Elena Mukhina became famous overnight, precisely in 1978, when she won the absolute world championship. Two years later, she was severely injured and was bedridden for 26 years.

Mukhina was born on June 1, 1960 in Moscow. Elena lost both her parents at the age of five. She was brought up by Anna Ivanovna - her grandmother. Since childhood, unlike her peers who dreamed of becoming figure skaters, Elena wanted to be a gymnast.

“One day an unknown woman appeared at the lesson. Introduced herself: Olezhko Antonina Pavlovna, master of sports. And he says: who wants to do gymnastics - raise your hand. I almost screamed with joy, ”Elena Vyacheslavovna herself later recalled.

Mukhina, thanks to her unprecedented capacity for work, talent and perseverance, immediately showed herself. The successes of the gymnast did not go unnoticed, and she got into Dynamo, to the famous coach Alexander Eglit. Eglit himself soon began working at CSKA and did not want to leave his students. So the 14-year-old candidate for master of sports ended up in the CSKA club. In 1974, Eglit invited his colleague Mikhail Klimenko to take his ward to his group. Klimenko, who had previously trained only men, looked at Mukhina in action and agreed. The whole short career of Elena Mukhina was connected with this coach.

In two years, the gymnast made an incredible breakthrough and already in the summer of 1976 she had a chance to go to the Olympics in Montreal. Her then program with unique combinations was called "space". But due to the instability of performances, sports leaders were afraid to take her to Canada.

Mukhina received her first serious injury at the age of 15. In 1975, during the Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR, which was held by gymnasts in Leningrad, Mukhina landed unsuccessfully on her head in a foam pit. When x-rays were taken, it turned out that during the fall, the spinous processes of the cervical vertebrae had been torn off. Lena was admitted to the hospital, but every day, after a medical round, a coach came for her and took her to the gym, where, having removed the orthopedic collar from her neck, Mukhina trained until the evening. A few days later, for the first time, she felt that her legs began to go numb during training and a feeling of some strange weakness appeared, which no longer passed.

Mukhina's first finest hour struck the following year. At the USSR Championship, she becomes the second in the all-around and goes to the adult European Championship in Prague, where she is slightly inferior in the individual standings to the famous Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci and wins three gold medals on separate apparatus, conquering the judges and fans with the highest technique. It was in the Czech Republic that Mukhina first performed the most difficult element on the uneven bars, later named after her - Mukhina's loop.

In 1977, when Mukhina was training at home before the World Championships, she hit her side on the lower pole of the bars so that it split. “It feels like I broke my ribs,” Lena later said. - But then, after sitting for ten minutes on the mats, in a semi-conscious state, she also worked freestyle and balance beam. When it got really bad, she went up to the coach, but he only gritted through his teeth: “You are always looking for an excuse to do nothing.”

In 1978, two weeks before the All-Union Youth Games, Mukhina knocked out her thumb on the uneven bars so that it completely came out of the joint. She corrected it herself - clenching her teeth and closing her eyes. But the injuries did not end there: during the warm-up before the competition, she did not calculate the run-up (they washed the floor in the hall and destroyed the marks made with chalk), fell when landing from a jump and hit her head. The choreographer secretly, so as not to attract the attention of the coaches, wore ammonia to her, and Mukhina, having stepped off the next projectile, clamped the cotton wool in her palms.

The year 1978 became triumphant in Mukhina's career. She wins the title of the strongest gymnast in the country, and then wins the world championship in France. First - in the team, and a day later she became the absolute champion, beating, among others, the absolute champion of the Games-76 Nadya Komenech. She made it to the finals on three apparatus out of four and collected another complete set of awards, winning silver on uneven bars and balance beam and sharing gold on floor exercise with two-time Montreal Olympic champion Nelly Kim. Elena Mukhina became the fourth Soviet gymnast after Galina Shamray, Larisa Latynina and Lyudmila Turishcheva, who became the absolute world champion.

This insane tension could not go unnoticed. When Mukhina and I periodically met in the hall, she looked inhibited, often cried. Once she said that she did not have time to completely cross the avenue in front of the CSKA sports complex while the green light was on - she did not have enough strength. At the same time, her free program on almost all shells continued to be the most difficult in the world.

