"Hide my hands from Samaranch ...". Close people talk about how gymnast Elena Mukhina lived her last 26 years

40 days ago, the famous Soviet gymnast Elena Mukhina passed away

REMEMBER

The famous Soviet gymnast Elena Mukhina passed away 40 days ago. She died on December 22, 2006 at five o'clock in the evening in her Moscow apartment near the Petrovsko-Razumovskaya metro station. The body, exhausted by 26 years of immobility, simply ran out of strength to fight for life. Elena was only 47 years old.

LIFE BROKEN IN TWO

History, as you know, does not tolerate subjunctive moods. But how you want to rewind the tape - stop Lena, who decided on that fateful day, July 3, 1980, to train on her own ...

On the eve, someone with an opportunity from Moscow brought to the Belarusian base "Stayki", where the national team passed the last training camp before the Moscow Games, a rumor: they say, Mukhina does not get into the Olympic team. One of the most realistic contenders for gold in the overall standings, a gymnast, whom the Romanian Nadia Comaneci herself is frankly afraid of - overboard the national team ?! Maybe an accidental failure at the World Cup 79 is the reason? Or an autumn injury?

The tough and ambitious Mikhail Klimenko immediately rushed to the capital to defend his student. And Lena (probably any 20-year-old girl would have done the same) decided not to waste time. The "shock" element, which was not performed by anyone in the world on floor exercises - one and a half back somersaults with a turn of 540 degrees in a forward roll - should have become, in their opinion, the trump card at the Olympics.

I scattered, pushed off, and then, as in a dream: I see people running towards the carpet on which I was warming up. It turns out that they are all running to me. I want to get up, but I can't get up, although my head is clear. I want to move my hand - I can't. And then from somewhere a thought: this is probably a disaster. They brought me to the hospital, they poke ammonia into my nose, and I am fully conscious and twisting my head - I don’t need to give it to me .. - this later, in the Moscow hospital, Lena told one of her closest people - the head coach of the Moscow national team in artistic gymnastics Tamara Andreevna Zhaleeva, who will remain the closest to the end of her days.

The fatal jump, ending with a fracture of the cervical vertebra, broke the life of a 20-year-old girl, Lena Mukhina, in two: before and after.

"After" turned out to be six years longer ...

"DO NOT LIVE IN SUCH POSITION FOR LONG"

Tamara Zhaleeva, Honored Trainer of the USSR, World Champion (1954) in the team competition:

On the evening of July 3, 1980, they called me from Minsk and said that Lena had fallen unsuccessfully during training and pulled her back muscles. They decided to save, as it turned out later, my nerves so that I could sleep peacefully that night. The call from Minsk, of course, alarmed, but not enough to dramatize the situation. Lena taught us to her injuries (the last happened as recently as the fall of 1979 at an exhibition in England, where she broke her leg) and to the fact that she is ready to perform with any of them. By the way, she also performed that fatal jump with an unhealed ankle injury, which did not allow her to push off properly in the run ...

The truth about what actually happened at the "Stayka" base, I learned only on the morning of the 4th. Until now, I cannot shake off the thought that everything might have turned out differently for Lena, if she had had an operation not on the third day after what happened, but on the next. Well, what can we say now about it ...

We met her at the Belorussky railway station, when Lena was brought to Moscow two weeks after the operation. The motionless body was carried out through the train window, so that, God forbid, it would not harm even more.

She spent about a year in the spinal ward of the 19th city clinical hospital on Krasnaya Presnya, and then categorically asked to go home. No, not from despair and hopelessness! She never had a decadent mood. She believed in the future, all the 26 years that she spent in complete immobility, she did not lose hope that she would definitely get on her feet and walk. At least, in a depressed state, I have never seen her, although at some point, I think, Lena began to understand that a miracle would not happen. But I never spoke about it out loud ...

After her death, one of the journalists wrote, allegedly from my own words, that in the last days Lena thought a lot about death, about where and how to be buried ... It was very disappointing to read this, because it is not true! I could not say that, because Lena herself never spoke about it. Only once, about four months before my death, I asked her: “Len, why are you all the time sick this year? Let's finish with this ... ". And she suddenly replies: “Tamara Andreevna, I’m already in bed for 26 years. They don't live in such a position for so long. " But all the same it was said with a smile: they say, don't worry - I'll get out ...

She lived a fulfilling life with this trauma. I read a lot, making up for what I did not have time to do during sports. CSKA, for which Lena played, installed a satellite TV dish in her apartment, and she did not miss a single interesting program, not to mention the broadcasts of gymnastics competitions. I was absolutely aware of the events taking place in our sport. She constantly analyzed something, had her own opinion on everything. I even tried to recommend some elements of the program to some athletes, music for floor exercises. Lydia Gavrilovna Ivanova, Olympic champion in 1956, 1960, who is now often invited to comment on gymnastic competitions, said that after each broadcast Lena called her and they discussed the performances of our gymnasts for a long time.

Bedridden, she graduated from the Institute of Physical Education, defended her thesis ...

