By Oleksandr HONCHARUK, Petro MARUSENKO, The Day
The last Thursday of every month is a special day at the sport complex
of the Kyiv Military Lyceum. If the uninitiated looks in at a cozy second-floor
office on this day, he is sure to be surprised, seeing a whole constellation
of legendary Ukrainian wrestlers. Olympic, world, and Soviet Union champions
Huliutkin, Saunin, Syniavsky, Kuleshov, Trostiansky - you simply cannot
count all those who get together at these traditional soirees organized
by our famous super heavyweight of the 1950s Ivan Bohdan. The host himself,
a hoary king of the ballroom, sits at the head of a table strewn with various
homemade dishes. You can hear endless stories, reminiscences, and anecdotes
you will never find in any book.
On an unusual Thursday like this, The Day correspondents met
the organizer of these informal get-togethers of veteran wrestlers Ivan
Bohdan and asked him to recall his younger years.
"Were you ordered to take up wrestling?"
"Yes, when I was drafted into the army in 1950, the local bosses at
once set an eye on me and sent me to the gymnasium. I was almost 190 cm
tall. I had worked on a collective farm since I was a small boy, doing
any hard work I was told to. So in the army, they exempted me from daily
drills so I could train and defend the honor of our military district on
the mat in the heavyweight category.
"Like hell I will, I thought. My father never ate such bread and neither
will I. And, instead of training in the gymnasium, I would go to the movies
or simply roam around Dnipropetrovsk where I lived at the time. I would
miss every other training session. Briefly, I went to a Kyiv tournament
like a stupid ox, knowing nothing. The boys showed me techniques right
in the railway car."
"And what do you remember most from your first appearance on the
Kyiv mat? Were you scared?"
"Oh, nothing special at all. I was ashamed. Morals were strict in my
native village: it was unthinkable to walk around in underwear in your
own yard, let alone in the street! And here is the capital and lots of
girls among the audience. This was perhaps the factor why I wound up second
in the tournament."
"But, further on, everything became clear: you tasted victory, and
we were told that the soldiers' mess sergeant was ordered to feed Ivan
Bohdan all he wanted. So you got to like wrestling."
"Well, I never liked it."
"This is fantastic. Not to like what brought you fame as a twice
world and Olympic champion? Incredible!"
"I have already said: I was forced to wrestle. The army is the army.
One is detailed to KP and peel potatoes, another, sorry, to dig latrines,
and I was sent to the mat. This was routine work for me, which I tried
to do honestly."
"Were you soon invited to the USSR national team only for such diligence?"
"No, this was akin to hazing in the army. I was taken there to be a
beanbag. In those times there were no big stuffed dolls for the wrestlers
to try out their throws on. So I became a living beanbag for team leaders
Oleksandr Mazur and Johannes Kotkas.
"The former had been wrestling in a circus for a long time. Never before
and after did I see a rubber boy like that! He would press into you his
belly, sending my feet up to the ceiling, then he would bend over backwards,
reach my legs with the back of his head, turn over and throw all his body
on me. He had first won the European championship back in 1934 and bagged
the World Cup twenty years later. He was also a unique person. Weighing
120 kg, he would easily walk on his hands. So they would throw me around
like a beanbag. Every time I went to the mat as if it were the gallows:
I don't know what would have been the end of it - by all accounts, this
pair could have broken my neck or my back. But I was taught one counter-technique..."
"According to your friends, you didn't have a master-strike technique,
but the whole arsenal of them was stunningly large. Many well-known wrestlers
even complained: you can't possibly find a key to Bohdan, he's always different,
you never know what he will do."
"One can always get used to a standard and traditional action trained
to automatic perfection. But it made no difference to me whether to throw
opponents to the left or right. And this worried them."
"You were born February 29, i.e., you can only mark your birthday
in a year of Olympic Games. So it was decreed by fate: to give yourself
a precious gift in one of these years?"
"In general, I thought it over and concluded, why not? I can't forget
that win in Rome, for it cost me so much effort! Take, for instance, the
bout with the first Olympic and world champion Wilfried Dietrich from West
Germany. Everybody called him the king of wrestling. And he really was.
It's no laughing matter: Dietrich took part in eight wrestling tournaments
and five Olympics both in free and Greco-Roman styles. Can one possibly
forget his fantastic victory over the American super-giant Chris Taylor
who was 195 cm tall and weighed 200 kg? While Dietrich, like me, was a
little over 100 kg. So the comparatively diminutive Wilfried carried out
what was later called the throw of the century: he hurled the American
over himself, staying in a bent-over-backward position. Imagine what would
have been left of the German if the throw had failed and the 200 kg. landed
on him. And how did he hug the rival? I once tried to do so, but my hands
failed to meet around Taylor's waist.
"So I wrestled Dietrich in Rome. I gripped him and he me, we spun off
like a top and flew to the mat's edges. And then I jumped and made an eight-meter
swan dive in the air and came down on top of him. They asked whether the
guy was crazy."
"Today Ukraine has almost forgotten about victories in the most prestigious
weight category."
"Little wonder. Our present-day heavyweights are straightforward. They
push around, rather than wrestle. One of them will gain a point by the
grace of God and immediately retreat to deep defense without even imitating
wrestling."
"Add to this that in your times a bout lasted 20 minutes and now
only 5."
"We didn't even occur to us to mark time or relax. Aram Yaltyrian would
sometimes spin such a whirl that he won up to 50 points. Not a minute of
rest. If you relaxed, you were eaten alive. This is what Oleksandr Medvid
did, for example. But today coaches drool over weak athletes, trying to
get off with little blood."
"You now head the Kyiv Association of Sports Veterans. You still
can't calm down."
"And who will help the people who sacrificed their health for sport,
but the state left them empty-handed, thus thanking them for their victories
and records? Whoever seriously practiced sports knows what kind of an excruciating
job it is. I am perhaps well-off with my military pension, but there are
champions who really are eking out a miserable existence. This is why we
set up this organization and started commercial activity. For example,
today we grant money to those in especially dire straits, about fifty people:
50 hryvnias a month. It is like in wrestling: if you dodge and relax, you'll
be eaten alive, and I don't want that at all!"