In the fall of 1979, Mukhina broke her leg at demonstration performances in England. A month and a half passed in a cast, but when it was removed, it turned out that the broken bones had dispersed. They were put in place, the plaster was put on again, and the next day (the coach insisted on this) Mukhina was already in the gym - she worked on shells, landing on dismounts on one leg. Two months after the cast was removed, she was already doing all her combinations.

“Klimenko was always terribly nervous before the competition, pulled me,” Mukhina recalled. - Probably because he perfectly understood that his own well-being and career directly depend on whether I get into the national team or not. I took my training very seriously. There were cases when, in order to drive off excess weight, she ran at night and went to the gym in the morning. At the same time, I constantly had to listen that I was a redneck and should be happy that they paid attention to me and gave me a chance.

At the last training camp in her life in Minsk in early July 1980, Mukhina arrived with ankles and knees sick from overloads, and besides, she began to have inflammation of the articular bag of the hand. The USSR national gymnastics team was preparing for the Olympic Games. Mukhina's coach, Mikhail Klimenko, left for Moscow for a couple of days (on the sidelines there was talk that Mukhina might not be included in the main team, and Klimenko went to "defend" the student at the top). Lena worked independently and at one of the training sessions she decided to try a unique combination. Its essence was that after the flask and the most difficult (one and a half somersaults with a turn of 540 degrees) jump, the landing should not have taken place on the feet, as usual, but head down, in a somersault. The gymnast unsuccessfully pushed, there was not enough height, and in front of the head coach of the women's team Aman Shaniyazov, the gost coach Lidia Ivanova and the coach of the acrobatics team (there was no one else in the hall), she crashed into the floor, breaking her neck. According to one of the coaches, she crashed because she simply didn’t push with that very injured leg in the run.

During the first eight years, she was operated on several times. The first operation - on the spine - was performed only a day after the injury in Minsk. It lasted several hours, but the result (largely due to delay) was not very comforting: due to the fact that the brain remained in a severely compressed state for so long, Mukhina remained almost completely paralyzed.

In the summer of 1985, Elena was offered to contact Valentin Dikul. However, as a result of huge loads, after a couple of months, she again ended up in the hospital - her kidneys failed. After another operation, a fistula formed in the side of the gymnast, which did not heal for a year and a half. Each time, with tremendous difficulty, doctors managed to get Mukhina out of a postoperative coma - the body refused to fight for life.

After all these countless operations, I decided that if I want to live, then I need to run away from hospitals, Lena told me. - Then I realized that I need to radically change my attitude to life. Not to envy others, but to learn to enjoy what is available to me. Otherwise, you can go crazy. I realized that the commandments “do not think badly”, “do not act badly”, “do not envy” are not just words. That there is a direct connection between them and how a person feels. I began to feel these connections. And I realized that, compared with the ability to think, the lack of the ability to move is such nonsense ...

Of course, at first I was terribly sorry for myself. Especially when she returned home for the first time after the injury, from where she left on her own legs and where everything still assumed the presence of a person on her feet. In addition, almost everyone who came to visit me asked: “Are you going to sue?”

All this time she never gave up. A few years after a terrible fall, she could sit in an armchair, hold a spoon, write a little. Teachers came to her, lectured, took exams. She managed to graduate from the Moscow Institute of Physical Education.

When an injury occurs, the question always arises: “Who is to blame?” When I asked Mukhina what she herself thinks about this, Lena answered evasively: “I taught Klimenko that I can train and perform with any injuries ...”

According to an interview with Larisa Latynina, Mikhail Klimenko was struck by her injury. Mukhina did not expect to be added to the roster of the Soviet Olympic team. There was little doubt that the Soviet women's gymnastics team would win the gold medal at the Summer Olympics as it had at previous Games. Despite this, Klymenko wanted Mukhina to train so that he would become an "olympic champion coach". After these events, Klimenko emigrated to Italy.

They did not know then at what cost these trainings were given to Elena. Leaving the hotel for training, each time she kept her eyes on the passing cars, automatically guessing: if she throws herself under the wheels, will she have time to slow down or not. She tried on the ledge outside the hotel room window and calculated how she should jump, so that she would be sure. When, in that nine-year-old conversation, she told me about it, I asked in horror why she had not quit gymnastics earlier?