STAND AGAIN

Nina Lebedeva, a methodologist for therapeutic gymnastics and massage of the spinal cord department of the 19th city hospital, says:

Mukhin was operated on by Professor Arkady Vladimirovich Livshits, a world-renowned neurosurgeon (before emigrating to Israel, he worked in our hospital). For this purpose I flew to Minsk. From there I called and said that the operation was successful. Successfully means a life has been saved.

The question, really, then stood like this: will Lena live or not? She suffered an anatomical rupture, and this is a fracture of the cervical vertebrae with damage to the spinal cord. That is, by the time of the operation, irreversible processes began. More than once later I heard conversations that it was not necessary, they say, it was necessary to do Mukha's operation, it was enough to bring her to the Poltava region to the famous doctor Kasyan, he would straighten the vertebrae and that's it. Complete nonsense! The anatomical rupture is, I repeat, not only damage to the spinal column. With such an injury, the victim is doomed to immobility, and without surgery, to certain death ...

As soon as Lena was placed in our department, we began to study with her: to re-learn to stand, sit, hold a pencil in hand ... And at the same time - fight for her life, because in such patients, who are constantly in a horizontal position, the kidneys also suffer ...

But do you know what struck me in the first place? Her hands. I have never seen such fragile children's hands (in her 20s she looked 15) with huge "production" calluses ...

Lena was practically motionless. As in a science fiction novel about Professor Dowell's head: only light movements of the shoulder joint, which, moreover, caused her severe pain. Plus - a barely noticeable life in the elbow joints ...

From this position, we began to work: through pain and tears, through her innate obstinacy and capricious nature. The joints were developed, because if they are not touched, they overgrow. But all the same, it is not difficult to imagine what kind of reaction Lena caused, for example, the next spoonful of soup poured on her when she tried to eat on her own ...

THE MOST IMPORTANT IS THE PEOPLE

Tamara Zhaleeva reports:

Complete immobility for twenty-six years! Neither sit nor stand. She couldn't even hold a spoon on her own. Probably, in such a state, in fact, it was impossible to live so much if all these years she had not been helped. And Lena from the very first day was not left alone with trouble. CSKA, the sports committees of the USSR and Moscow took part in its fate. In particular, at the request of the Moscow Sports Committee, the Mossovet very quickly changed her one-room apartment on Chasovaya Street for a two-room apartment near the Petrovsko-Razumovskaya metro station.

This apartment was jointly adapted to the life of the new mistress. We made a special ramp to the balcony so that you can take it out into the fresh air. We bought a bed with an anti-decubitus mattress, a stroller. When Lena began to train according to the system of Valentin Dikul, a special simulator was installed. Over time, the personal presidential ...

But the most important thing is, of course, the people who were constantly with her and surrounded her with daily care. Lena lost her mother at the age of three. Relations with my father, who started another family, to put it mildly, did not work out. And 70-year-old grandmother Anna Ivanovna alone, naturally, was not able to take care of her paralyzed granddaughter ...

Lydia Ivanova, at that time the state trainer in artistic gymnastics, turned to the leadership of the First Medical Institute with a request to allocate students, patronage nurses to take care of Mukhina. Many responded to the Komsomol call: Nina, Sima, Galya - these girls, even after graduating from the institute, remained with Lena until the end of her days.

LAZY OR LIE?

Nina Lebedeva reports:

In the mid-80s, the method of Valentin Dikul appeared, which I really liked. She, in particular, gave hope that the active shoulder joint would be preserved for many years, pumping it up with the help of athletic gymnastics. But, alas, this technique did not work with Lena, although she began to deal with it even with some fanaticism. I saw almost the last hope in her. But the great physical exertion that Dikul's technique provided (and I, frankly, still spared Lena), again caused kidney problems, so she had to be abandoned ...

And almost the next day, an interview with Valentin Dikul appeared in one of the popular publications, who allegedly claimed: his method did not work just because he encountered ... Elena's laziness. I know Valentin Ivanovich very well: he could not say that!

By the way, speaking of publications ... Why did Lena once mortally take offense at journalists? I have never spoken to her about this. I can only assume that this happened after I started laying her on her stomach for the first month. Half an hour on the stomach with an emphasis on the elbows, the head is laid back slightly. The pain is hellish. On the days when these procedures take place, the department resembles a torture chamber. Screams like in the dungeons of the Gestapo. But this is the very case when you need to hurt for the sake of good - so that the joints, as we say, do not stick together.

So, I put a piece of some newspaper in front of the sobbing Lenka so that she would not flood the sheet with tears. And when the poor thing, as they say, merged with pain, caught the so-called "blind spot", a journalist unexpectedly looked into the ward. Where did he come from, because the hospital has a strict admission regime? And a few days later, an article appeared that the bright April sun was shining through the window, and Lena Mukhina, sitting comfortably in a hospital bed, resting her head on her hands, reads the latest issue of the newspaper ...

After the injury, she avoided any publicity. She erased many from her life, leaving only the closest ones. She was afraid that suddenly something very personal would become public, someone would suddenly come and see her helplessness, her paralyzed hands, which she was once proud of ...

