, showing a new world record.
At the XXII Olympic Games in Moscow , only Heuser (1978 world champion) and Rakhmanov (1979 prize winner in Thessaloniki) came out to compete with him. The victory was won by Rakhmanov. He was able to reproduce Alekseev's Olympic record in biathlon (440 kg).
What prevented the Soviet weightlifter from defeating? Probably, the Soviet strongman did not take into account the main thing - after a long break, weightlifting athletes do not feel the platform. For 2 years, Vasily did not take part in any championships, he tried to save his strength for the Moscow Olympics. And that was his huge mistake. He did not remember how to behave in competitions. For 10 years, Alekseev Vasily Ivanovich sat on the throne as the most powerful weightlifter on a global scale, but he was forced to make room for the sake of the young.
Now the head coach
Then he was elected head coach of the Soviet team. Under him, which can also be attributed to absolute achievement, not a single member of the team was injured (training was conducted according to a special technique) and no one received a “zero” rating. Alekseev left the Soviet team when the Soviet Union collapsed. This, one can say, ended the sports biography of Vasily Alekseev.