"I don't know," came the reply. - I saw my fall several times in a dream. I saw how they carried me out of the hall. I knew that sooner or later it would really happen. I felt like an animal being whipped down an endless corridor. But again and again she came to the hall. Perhaps this is fate. And they are not offended by fate.

Did she offend herself? Externally, no. When I learned about Mukhina's death from the same friend who once brought me to her house, our eight-year-old conversation involuntarily surfaced in my memory, stood before my eyes. “You don’t need to help me,” Lena objected quite calmly to some of our attempts to straighten the pillows, to move something closer. "I shouldn't let myself get too used to helping others."

Mukhina never sought to communicate with journalists. Even a short period of public attention, when in 1983 IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch presented her with the highest award of the Olympic movement - the Olympic Order, became quite painful for her. With all the horror of her physical condition, Mukhina managed to retain the ability to surprisingly calmly talk on any topic and call a spade a spade. Therefore, all that naked window dressing, which was the award fuss with visits to a small apartment of journalists and photographers, did not please her. Rather, offended.

It was difficult to describe her state in words. Elena could neither stand, nor sit, nor hold a spoon in her hand, nor even dial a phone number. In order to be able to read something, Lena resorted to a trick proven over the years: she asked to attach a sheet of text to the wall at eye level with a pin. When talking on the phone, she lay her ear on the receiver and could talk like that for quite a long time.

She learned to withdraw into herself - into some unreal world for healthy people, where she traced the chains of origins, heredity. I sincerely believed that a person can have several lives - in different time spaces. She assured me that she sees not only the past, but also the future of the people with whom she communicates. She was happy to talk about it. This hobby (although one can call it a hobby that, in essence, became a life) had different consequences. Including - heavy for others. It was Mukhina who at one time dissuaded one of her close friends from sending a newborn child with a severe heart defect to the hospital. Convinced that the baby simply will not survive. As a result, a few years later, the child was still operated on, but the family broke up: the child's father was never able to forgive either Mukhina or his wife for the fact that the child was in the hospital so late.

As her close friend told me, Mukhina noticeably passed when she found out that her former coach returned from Italy, where he worked for many years, to Moscow. To meet with Klimenko, who in her mind remained the most terrible ghost of a past life, she flatly refused.

The death of her grandmother in the spring of 2005 was a colossal blow for Lena. She did not want to give her to a nursing home, despite the fact that the 90-year-old woman herself required constant care. And, having already lost her mind and feeling that she was dying, she constantly shouted to her granddaughter: “I will not leave you. Come with me!".

Mukhina also survived this nightmare. She asked, when Anna Ivanovna was gone, only one thing: when the time comes, under no circumstances should they bury her next to her grandmother. And don't do an autopsy. Leave alone. She had almost no contact with her father. He himself - still a young man - began to appear in the house only after he found out that Mukhina, through the incredible efforts of many people, managed to “break through” the personal presidential pension. Here I visited. For money...

She's probably just tired of living. I'm tired of constantly looking for an answer why in our country anything can be valuable, but not human life. Even in conversations with the closest people, which included, by and large, only two friends, Mukhina never allowed herself to complain about her fate. Although to think about it - what a horror it is that the only variety in her life was rare excursions in a wheelchair to the corridor or to the kitchen. With one single purpose: to see what is happening there - behind the walls of the room in which she spent 26 years ...

Elena Mukhina died on December 22, 2006. A memorial service in her honor was held on December 27. Elena was buried at the Troekurovsky cemetery in Moscow.