In the hospital, she immediately fenced herself off from everyone with an invisible, but very dense wall, practically did not communicate with any of her comrades in misfortune. At the same time, they, without knowing it, helped her: looking at them, Lena, in my opinion, became easier, since these people did not even have a tenth of what she had. And she was even sent to the spinal center in the Crimean city of Saki on a special military plane. She knew how to compare ...

I remember 1982, when the then President of the IOC, Juan Antonio Samaranch, expressed a desire to visit Lena's home to present her with the International Olympic Order. What a crazy stress she went through then! For two days we were choosing a decent blouse for her, in which her hands would not be visible ...

"I AM NOT SICK!"

In recent years, Lena came to religion, very much regretted that earlier no one could explain to her the most important things for her. And only special literature suggested that the Lord did not offend her in any way, since he makes only those whom he loves suffer to suffer. I was carried away by philosophy, astrology, parapsychology, lying in bed, looking for ways to save myself and others. I sincerely believed that God had endowed her with the healing powers of a psychic: at some point, she even took patients ...

Nina Lebedeva reports:

One day she suddenly said to me: “I don’t consider myself sick. I am not sick because I feel very comfortable. And it remains to be seen whether this is good or bad, what happened to me ... If it had not been for this injury, perhaps there would have been more trouble. Many years ago I was walking along Leningradka for training, and suddenly a girl with cerebral palsy comes up to me, asks for an autograph, and I was out of sorts and kicked her off: "Go away, you freak!" For this, God punished me ... "

Imagine, for so many years she carried this memory in herself ...

"LENOCHKA BELONGED TO HER SOUL"

Tamara Zhaleeva reports:

Since 2000, Lena has always been with her namesake Lena Gurina, in the past also a gymnast, with whom they once performed together. Gurina had a family, but after parting with her husband, she devoted herself to her friend. She belonged to her soul. I once asked her: "Helen, isn't it hard for you?" “No,” he says, “on the contrary, it's nice that Lenka needs him. It seems to me that my life has become more meaningful and light, because I help her ... "

They were very friendly. In addition to the spiritual relationship, they, former gymnasts, had common interests. And Lena died in her arms.

I went to see them on the 21st, and Lenochka Gurina said: "Lena fell asleep, asked her not to wake her up." So I left without saying goodbye. Nothing boded trouble, although my heart ached a little. And the next day Lenochka Mukhina passed away ...

LAST DAY OF THE GREAT GYMNAST

On the morning of December 22, Lena woke up and complained to her friend that she was not feeling well: "My strength is leaving me." - "Maybe you sing something?" - suggested Gurina. “I don’t want to, give me some water.” She drank and closed her eyes, as if trying to sleep again. It was always like this when she was sick. But closer to noon, Lena began to slowly leave. Wheezing appeared. Gurina called an ambulance, tried to help on her own: she began to massage her hands, as it should be for heart failure, but there was no improvement. The doctors could not do anything either ...

About the last day of the famous gymnast, according to Gurina, Zhaleeva told me about the last day of the famous gymnast and urged me not to look for Elena and not call her. “All the same, she will refuse to be interviewed,” Tamara Andreevna said. - At one time Lena Mukhina, offended by the journalists, promised herself not to communicate with them anymore and asked Gurin not to tell anything either. Lena promised and now will never break her promise. I know…"

PRIVATE BUSSINESS

Elena Vyacheslavovna Mukhina

One of the strongest gymnasts in the world at the end of the 70s. She was born on June 1, 1960 in Moscow. Honored Master of Sports. Absolute world champion and world champion in the team competition (1978). Silver medalist of the 1978 World Championship (bars, beam, floor exercise). Winner of the 1977 World Cup (bars, logs). Champion of Europe-1977 (bars, beam, floor exercise). Winner of the silver medal at the European Championship (1977) in the all-around. Bronze medalist of the European Championship (1977) in the vault. Absolute champion of the USSR (1978). Champion of the USSR (1978) in the team event and in exercises on the uneven bars. Champion of the USSR (1977) in floor exercise. She was awarded the Order of the Badge of Honor and the Silver Badge of the IOC Olympic Order.

Mukhina was born on June 1, 1960 in Moscow. Since childhood, unlike her peers who dreamed of becoming figure skaters, Elena wanted to be a gymnast.

“Once an unknown woman appeared at the lesson. Introduced herself: Olezhko Antonina Pavlovna, master of sports. And he says: who wants to do the gymnastics section - raise your hand. I almost screamed with joy, ”Elena Vyacheslavovna herself later recalled.

Mukhina, thanks to her unprecedented capacity for work, talent and perseverance, immediately showed herself.

The gymnast's successes did not go unnoticed, and she got to Dynamo, to the famous coach Alexander Eglit. Eglit himself soon began working at CSKA and did not want to leave his students. So the 14-year-old candidate for master of sports ended up in the army club. Soon, Eglit suggested that his colleague Mikhail take his ward into his group. Klimenko, who had previously trained only men, looked at Mukhina in action and agreed. The whole short career of Elena Mukhina was connected with this coach.

In two years, the gymnast made an incredible breakthrough. She got to Klimenko in 1974, and in the summer of 1976 she had a chance to go to the Olympics in Montreal. As I recently recalled, its then program with unique combinations was called "space". But due to the instability of the performances, the sports executives were afraid to take her to Canada.

