Riga Rocket - who is it or what is it about? Hockey fans know the answer to this question. The article will focus on the famous hockey player Helmut Balderis.
Latvian hockey star
Balderis Helmut is the star of Latvian hockey, the famous striker who played for the national team of the CSK and the national team of the Soviet Union. Today he is considered one of the best strikers in the history of Latvia. In 1977, Balderis Helmut was awarded the title of the best hockey player of the USSR, and about a year after that another pleasant event followed - Helmut became the honored master of sports of the USSR. He is also called the most original hockey player of the 70s. Hockey fans, and just people who are not indifferent to this sport, know Balderis Helmut under the pseudonym Riga Rocket.
Why did the audience love him so much?
Fans note that Balderis Helmut was not only a terrific athlete and a good player, he was also an excellent logician, tactician, was quick in thinking and was famous for his unconventional approach to solving problems that arise on the playing field during the match. Only he could masterfully score goals, perform complex and twisted passes, enthralling even the members of the opposing team. There was something about the skater in him. He behaved on the ice very gracefully, watching his game was a real aesthetic pleasure. Colleagues respected him for his talent, phenomenal determination and remarkable industriousness.
Helmut Balderis, whose photo you see in the article, is a fun-loving and incredibly open person in life. He always stood for the truth and did not hesitate to speak it in person, even if it repeatedly ended in conflicts. It was not difficult for Helmut to express his complaints to the coach or officials, that is, those people with whom it would be undesirable to argue at all, if only in order not to undermine their reputation. But no, Helmut didn’t do it for himself at all, he was not an egoist, he didn’t play in public, he didn’t amuse himself. All this was done only for the common cause, for the success of the team, for the prosperity of hockey as such.
Some statistics
It is estimated that this extraordinary and unique in all respects man participated in 462 matches during his life, while he scored 333 goals on his own. As for the competitions of the entire Soviet Union, Helmut was completely embellished as the most productive athlete. At that time, when Balderis played in the USSR national team, he became a three-time European and world champion in his sport, won many gold and silver medals.
Balderis Helmut: biography, the beginning of the sports path
The athlete was born on July 3, 1952 in Riga, at the age of 11 his parents sent him to a sports school, in which children and teenagers attended. I must say that Balderis Helmut did not possess any outstanding data from birth that would help him make a dizzying career in the sports field. On the contrary, he absolutely did not stand out among his comrades and peers; he understood early that the path to success for him would lie only through colossal efforts and work on himself, which he brought to life. As his fate shows, it was this understanding that helped him to realize himself in the chosen direction, not to give up, not to give up, and, contrary to everything, overcoming himself, go to his star. And a few years later, his first and very serious result came to Helmut, he was invited to Dynamo Riga, whose honor he defended at various competitions and matches until 1985.
Helmut Balderis, whose vision was poor, played and trained with glasses for some time, and then switched to contact lenses, which greatly facilitated his life as an athlete. Vision problems did not break the stubborn athlete and did not become a stumbling block on the path to success.
Helmut's Special Mastery
Eyewitnesses said that Helmut trained in a special way, not like everyone else. The puck’s flight path and hit accuracy were truly unique, as no one had done before the Lithuanian hockey player. At some point, even Tretyak himself, who was rightly called an impenetrable goalkeeper, lost to him. It was him who Balderis Helmut managed to score as many as four goals in one match.
Meeting with Viktor Tikhonov
This event was really decisive in the life of Balderis Helmut. It was thanks to this man that Helmut got into the USSR national team, though for all he was an absolute beginner whom no one knew, and whose capabilities, to put it mildly, were very doubtful. Tikhonov in an interview for a sports newspaper admitted that he was strongly opposed to Helmut. They said that he was the most perfect coward, that he absolutely did not have charisma and the ability to rush forward in spite of everything, that he would always be in the shadows, and that Tikhonov would certainly regret that he had taken such a rash and hasty step. But the coach did not listen to anyone, his athletic instinct told him that a real treasure could be made of this guy. And Viktor Tikhonov was not mistaken, and even more so he never regretted that he had made this choice. Balderis Helmut is a hockey player who in 1977 was recognized as the best striker of the then World Cup.
Career at the club CSKA
Already in the same 1977, Balderis Helmut became an official member of the CSKA club, which really upset Riga fans, because during the game in the Riga national team, Helmut became a favorite for many strikers, and for some, a role model. Helmut said that the decision to leave for CSKA was made solely by himself, just at some point the athlete wanted to go further, try his hand, take another height, playing with real world hockey stars. And even he succeeded, and all thanks to the iron fortitude and strong hardening of a real hockey player. Helmut always said that membership in the club CSKA has always been a great honor for him. Probably, in his place every athlete would be proud of it. At some point, Balderis’s career in CSKA was significantly shaken, he was accused of an insulting loss to the American team. This hurt the pride of the hockey player very much, and he preferred to return to Riga, periodically practicing in Japan and America.
The further fate of Balderis Helmut
After the legendary hockey player left the sport, he did not give up ice and hockey, worked as a coach, as the director of the Sports Palace in Riga, served as vice president of the hockey association, practiced his favorite sport on a voluntary basis. A lot of journalists and simply fans of Helmut have repeatedly asked him why he left sports, because he was a tremendous success. Helmut without hesitation said that he was always drawn home to the city where he was born and raised, graduated from school, experienced his first victories and defeats. Leaving the sport, Helmut decided to go in for business, at one time he headed the workshop of the pharmaceutical industry, but did not find himself in this business.
Helmut Balderis, a hockey player whose biography was considered in the article, currently heads an agricultural company that grows and sells natural products: milk, meat, vegetables and other vegetable and food crops.