References

• Elena Vaitsekhovskaya "Elena Mukhina: A Tragedy 26 Years Long". Sport-Express, 26.12.2006
• Andrey Uspensky "Fly's Loop" Novaya Gazeta, No. 38, May 29, 2003

Honored Master of Sports
Absolute World Champion (1978)
Champion in team championship and floor exercise (1978)
Silver medalist in uneven bars and balance beam (1978)
European Champion in uneven bars (1977, 1979)
European Champion in balance beam and floor exercises (1977)
Silver medalist in all-around and floor exercise (1977, 1979)
Bronze medalist in vault (1977)
World Cup winner in uneven bars and balance beam (1977)
Absolute champion of the USSR (1978)
Champion of the USSR in exercises on uneven bars (1978, 1977)
Champion of the USSR in floor exercises (1977)
Silver medalist in all-around and USSR Cup in all-around (1977)
Bronze medalist of the USSR Championship in uneven bars (1977)
Bronze medalist of the USSR championship in floor exercises (1978)
She was awarded the highest badge of Olympic honor with the Silver Olympic Order of the International Olympic Committee
Cavalier of the Order of the Badge of Honor

At the age of two, she was left without a mother, later she did not get along very well with her father, and her grandmother was engaged in her upbringing.Elena was a very unsmiling and shy girl, she wanted to become a gymnast since childhood and later said in an interview: “Once an unknown woman appeared at the lesson. Introduced herself: Olezhko Antonina Pavlovna, master of sports. And he says: who wants to do gymnastics - raise your hand. I almost screamed with joy."

Thanks to her hard work, talent and perseverance, Mukhina soon got to coach Alexander Eglit at the Dynamo sports club, but later Eglit went to work at CSKA and took his students there, among whom was 14-year-old candidate for master of sports Elena Mukhina. In 1974, Eglit suggested to his colleague Mikhail Klimenko to take his ward to his group, and Klimenko, who had previously trained only men, agreed. The whole sports career of Elena Mukhina was subsequently connected with this coach. The master of sports in gymnastics, journalist Vladimir Golubev, said: “I met the brothers Mikhail and Viktor Klimenko in 1967. I often visited the CSKA gym. Misha then coached Viktor and was an incredible maximalist. A few years later, Mikhail showed me Lena Mukhina, very modest, very sweet. He said: "She will be the world champion." I didn’t believe it in my heart - such quiet people don’t know how to get angry, and without anger you won’t get into the champions. Guessed wrong. Klimenko immediately and firmly decided that Mukhina's trump card would be incredible complexity. “Designed” a fantastic program for Lena. Mukhina was an exception to the rule. Only at the age of 14 did she begin to study such a “basic” element as a double somersault - at this age all gymnasts can do it. When I looked at Lena, I compared her with Lyudmila Turishcheva. The same figure, the same strict, but internally soft, natural style, the same composure and seriousness.

A sports career is associated with injuries, and they often happened to Mukhina. In 1975, at the Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR, after an unsuccessful landing, she suffered a detachment of the spinous processes of the cervical vertebrae. With such an injury, it is subsequently impossible to turn your head, but Klimenko came to her hospital every day and took her to the gym, where Mukhina continued to work hard without an orthopedic "collar" necessary for the rehabilitation of such injuries. She overcame incredible pain, not being afraid to go to training after chasing rib fractures, concussion, inflammation of the joints, twisted ankles and knocked out fingers. Often she hid her injuries, sniffed ammonia and went to the next projectile. For two years of such hard work, the gymnast made an incredible breakthrough, and by the summer of 1976 she prepared a program with unique combinations, with which she had a chance to go to the Montreal Olympics. But due to the instability of her performances at that moment, sports leaders were afraid to take her to Canada.

Mukhina's real finest hour struck in 1977, when she became second in the all-around at the USSR Championship and went to the European Championship in Prague, where she only slightly lost in the individual standings to the Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci and won three gold medals on individual apparatus, subduing the judges and fans with the highest technology.

It was in the Czech Republic that Mukhina first performed the most difficult element on the uneven bars, later named after her - Mukhina's loop.

Nelli Kim said: “Lena had a miracle element on the uneven bars, which was called “Mukhina's loop”. There used to be a “Korbut loop”, and then the “Mukhina loop” appeared, when Klimenko, at the suggestion of his brother Viktor, decided to improve the “Korbut loop” - something amazing happened. The audience gasps and closes their eyes, and Mukhina, as in a circus, soars over the bars and flutters in the air. But winning in sports doesn't come easy. During training before the World Championships, Elena hit her side on the lower pole of the bars so that it split. In an interview, Mukhina said: “It feels like I broke my ribs. But then, after sitting for ten minutes on the mats, in a semi-conscious state, she also worked freestyle and balance beam. When it got really bad, she approached the coach, who, without understanding the situation, replied: “You are always looking for an excuse to do nothing.”