But the athlete was not embarrassed by this turn of events, and she continued to work hard, overcoming incredible pain. In 1975, at the Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR, Mukhina, after an unsuccessful landing, experienced a separation of the spinous processes of the cervical vertebrae. With such an injury, it is impossible to turn your head.

But every day Klimenko came to the hospital and took her to the gym, where she trained all day without an orthopedic "collar" necessary for the rehabilitation of such injuries. Mukhina did not even pay attention to fractured ribs, concussions, inflammation of the joints, twisted ankles and knocked out fingers. Fearing the coach's anger, she hid her injuries, secretly sniffed ammonia and went to the next projectile.

Mukhina's first finest hour struck the following year. At the USSR championship, she becomes the second in the all-around and goes to the adult European championship in Prague, where she is slightly inferior in the individual competition to the famous Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci and wins three gold medals on individual apparatus, conquering the judges and fans with the highest technique.

It was in the Czech Republic that Mukhina first performed the most complex element on the uneven bars, which was later named after her - Mukhina's loop.

1978 became a triumphal year in Mukhina's career. She won the title of the country's strongest gymnast, and then at the World Championships in France she became the fourth Soviet gymnast after Galina Shamrai, and Lyudmila Turishcheva, who became the absolute world champion.

Ahead was the Olympics in Moscow, which the gymnast dreamed of winning and becoming an Olympic champion. Mukhina was one of the main contenders for gold. But, unfortunately, this dream was not destined to come true. Mukhina received the first sign from above when, in 1979, at one of the training sessions, she broke her leg and wanted to leave the sport altogether. However, at that time, she was the only gymnast in CSKA who could get to the Olympics in Moscow. And Klimenko persuaded the gymnast to stay and set her a task - to win a medal in the individual championship.

The second unfortunate and glorified athlete throughout the country was a case at a training session shortly before the Games, when, when performing a complex element, Mukhina received a severe spinal injury and was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life.

“We traditionally prepared for the Moscow Olympics in Minsk,” recalls Mukhina's partner in the women's team, absolute world champion-79 and five-time Olympic champion Kim. - The most hardworking of us was Lena. Due to an injury, she missed the 79th World Cup and now worked tirelessly, catching up and dreaming of becoming a participant in the Olympic Games.

Once Klimenko went to Moscow on business for one day. And such a misfortune must happen that Mukhina herself dared to perform the most difficult somersault in training without insurance. Lena jumped, but full rotation did not come out - and the gymnast hit her back on the platform. She was taken to the hospital, training for us was crumpled, we were silent and could not talk about anything. Soon the worst was confirmed: Lena had a damaged cervical vertebra.

Mukhina's operation was performed only on the third day, since all the necessary doctors at the military hospital were on leave.

As a result, the athlete remained paralyzed for life.

In 1980 she was awarded the Order of the Badge of Honor, two years later she was awarded the highest badge of Olympic honor - the IOC Olympic Order. All this time, she did not give up for a minute. A few years after the terrible fall, Mukhina was able to graduate from the Moscow Institute of Physical Education. Mukhina spent the last years of her lonely life fighting her illness.

The funeral of the famous athlete is scheduled for December 27. The funeral service, presumably, will be held at USK CSKA.

Lena Mukhina from childhood, she wanted to be a gymnast, and therefore was incredibly happy when the school announced a set in the section of her dreams. The girl immediately impressed the coaches with her efficiency and unbridled desire to achieve the almost impossible. For this, the coach fell in love with his pupil Mikhail Klimenko... They called her "quiet", they said that she did not have enough sports anger at the right moment, and the coach dismissed her, insisting on the girl's amazing performance and her peculiarities to master the most difficult elements. In just two years, he managed to raise a high-class athlete, ready to go to the Olympics in Montreal at the age of 16.

However, the dreams of the Games were not destined to come true. Despite the "space" program, Elena was not included in the team. And the reason for this is a serious spinal injury received during the competition a year before the Olympics. The country's sports leadership considered Mukhina to be too unstable a gymnast, and in the face of fierce competition in the team, this sounded like a verdict. And after all, no one knew that, having not yet healed the injury, the athlete went to the gym to train. For half a day, the girl was diligently treated in the hospital with the help of an orthopedic collar, and after the day's round, the mentor took her to training. Fortunately, even with such strange methods of treatment, the gymnast still managed to recover from her injury and return to the platform.

And then there was the amazing 1978 World Cup. Elena's most difficult program fully justified itself: at the age of 18 she became the absolute world champion, ahead of and Comaneci, and their formidable rivals on the team. However, together with them, Mukhina also became the world champion in the team competition, and in some exercises she also collected a full set of awards. The gold medal, of course, was won on your favorite uneven bars. In Moscow, her and Nikolay Andrianov they were greeted as national heroes.

