Raisa Petrovna Smetanina - Soviet skier, five-time Olympic champion. Repeated champion of the USSR and the world. She won more than 20 medals at various distances. In 1993, in Paris, she was awarded the Fair Play award for a worthy example of a sports career.
Childhood
Raisa Petrovna Smetanina (photo below) was born in the village of Mokhcha (Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic) in 1952. The parents of the future champion were hereditary reindeer herders.
The girl early adapted to that life and with all her heart fell in love with the tundra, its air, vast expanses, silence, blue lakes ... Here she gained independence, calmness, the ability to get rid of loneliness - the eternal companion of the skier in the struggle for distance.
The Smetanins family consisted of five brothers: Ivan, Ilya, Gennady, Fedor, Vladimir - and two sisters: Olya and Paradise. From early childhood, they were taught to ski, since in the tundra this was the main means of transportation. Skis were inherited, and the time came when they fell into the hands of Raisa.
The northern region lived an active sports life. Two directors of local schools were great lovers of skiing and regularly organized competitions for children, as well as made films about it. At the weekend, they constantly visited each other and exchanged tips, looking for new training methods. With their enthusiasm, they managed to ignite not only schoolchildren, but also children from all over the region.
The first competitions and studies
For the first time, Raisa won in Pechora at the youth championship of the republic. The girl took second place. After school, Smetanina Raisa Petrovna moved to Syktyvkar for admission to the pedagogical college. Here she met her first coach - German Kharitonov - and began to seriously engage in skiing. After graduating from college in 1970, Raisa was taken to the Urozhay sports society as a member of the national team.
Carier start
In 1971, Raisa Petrovna Smetanina was included by the USSR national team coach in the list of applicants for participation in the Olympics.
The most difficult year for the athlete was 1972, when she worked hard to learn all the tricks of skiing. Her coach was Viktor Ivanov, and the girl Galina Kulakova took care of her. Thanks to this, Raisa showed good results, taking third places in the national championship (5 and 10 km.).
First gold
1974 brought the first gold to the athlete. Raisa Petrovna Smetanina won him in the team relay at the world championship in Falun. At the Olympics in Innsbruck, the Soviet team had trouble. Galina Kulakova could not lead the team for health reasons. Her place was taken by Smetanina.
The young skier passed the five-kilometer distance brilliantly, but lost the gold to Helena Tekalo, losing her only a second. Raisa worked with the trainer on the mistakes and developed a strategy for the next race. It bore fruit, and Smetanina managed to beat all rivals at a ten-kilometer distance. The result of the Olympics is two gold and one silver medal.
New victories
At the 1980 Olympics, Smetanina Raisa Petrovna entered the history of skiing as the first racer to conquer the podium twice in individual competitions. At the 1982 World Cup, the athlete won a gold medal at a distance of 20 kilometers, becoming the only Soviet skier to be included in the top six.
The fourteenth Olympic Games were also successful for Raisa. She won two silver medals (10 and 20 km.). And the 1985 World Cup brought gold to her piggy bank (relay race).
The 1988 Olympics can also be considered successful. In the ten-kilometer race, Raisa won silver, and over twenty kilometers received bronze. Then our other skiers, Reztsova and Tikhonova, managed to occupy the podium.
Experience transfer
Realizing that the sports career will someday end, Raisa Petrovna Smetanina took care of the young athletes from the team. She took up the education of a new generation of Russian skiers. Raisa Petrovna, by personal example, showed the girls how persistent and industrious it was to achieve their goals. The famous skier constantly set them a high pace, both in training and in competition.
Last victory
In 1992, Smetanina Raisa Petrovna, whose biography was presented in this article, went to the Winter Olympics in Albertville. A forty-year-old athlete appeared on the ski run under the second number. At a ten-kilometer distance, she took fourth place, and in the relay race she won gold.
This was the last medal in the career of Raisa Petrovna. She became a symbolic and expensive award. Now the great racer could retire and pass the baton to young and promising skiers. At that time it was Lazutina, Vyalbe and Egorova, who fled with Raisa Petrovna at the Olympics. In their interviews, the girls always talked about the fact that Smetanina made a huge contribution to skiing, and the numerous victories of the team are exclusively her merit.
For sports achievements of Raisa Petrovna, the leadership of the Komi Republic gave her a solid house.