1978 also became a triumphant year in Mukhina's career. She won the title of the strongest gymnast in the country, and then at the World Championships in France she became the fourth Soviet gymnast after Galina Shamray, Larisa Latynina and Lyudmila Turishcheva, who became the absolute world champion. First, she won the team championship, reached the final on three events out of four and collected another complete set of awards, winning silver on uneven bars and balance beam, and sharing gold on floor exercise with two-time Montreal Olympic champion Nelly Kim, who said in an interview: “ We came to Strasbourg with the following team: Elena Mukhina, Maria Filatova, Natalya Shaposhnikova, Tatiana Arzhannikova, Svetlana Agapova and myself. This team became the "golden" one! But the absolute winner was Elena Mukhina - a real champion, without any reservations. The most difficult program, virtuosity, softness, femininity. ... We returned to Moscow - October, autumn, cold, and we all have spring in our hearts and smiles from ear to ear. But, of course, Mukhina and Andrianov were greeted especially solemnly - they are absolute champions.

But this success was given to Elena with great difficulty. Two weeks before the All-Union Youth Games in 1978, Mukhina knocked out her thumb on the uneven bars, and he completely left the joint. She corrected it herself, but the injuries did not end there: during the warm-up before the competition, she did not calculate the run-up after the floor was washed in the hall and the marks made with chalk were erased, she fell when landing from a jump and hit her head. The choreographer secretly, so as not to attract the attention of the coaches, wore ammonia to her, and Mukhina, having stepped off the next projectile, clamped the cotton wool in her palms. She worked everything without a warm-up and won. Her free program on almost all apparatuses was the most difficult in the world.

This insane tension could not go unnoticed. When friends met with Mukhina, she often looked very tired, her movements were slow, he herself could sometimes burst into tears. Elena even said that she did not have time to completely cross the avenue in front of the CSKA sports complex while the green light was on - she did not have enough strength. In the fall of 1979, Mukhina broke her leg at demonstration performances in England, spent a month and a half in a cast, but when it was removed, it turned out that the broken bones had dispersed. They were put in place, the plaster was put on again, and the coach insisted that the next day Mukhina began working on shells. She landed on dismounts on one leg, and two months after the plaster was removed, she did all her combinations. Elena Mukhina said: “Klimenko was always terribly nervous before the competition, pulled me. Probably because he perfectly understood that his own well-being and career directly depend on whether I get into the national team or not. I took my training very seriously. There were cases when, in order to drive off excess weight, she ran at night and went to the gym in the morning. At the same time, I constantly had to listen that I was a redneck and should be happy that they paid attention to me and gave me a chance.

However, at that time she was the only gymnast in CSKA who could get to the Olympics in Moscow. After hard training, Mukhina became the European champion in the uneven bars, the silver medalist in the all-around and floor exercises, and on the eve of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow she was one of the main contenders for gold. Nelly Kim said in an interview: “Lena was the most hardworking of us. Due to injury, she missed the 79 World Championships and now worked tirelessly, making up for lost time, and dreaming of becoming a participant in the Olympic Games. Elena dreamed of winning these prestigious competitions and becoming an Olympic champion. But, unfortunately, this dream was not destined to come true. In training shortly before the Games, when performing a complex element, Mukhina received a severe spinal injury and was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life. The tragedy happened in early July 1980 in Minsk, where the USSR national gymnastics team was preparing for the Olympic Games. Mukhina arrived at the last gathering in her life with ankles and knees sick from overloads, and besides, she began to have inflammation of the articular bag of the hand. Mikhail Klimenko left for Moscow, Elena worked independently and at one of the training sessions she decided to try a unique combination - after a flask and the most difficult (one and a half somersaults with a turn of 540 degrees) landing should not have happened on her feet, as usual, but head down, in a somersault . Leaving, Klimenko forbade her to do this jump on the platform. He said: “Lena, no initiative. You will perform somersaults only in front of my eyes, with insurance. But the student did not listen to him. The gymnast unsuccessfully pushed, she did not have enough height, and in front of the head coach of the women's team Aman Shaniyazov, the coach of Lidia Ivanova and the coach of the acrobatics team, she fell to the floor, injuring her cervical vertebra. According to one of the coaches, she crashed because she simply didn’t push with that very injured leg in the run. Later in an interview, Elena said: “I saw my fall several times in a dream. I saw how they carried me out of the hall. I knew that sooner or later it would really happen. I felt like an animal being whipped down an endless corridor. But again and again she came to the hall. Perhaps this is fate. And they are not offended by fate. Elena Davydova became the Olympic champion in all-around at the Games in Moscow. After the award, she said: “Of course, I am happy with my victory, but another gymnast, Elena Mukhina, should stand on the podium. She deserves more than all of us."