The jump that crossed it all

After the victorious world championship, it seemed that the path to the Moscow Olympics was open to the athlete. But fate presented another test - in the fall of 1979, the gymnast broke her leg at demonstration performances. Elena spent a month and a half in a cast, but then it turned out that the bones had parted and had to be applied again. The coach could not endure such a long wait and again forced the injured ward to return to the gym - the dismounts were trained on one healthy leg. So, without really healing the injury, the gymnast came to the pre-Olympic training camp in Minsk - the last training camp in her life.

On the sidelines then there was talk that Mukhina might not be taken to the Olympic team again, and Elena, meanwhile, was training with might and main, left to herself. And at a bad hour, I decided for the first time to try to perform a unique link, which ended with a landing head down - in a somersault ... But I didn't twist it. Right in front of those present in the hall, the gymnast crashed her head into the floor. Later, coaches will say that the reason for such an unsuccessful attempt was a weak push from a recently broken leg.

The athlete needed an urgent surgical intervention, the count went on for minutes, and hours were lost. A doctor of the necessary qualifications was found only a day later, and therefore the results of the first operation were disappointing: the athlete's brain remained in a compressed state for too long, and the body was almost completely paralyzed. A blooming girl, a titled athlete remained disabled, chained to a chair for the rest of her life, which was supposed to be short-lived: the doctors, averting their eyes, talked about a year or two, and some did not give even six months.

How to live after the tragedy?

However, Elena was not one of those who, having heard this, decides to surrender. She began to fight for her life. Unbearably hard, painful, terrible - but life! Operations followed one after another, but they were of little use. Moreover, each time it became more difficult for the doctors to get the girl out of the postoperative coma, since her body was seriously weakened. After another operation, which again did not bring almost any positive effect, Elena firmly decided to leave the hospital. However, she did not leave hope for recovery - she began to study according to the methods Valentina Dikulya, who developed a set of rehabilitation measures for spinal injuries. But after a couple of months of serious exertion, the classes had to be stopped, because the kidneys began to fail due to heavy loads.

Hopes for a full recovery had to be abandoned. And then Elena radically changed her attitude to life: she stopped feeling sorry for herself, envious of others, and began to appreciate what was available to her, tried to make the most of her opportunities. The girl did not give up daily physical exercises, and therefore, several years after the injury, she could sit in a chair, hold a spoon on her own, and write a little. The latter, by the way, came in handy when the athlete studied at the Moscow Institute of Physical Education. Teachers came to her, gave lectures, took exams. So Elena managed to get a diploma of higher education. But it was difficult for her to read - each time she had to fix a sheet of text at eye level. However, the girl did not give up! After all, those two years that the doctors measured for her had long since passed.

The order will not replace the old life

At the same time, Mukhina herself never tried to draw anyone's attention to her struggle with trauma. She did not like the direct or indirect reminders of helplessness at all. Therefore, when in 1983 the IOC President himself Juan Antonio Samaranch He came to visit in the company of journalists to present the highest award of the Olympic movement - the Olympic Order, Elena was not too happy about it. She calmly and honestly answered questions, soberly assessed her position and at the same time perfectly understood that all the visits of journalists and photographers were far from the most sincere support and desire to help.

For 26 years, the gymnast fought for her life. Day after day, hour after hour. She, who once owned her body better than billions of others, spent a quarter of a century overcoming the loss of her usual ability to walk. And overcame. To live in spite of.

Elena Mukhina became famous overnight, precisely in 1978, when she won the absolute world championship. Two years later, she received a serious injury and was bedridden for 26 years.

Mukhina was born on June 1, 1960 in Moscow. Elena lost both parents at the age of five. She was brought up by Anna Ivanovna, her grandmother. Since childhood, unlike her peers who dreamed of becoming figure skaters, Elena wanted to be a gymnast.

Mukhina, thanks to her unprecedented capacity for work, talent and perseverance, immediately showed herself. The gymnast's successes did not go unnoticed, and she got to Dynamo, to the famous coach Alexander Eglit. Eglit himself soon began working at CSKA and did not want to leave his students. So the 14-year-old candidate for master of sports ended up in the CSKA club. In 1974, Eglit invited his colleague Mikhail Klimenko to take his ward into his group. Klimenko, who had previously trained only men, looked at Mukhina in action and agreed. The whole short career of Elena Mukhina was connected with this coach.

In two years, the gymnast made an incredible breakthrough and in the summer of 1976 she had a chance to go to the Montreal Olympics. Its then program with unique combinations was called "space". But due to the instability of the performances, the sports executives were afraid to take her to Canada.

For the first time, Mukhina received a serious injury at the age of 15. In 1975, during the Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR, which was held for gymnasts in Leningrad, Mukhina unsuccessfully landed on her head in a foam pit. When X-rays were taken, it turned out that during the fall, the spinous processes of the cervical vertebrae were torn off. Lena was admitted to the hospital, but every day after the doctor's round, the trainer came for her and took her to the gym, where, removing the orthopedic collar from her neck, Mukhina trained until the evening. A few days later, for the first time, she felt that her legs began to go numb during training and a feeling of some strange weakness appeared, which no longer passed.

