Boris Shakhlin

Gymnast

• Born: January 27, 1932
• Birthplace: Ishim, Soviet Union (now in Russia)
• Died: May 30, 2008
• Place of death: Kiev, Ukraine

Sport: Gymnastics

Early Life

Boris Anfiyanovich Shakhlin was born on January 27, 1932, in the town of Ishim in central Russia. He began gymnastics training at the Sverdovsk Physical Training Technical College. Later, he attended the Kiev Institute of Physical Culture, where he trained under A. S. Mishanov.

In 1954, at the age of twenty-two, Boris entered his first international competition—the World Gymnastics Championships in Rome, Italy. Boris tied for fourth in the all-around event in a Soviet sweep of the first five places. Boris’ team was an amazingly strong team—Soviet gymnasts had burst upon the international scene in the 1952 Olympics. No one knew which of the young gymnasts would ultimately challenge and inherit the supremacy of teammate and Olympic all-around champion Victor Tchoukarine.

A year after his respectable showing in Rome, in 1955, at the age of twenty-three, Boris graduated from the Kiev Institute with the title of Honored Master of the Sport. That same year, at the European championships in Frankfurt, West Germany, against a reduced field marked by the absence of Tchoukarine and fellow Soviet Yuri Titov, Boris was commanding. He took gold medals in the all-around competition as well as three individual events, with a silver medal in a fourth event.

The Road to Excellence

Boris was a gymnast characterized less by style and grace than by strength and precision. At 5 feet 7 1/2 inches and 154 pounds, he was relatively large and solid for a male gymnast, especially when compared to the diminutive Japanese male gymnasts of the following decades. Like Tchoukarine, Boris depended on stillness and strength in his routines, aiming for a series of stark images than for an organically flowing sequence. Not surprisingly, his weakest event was the floor exercise, the only one in which he failed to gain a single medal in international competition during his entire career. A hard thinker who valued analyzing the structure and logic of moves, Boris approached his training sessions as if they were the real international competitions, and his strength and tenacity earned him the nickname “Shakhlin the Steel One.”

Boris’s performance at his first Olympics, the 1956 Games in Melbourne, Australia, was impressive. He was in direct competition with a strong Soviet team—Tchoukarine’s dominance was clear The Japanese had improved tremendously since its return to international competition in Helsinki in 1952. Although Boris placed eighth in the all-around, his solid and dexterous work on the pommel horse earned him his first Olympic gold medal, an experience he relished and was determined to repeat.

The Emerging Champion

Boris did not attend the 1957 European championships in Paris, but he was prepared to succeed the retired Tchoukarine the following year at the World Gymnastics Championships in Moscow. At the age of twenty-six, he was at his peak. He had developed technical expertise but still retained the youthful energy necessary for the sport. He dominated in Moscow, taking four gold medals, including the all-around, and leading the Soviets to a team title. His five of eight possible medals set a record for World Gymnastics Championship competition.

By 1960, Boris was considered the world’s best gymnast, and his performance at the 1960 Olympics in Rome confirmed that assessment. He took first place in the all-around, vault, parallel bars, and pommel horse and second in rings; however, his all-around victory was by a slight .05-point margin over Takashi Ono of Japan. On the horizontal bar, one of Boris’s leather hand guards broke, but he did not stop; dismounting with a bloody palm, he nevertheless took third in the event. Counting the team title, Boris won a total of seven medals—an Olympic record that was not matched until the American Mark Spitz won seven swimming medals in 1972, and not broken until Soviet gymnast Alexander Dityatin won eight, of a possible eight, medals in 1980.

Boris was a member of the Soviet national team that toured the United States in early 1961, performing at meets and exhibitions in the Northeast and Midwest. As he headed toward and beyond his thirtieth birthday, though, it was inevitable that younger men would surpass him in international competition. Still, he took third in the all-around at the 1962 World Gynmastics Championships in Prague, Czechoslovakia, placing in four events but losing the gold in the pommel horse to Yugoslav gymnast Miroslav Cerar on a contested score. Boris took second all-around at the 1963 European championships in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, tying for gold medals in the rings and horizontal bar. At his third Olympic Games, in Tokyo, Japan, in 1964, Boris was still the man to beat, and he tied for second in the all-around, with a gold medal on the horizontal bars.

Continuing the Story

At the 1966 World Gymnastics Championships in Dortmund, West Germany, twelve years after his international debut, Boris’s skills were clearly waning. He was eclipsed by the Japanese gymnasts—Olympic champion Yukio Endo, Akinori Nakayama, and Shuji Tsurumi—and by his Soviet teammate Mikhail Voronin. At the ripe age of thirty-four, he failed to reach the finals in any of the events. Following the tournament, he decided to end his illustrious competitive career. In February of 1967, at the Soviet National Championships, Boris retired in a ceremony marked by flowers, gifts, speeches, and a tearful farewell from the “Steel One.”

Boris remained involved in international gymnastics after his retirement. He lived in Kiev, where he served as a city councilor and was admitted to the Soviet Communist Party in 1964. He became an international gymnastics official shortly after his retirement and published a book entitled Moia gimnastika (my gymnastics) in 1973. He was a member of the Technical Committee of the International Gymnastics Federation through the 1970’s and 1980’s and was involved in the scoring controversies of the 1976 Montreal Olympics. He died in 2008.

Summary

With the strength and poise of a classical gymnast, Boris Shakhlin assumed a position of supremacy for more than a decade in the enduring Soviet dynasty of world-class gymnasts. He was one of a select group of individuals to win titles in three successive Olympics, and his diligence and technical precision set a solid example for champions to come. He was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame in 2002.

Bibliography

Greenberg, Stan. Whitaker’s Olympic Almanack: An Encyclopaedia of the Olympic Games. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2000.

Wallechinsky, David, and Jaime Loucky. The Complete Book of the Olympics: 2008 Edition. London: Aurum Press, 2008.