Gymnastics coach Tamara Zhaleeva said: “Aboutnever blamed anyone. It's hard to remember that time, it's just scary ... Her coach left that day, Mikhail Klimenko. Left her alone to train. She trained ... Also, after all - how to blame that she wanted the best? Aspired to get into the team at the Olympic Games. You can imagine - gymnasts are always aimed at something. It happened on the third of July - they called me and said that trouble had happened to Lena, and I was then the head coach of Moscow. And it was my girl, my athlete, I also wanted her to get to the Games ... And at that time Lena was overcome by injuries. The coach was tough. Here, the injuries have not yet been fully healed, and the coach has already loaded her. Probably, and this to some extent affected. She tried a difficult element that day. I thought everything would work out. “I did, I fell and I don’t understand: why is everyone running to me? I want to get up, but I can’t get up, but my head is clear. I want to move my hand but I can't. And then I just thought and said to myself: this is a disaster. They brought me to the hospital, they put ammonia on me, and I am fully conscious and turn my head all the time so that they don’t give it to me, ”she told me this when she was already in the hospital in Moscow. We talked a lot later that if she had been operated on in time, maybe ... But what was the use of these conversations already? When she was injured, she had a one-room apartment - the Moscow City Council changed her to a two-room apartment, they bought a stroller, but they could no longer return her to normal life.

The first operation on the spine was performed by Mukhina only a day after the injury. It lasted several hours, but due to the delay, the result was largely disappointing - Mukhina remained almost completely paralyzed. After another operation, a fistula formed in the side of the gymnast, which did not heal for a year and a half. Each time, with tremendous difficulty, doctors managed to get Mukhina out of a postoperative coma - the body refused to fight for life. Elena said in an interview: “After all these countless operations, I decided that if I want to live, then I need to escape from hospitals. Then I realized that I needed to radically change my attitude to life. Not to envy others, but to learn to enjoy what is available to me. Otherwise, you can go crazy. I realized that the commandments “do not think badly”, “do not act badly”, “do not envy” are not just words. That there is a direct connection between them and how a person feels. I began to feel these connections. And I realized that, compared with the ability to think, the lack of the ability to move is such nonsense ... Of course, at first I was terribly sorry for myself. Especially when she returned home for the first time after the injury, from where she left on her own feet, and where everything still assumed the presence of a person on her feet. In addition, almost everyone who came to visit me asked: “Are you going to sue?”When the journalist asked Mukhina what she thought about this, Lena replied: “I taught Klimenko that I can train and perform with any injuries ...” Absolute world champion in 1966, two-time winner of the Olympic Games in Mexico City in 1968 Mikhail Voronin said: “Mukhina has always been distinguished by fantastic performance. She obeyed the coach implicitly. By the way, many blame the gymnast's mentor Mikhail Klimenko for this tragedy. Say, he was a terrible despot. But, in my opinion, this is just a terrible coincidence. One can envy the professional attitude of Mikhail Yakovlevich to his work. I actually grew up with him and I know what I'm talking about. And how many wonderful athletes he brought up.

For eight years, Mukhina was operated on several times, and after numerous operations in the summer of 1985, Elena was offered to turn to Valentin Dikul. However, as a result of huge loads, after a couple of months, she again ended up in the hospital - her kidneys failed. But Mukhina did not give up. A few years after a terrible fall, she could sit in an armchair, hold a spoon, write a little. Teachers came to her, lectured, took exams. She managed to graduate from the Moscow Institute of Physical Education. Looking at her, it's hard to believe that she was once called a coward for being afraid to learn new elements. Years of loneliness made Lena take a different look at the world, turn to God.In 1980, Elena Mukhina was awarded the Order of the Badge of Honor, two years later she was awarded the highest Olympic honor - the Olympic Order of the IOC.