In 1977, when Mukhina was training at home before the World Championships, she hit her side on the lower bar of the bars so that it split. “I felt like I broke my ribs,” Lena later said. - But then, after sitting for ten minutes on the mats, in a semi-conscious state, I also worked both free and a log. When it got really bad, I went up to the coach, but he just muttered through clenched teeth: "You are always looking for a reason not to do anything."

In 1978, two weeks before the All-Union Youth Games, Mukhina knocked out her thumb on the uneven bars so that it completely came out of the joint. She corrected it herself - clenching her teeth and closing her eyes. But the injuries did not end there: during the warm-up before the competition, she did not calculate the take-off run (in the hall they washed the floor and destroyed the chalk marks), fell upon landing from a jump and hit her head. The choreographer secretly, so as not to attract the attention of the coaches, wore ammonia for her, and Mukhina, getting off the next projectile, squeezed the cotton wool in her palms.

1978 became a triumphal year in Mukhina's career. She wins the title of the country's strongest gymnast, and then wins the world championship in France. First - in the team, and a day later she became the absolute champion, beating, among others, the absolute champion of the Games-76 Nadia Komenech. She made it to the finals on three out of four apparatus and collected another full set of awards, winning silver on the uneven bars and balance beam and splitting gold in floor exercise with two-time Olympic champion Nelly Kim. Elena Mukhina became the fourth Soviet gymnast after Galina Shamrai, Larisa Latynina and Lyudmila Turishcheva, who became the absolute world champion.

This insane tension could not pass without leaving a trace. When Mukhina and I met periodically in the hall, she looked sluggish and often cried. Once she said that she does not have time to completely cross the avenue in front of the CSKA sports complex, while the green light is on, she lacks strength. At the same time, her free program on almost all apparatus continued to be the most difficult in the world.

In the fall of 1979, at an exhibition in England, Mukhina broke her leg. I spent a month and a half in a cast, but when it was removed, it turned out that the broken bones had parted. They were put in place, the plaster cast was applied again, and the next day (the coach insisted on this) Mukhina was already in the gym - she worked on shells, landing on one leg on the dismounts. Two months after the cast was removed, she was already doing all her combinations.

“Klimenko was always terribly nervous before the competition, he tugged at me,” Mukhina recalled. - Probably because he perfectly understood that his own well-being and career directly depend on whether I get into the national team or not. I was extremely responsible for training. There were times when, in order to lose weight, I ran at night, and went to the gym in the morning. At the same time, I constantly had to listen that I was a trash and should be happy that they paid attention to me and gave me a chance. "

At the last training camp in Minsk in early July 1980, Mukhina arrived with her ankles and knees sick from overloads, and besides, she began to have inflammation of the joint capsule of the hand. The USSR national gymnastics team was preparing for the Olympic Games. Mukhina's coach, Mikhail Klimenko, left for Moscow for a couple of days (there was talk on the sidelines that Mukhina might not be included in the main team, and Klimenko went to “defend” the student at the top). Lena worked independently and at one of the trainings she decided to try a unique combination. Its essence was that after the flask and the most difficult (one and a half somersaults with a turn of 540 degrees) jump, the landing should not take place on your feet, as usual, but head down, into a somersault. The gymnast pushed unsuccessfully, she did not have enough height, and in front of the head coach of the women's team Aman Shaniyazov, the state coach Lidia Ivanova and the coach of the acrobatics team (there was no one else in the gym), she crashed into the floor, breaking her neck. According to one of the coaches, she crashed because she just missed the run with the same injured leg.

During the first eight years, she was operated on several times. The first operation - on the spine - was performed only a day after the injury in Minsk. It lasted several hours, but the result (largely due to the delay) was not encouraging: due to the fact that the brain remained in a severely compressed state for so long, Mukhina remained almost completely paralyzed.

In the summer of 1985, Elena was offered to contact Valentin Dikul. However, as a result of enormous stress, a couple of months later, she again ended up in the hospital - her kidneys failed. After another operation, a fistula formed in the gymnast's side, which did not last for a year and a half. Each time, doctors with tremendous difficulty managed to get Mukhina out of the postoperative coma - the body refused to fight for life.

After all these countless operations, I decided that if I wanted to live, then I had to run away from the hospitals, ”Lena told me. - Then I realized that I needed to radically change my attitude to life. Not to envy others, but to learn to enjoy what is available to me. Otherwise, you can go crazy. I realized that the commandments "do not think badly," "do not act badly," "do not envy" are not just words. That there is a direct connection between them and how a person feels. I began to feel these connections. And I realized that, compared to the ability to think, the inability to move is such nonsense ...

Of course, at first I was terribly sorry for myself. Especially when I returned home for the first time after the injury, from where I left on my own feet and where everything still presupposed the presence of a person on her feet. Besides, almost everyone who came to see me asked: "Are you going to sue?"

All this time, she did not give up for a minute. Several years after the terrible fall, she could sit in an armchair, hold a spoon, write a little. Teachers came to her, gave lectures, took exams. She managed to graduate from the Moscow Institute of Physical Education.

When trauma occurs, the question always arises: "Who is to blame?" When I asked Mukhina what she herself thinks about this, Lena answered evasively: "I taught Klimenko that I can train and perform with any injuries ..."

