2023-07-31 14:00:00
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THE FORGOTTEN HEROES OF OLYMPISM 2/5. Gymnast Larissa Latynina has kept the record for the most Olympic medals for forty-eight years, in anonymity.
By Julien Rebucci Larissa Latynina in discussion with Soviet astronauts Guerman Titov and Yuri Gagarin, in 1962. © RIA Novosti/SPUTNIK/SIPA / SIPA / RIA Novosti/SPUTNIK/SIPA Published on 07/31/2023 at 2:00 p.m.
Larissa Latynina assures her and repeats it, she is not jealous. In 2012, then aged 77, the time had come, she told herself, for her incredible record to finally fall. “It was time for a man to finally be able to achieve what a woman had accomplished a long time ago,” she joked. It was done on July 31, during the London Olympics. By winning his 18th and 19th Olympic medals on the same day – silver in the 200-meter butterfly and gold in the 4 x 200-meter freestyle relay – American swimmer Michael Phelps erased the gymnast’s performance from the shelves. Soviet Union, which had lasted forty-eight years, established between the 1956 and 1964 Olympic Games.
In truth, Latynina can thank Phelps. By erasing it from the history books, the one…
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