The death of her grandmother in the spring of 2005 was a colossal blow for Lena. She did not want to give her to a nursing home, despite the fact that the 90-year-old woman herself required constant care. Having lost her mind and feeling that she was dying, the once caring woman and the closest person in the world constantly shouted to her granddaughter: “I will not leave you. Come with me!". After that, Mukhina asked her friends after the death of Anna Ivanovna - when the time comes, under no circumstances should they bury her next to her grandmother. And don't do an autopsy. Tamara Zhaleeva said: “ As soon as she was injured, the Sports Committee, and especially Lidia Gavrilovna Ivanova, made every effort to provide her with medical staff. They turned to the medical institute - they found students who looked after her. One of them, Nina Zaitseva, has been coming to Lena all these years, she has been a doctor for a long time. Who else? Coaches familiar from CSKA. I remember we bought her a mattress so that there would be no bedsores - at first ... we still didn’t know what would happen and how. But for the last six years, Lena Gurina has been with her, with whom she performed together. It was such a wonderful tandem - two gymnasts, they understood each other very well. Lena herself told me: “Do you know, Tamara Andreevna, Lena Gurina and I are watching and deciding: how is this music? Suitable for this gymnast or not? Yulia Lozhechko, for example, or Anya Pavlova? I say: no, it doesn’t fit - and it turns out that Lena thinks so too. For the last few years, she has been lying all the time. In the early years, we put her in a chair, took her somewhere, and then, ten years later, she got tired of all this. I told her: "Len, how long will you lie there?" And she: “Tamara Andreevna, not all at once. Everything is going in stages for me, you see, I have not grown decrepit, it’s just that nothing is moving for me yet. ” Her hands did not work, and she could twirl with her whole arm. I read a lot, watched television, analyzed - I was very smart. She was very interested in space, she believed that signals were possible. In recent years, Lena has become a believer; although she was immovable, and cared for her grandmother, she had a healing gift. She treated her. And my grandmother lived to be 92 years old. I was always looking for new things - in science, in search of treatment ... After all, until the last days she lived in gymnastics. She looked through all the championships - she was presented with a sports channel - and was interested in everything. But this year it hurt a lot ... I was with her just last week. Before that, she was sick - she says, do not come. And then I went in and directly gasped: “Lenk, well, you look so good!” - “Yes,” he says, “you know, I noticed myself: my face became the same as before.” And laughs. And the face really was like that - without puffiness. I asked again: “What hurts you, that you are getting sick this year?” And she suddenly says: “Tamara Andreevna, how long do they live with my diagnosis? You know how many operations I have had, everything hurts. And the kidneys, and the liver, and the heart - the whole village. And I'm lying. After all, they don’t live that long!” I tell her: “Helen, dear ... Don’t think about it!” - "How not to think - I already live so much." That's how we talked. I had no idea that everything would happen so quickly. I went to see her on the 21st, and Lenochka Gurina said: “She fell asleep, didn’t want to be woken up.” I left - I didn’t even say hello, nothing, and somehow my heart ached so much ... The next day she died. At three o'clock in the afternoon she said: "Lena, I feel very bad." And she began to choke. She was gone at five o'clock."

Elena Mukhina died on December 27, 2006 and was buried in Moscow at the Troekurovsky cemetery.

The fate of one of the strongest gymnasts in the world in the late 70s became one of the most tragic in the history of domestic and world sports.

Used materials:

Text of the article "The tragedy of 26 years", author E.Vaytsekhovskaya
The text of the article in the newspaper "Moskovsky Komsomolets" from 27.12.2006
Text of the article “Elena Mukhina died”, author P. Krasnov
Site materials www.rezeptsport.ru

TRAGEDY 26 YEARS LONG

Elena Mukhina passed away last Friday. In the history of gymnastics, there was no person with a more tragic fate. For 26 years, she was bedridden due to a severe injury - a fracture of the spine. I could neither stand, nor sit, nor hold a spoon in my hand, nor even dial a phone number. At first, her grandmother looked after her, for the last five years - a friend. Also a former gymnast, who ended her career a long time ago and became attached to Mukhina with all her heart.