According to an interview with Larisa Latynina, Mikhail Klimenko was struck by her injury. Mukhina did not expect to be added to the list of the Soviet Olympic team. There was little doubt that the Soviet women's gymnastics team would receive a gold medal at the Summer Olympics as they did at the previous Games. Despite this, Klimenko wanted Mukhina to train, so that he would become the "coach of the Olympic champion." After these events, Klimenko emigrated to Italy.

They did not know then at what cost these trainings were given to Elena. Leaving the hotel for training, each time she kept her eyes on the cars passing by, automatically wondering if she threw herself under the wheels - would she have time to slow down or not. I tried on the ledge outside the hotel room window and figured out how I should jump so that it was sure. When, in a conversation nine years ago, she told me about this, I asked in horror why she had not quit gymnastics earlier?

“I don’t know,” came the answer. - Several times I saw my fall in a dream. She saw me being carried out of the hall. I understood that sooner or later this will really happen. I felt like an animal being whipped along an endless corridor. But again and again she came to the hall. Perhaps this is fate. And they don’t take offense at fate ”.

Was she offended herself? Outwardly, no. When I learned about Mukhina's death from the same friend who had once brought me to her house, our eight-year-old conversation involuntarily came to mind, stood before my eyes. “I don’t need to help,” Lena objected quite calmly to some of our attempts to straighten the pillows, to move something closer. "I shouldn't allow myself to get too used to someone else's help."

Mukhina never tried to communicate with journalists. Even a short period of public attention, when in 1983 IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch presented her with the highest award of the Olympic movement - the Olympic Order, became quite painful for her. With all the horror of her physical condition, Mukhina managed to retain the ability to reasonably calmly on any topic and call a spade a spade. Therefore, all that undisguised window dressing, which was the premium vanity with visits to the small apartment of journalists and photographers, did not please her. Rather, she offended.

It was unbearably difficult to describe in words her condition. Elena could neither stand, nor sit, nor hold a spoon in her hand, nor even dial a telephone number. To be able to read something, Lena resorted to a trick proven over the years: she asked to pin a piece of paper with the text to the wall at eye level with a pin. While talking on the phone, she lay down with her ear on the receiver and could talk like that for quite a long time.

She learned to withdraw into herself - into some unreal world for healthy people, where she traced the chains of origins, heredities. I sincerely believed that a person can have several lives - in different time spaces. She assured that she sees not only the past, but also the future of the people with whom she communicates. I talked about it with pleasure. This hobby (although can you call it a hobby that essentially became life) had different consequences. Including - difficult for others. It was Mukhina who at one time dissuaded one of her close friends to send a newborn child with a severe heart defect to the hospital. Convinced that the baby simply will not survive. As a result, a few years later, the child was still operated on, but the family fell apart: the child's father was unable to forgive either Mukhina or his wife for the fact that the child was admitted to the hospital so late.

As her close friend told me, Mukhina gave up noticeably when she found out that her former coach had returned from Italy, where he had worked for many years, to Moscow. She flatly refused to meet with Klimenko, who in her mind remained the most terrible ghost of her past life.

The death of her grandmother in the spring of 2005 was a colossal blow for Lena. She did not want to give her to a nursing home, despite the fact that the 90-year-old woman herself required constant care. And, already out of her mind and feeling that she was dying, she constantly shouted to her granddaughter: “I will not leave you. Come with me!".

Mukhina survived this nightmare too. When Anna Ivanovna was gone, she asked only about one thing: when the time came, under no circumstances should she be buried next to her grandmother. And no autopsy. Leave alone. She hardly spoke to her father. He himself - not yet an old man - began to appear in the house only after he learned that Mukhina, through the incredible efforts of many people, had managed to "break through" a personal presidential pension. So I visited. For money ...

She's probably just tired of living. I'm tired of constantly looking for an answer why in our country anything can be valuable, but not human life. Even in conversations with the closest people, which, by and large, included only two friends, Mukhina never allowed herself to complain about her fate. Though to think about it - what a horror it is that the only variety in her life were rare excursions in a wheelchair to the corridor or to the kitchen. With one single purpose: to see what is happening there - outside the walls of the room in which she spent 26 years ...

Elena Mukhina died on December 22, 2006. The funeral service in her honor was held on December 27. Elena was buried at the Troekurovsky cemetery in Moscow.

References

Elena Vaytsekhovskaya "Elena Mukhina: A Tragedy of 26 Years Long". Sport-Express, 26.12.2006
Andrey Uspensky "Loop of Mukhina" Novaya Gazeta, №38, May 29, 2003

She was amazingly talented and tenacious. Elena Mukhina was the absolute champion of the USSR and the world in artistic gymnastics, showed an incredibly difficult program, some elements of which are currently prohibited in competitions because of their danger. The gymnast dreamed of becoming an Olympic champion, but the injury she received in training forever deprived her of this opportunity. But even being bedridden, Elena Mukhina continued to fight for the right to live.

Striving upward

The future gymnast, who was born in 1960 in Moscow, was left without a mother at the age of two, and the baby's father, after the death of his wife, created a new family in which there was no place for his daughter. Fortunately for Lena, she had a wonderful grandmother, Anna Ivanovna, who raised and raised her granddaughter.

Elena dreamed of gymnastics since childhood. While her peers did not miss a single broadcast from the figure skating championships, Lena looked fascinated at the screen, where fragile girls performed complex gymnastic elements on the uneven bars or a balance beam.

When once Antonina Olezhko appeared at one of the lessons and invited those who wish to the gymnastics section, Elena Mukhina did not hesitate for a second. It was her dream, which took on quite real features.

Many athletes could envy the little girl's performance. She could train for hours without noticing fatigue and repeating the element over and over again, bringing it to perfection. Very soon Elena's efforts were noticed, and she reached a new level: she began to train with the famous at that time Alexander Eglit at Dynamo, then moved to CSKA with him.

Mikhail Klimenko, to whom he handed over his pupil Eglit, firmly decided to make Mukhina a world champion. How he managed to discern stamina and sports passion in a modest girl remains a mystery.

Hard work and perseverance

Mikhail Klimenko was a demanding, strict and even tough coach. In his quest to make an athlete a champion, he was ready for any sacrifice. Elena had to listen to the coach in everything, she had no right to cry, skip workouts or arguments. The coach decided that Elena Mukhina should show the most difficult program.

He put together an incredible program for the student, which hardly anyone could repeat, and developed a rigid training schedule.

Elena obeyed the coach unquestioningly, over and over again honing her skills, overcoming pain and fatigue. After only a year and a half, Mukhina became one of the strongest gymnasts and applied for membership in the USSR Olympic team. But the commission at that moment did not approve the candidacy of the gymnast, justifying its refusal by the lack of experience and stability in the athlete.

However, neither Elena Mukhina herself, nor her coach was upset by the refusal. They continued to stubbornly prepare for participation in the competition and were almost sure of imminent success. In 1977, Elena Mukhina became the second in the all-around in the USSR, and at the European championship held in Prague, she was able to win three gold medals at once.

That championship became a landmark for the athlete: in Prague, for the first time, she presented to the audience and judges the most difficult element of the program, the “Korbut loop”. True, the trainer, on the advice of his brother, especially for Elena, improved and complicated this element, as a result of which it received the name "Mukhina's loop".

It was impossible not to admire the athlete, who soared easily and seemed to hover over the uneven bars, performing the most difficult turns in the air. Subsequently, due to the danger, both loops were forbidden to be performed by gymnasts.

Ups and downs

Her path in sports was not easy, the athlete on the way to the podium was repeatedly injured and worked, trying not to notice the pain. From 1975 to 1978, the gymnast suffered several serious injuries, but she often trained, even while being treated in a hospital. She taught herself and her trainer that she can train to the edge of her ability without noticing the pain and not allowing herself to be weak.

In 1978, Elena Mukhina became the absolute champion of the USSR and the world. When the anthem of the USSR sounded at the World Championships in Strasbourg, Elena did not hold back tears: she was proud that she was able to win and became the strongest gymnast in the world.

However, 1979 brought the athlete and her coach the first disappointments. Elena's demonstration performances in England in 1979 ended with a broken leg and the inability to take part in the World Cup. Barely recovering from her injury, the gymnast began training. She practiced, not knowing fatigue, overcoming pain. And only occasionally did she complain to her teammates about her incredible weakness. Athletes often noticed that Elena was secretly wiping away her tears.

The right to live

At the training camp in Minsk in 1980, Elena again worked in the gym, not paying attention to the strongest pain in her leg and categorically ignoring fatigue. She dreamed of the Olympics and therefore even the departure of the coach to Moscow did not force her to give up training. However, Mikhail Klimenko insisted that she go through her entire program, including the most difficult elements. During the next repetition, she literally crashed into the floor and was no longer able to move due to a broken neck.

Many coaches and gymnasts believed that the cause of Elena Mukhina's injury was the excessive loads set by the coach. She was used to obeying the coach and continued to work even when she had no strength at all.

Only a day later, Elena Mukhina underwent the first operation, but after it the athlete still could not move. During the year, the athlete underwent eight operations. And after each, it was more and more difficult for the doctors to bring Elena to her senses. There was a feeling that the athlete's body simply refuses to fight for life. But Elena Mukhina herself never refused to fight.

Five years after the injury, Elena turned to Valentin Dikul for help, but two months later the gymnast was hospitalized again, this time due to kidney failure. And she forced herself to do the exercises over and over again. And she learned to rejoice, no matter what. Elena was able to first sit, then hold a spoon, even write. She graduated from the Institute of Physical Education thanks to the fact that teachers came to study at her home and take exams.

Elena and her fellow gymnasts, who constantly visited Mukhina, tried to help, support, and please her with their participation. Elena Mukhina lived for another 26 years after the injury, constantly being in a wheelchair and diligently refusing outside help. In 2005, her grandmother died, and a year later Elena was gone.

Larisa Latynina was a winner not only in sports, but also in life. She graduated from school with a gold medal, and the institute with honors. And in the family, she strove for the ideal, but she could only achieve it on the third attempt. before Larisa Latynina became truly happy.