Their life was completely closed. Mukhina never sought to communicate with journalists. Even a short period of public attention, when several years ago IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch presented her with the highest award of the Olympic movement - the Olympic Order, became quite painful for her. With all the horror of her physical condition, Mukhina managed to retain the ability to surprisingly calmly talk on any topic and call a spade a spade. Therefore, all that naked window dressing, which was the award fuss with visits to the House of Journalists and Photographers, did not please her. Rather, offended.

I visited Mukhina's house only once - in 1997. At one time we were quite familiar: we played in the second half of the 70s for the same club - CSKA. I remember the state of spiritual horror at the entrance to the apartment: how and what to talk about with a person who has been deprived of elementary life opportunities for so many years? But the subsequent shock turned out to be even stronger: in more than three hours of conversation with the gymnast, I never remembered that I was in front of a disabled person. So much light, love for people and reason, and sometimes - humor was radiated by my motionless interlocutor.

She will never agree to an interview, our mutual friend warned me, to whom I honestly admitted that I was collecting material for a large magazine essay on sports injuries. However, when Mukhina and I were already saying goodbye, and I couldn’t figure out how to be more tactful in asking her for permission to publish at least part of our conversation, Lena suddenly said to herself: “You want to write about this, right? Write ...”

The tragedy happened in early July 1980 in Minsk, where the USSR national gymnastics team was preparing for the Olympic Games. Mukhina's coach, Mikhail Klimenko, left for Moscow for a couple of days (on the sidelines there was talk that Mukhina might not be included in the main team, and Klimenko went to "defend" the student at the top). Lena worked independently and at one of the training sessions she decided to try a unique combination. Its essence was that after the flask and the most difficult (one and a half somersaults with a turn of 540 degrees) jump, the landing should not have taken place on the feet, as usual, but head down, in a somersault. The gymnast unsuccessfully pushed, there was not enough height, and in front of the head coach of the women's team Aman Shaniyazov, the gost coach Lidia Ivanova and the coach of the acrobatics team (there was no one else in the hall), she crashed into the floor, breaking her neck.

During the first eight years, she was operated on several times. The first operation - on the spine - was performed only a day after the injury in Minsk. It lasted several hours, but the result (largely due to delay) was not very comforting: Mukhina remained almost completely paralyzed. Then her kidneys began to fail. After another operation, a fistula formed in the side of the gymnast, which did not heal for a year and a half. Each time, with tremendous difficulty, doctors managed to get Mukhina out of a postoperative coma - the body refused to fight for life.

After all these countless operations, I decided that if I want to live, then I need to run away from hospitals, Lena told me. - Then I realized that I need to radically change my attitude to life. Not to envy others, but to learn to enjoy what is available to me. Otherwise, you can go crazy. I realized that the commandments "do not think badly", "do not act badly", "do not envy" are not just words. That there is a direct connection between them and how a person feels. I began to feel these connections. And I realized that, compared with the ability to think, the lack of the ability to move is such nonsense ...

Of course, at first I was terribly sorry for myself. Especially when she returned home for the first time after the injury, from where she left on her own legs and where everything still assumed the presence of a person on her feet. In addition, almost everyone who came to visit me asked: "Are you going to sue?"

When an injury occurs, the question always arises: "Who is to blame?" When I asked Mukhina what she herself thought about this, Lena answered evasively: “I taught Klimenko that I can train and compete with any injuries ...”

In 1975, during the Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR, which was held by gymnasts in Leningrad, Mukhina landed unsuccessfully on her head in a foam pit. When x-rays were taken, it turned out that during the fall, the spinous processes of the cervical vertebrae had been torn off. Lena was admitted to the hospital, but every day, after a medical round, a coach came for her and took her to the gym, where, having removed the orthopedic collar from her neck, Mukhina trained until the evening. A few days later, for the first time, she felt that her legs began to go numb during training and a feeling of some strange weakness appeared, which no longer passed.

In 1977, when Mukhina was training at home before the World Championships, she hit her side on the lower pole of the bars so that it split. “It feels like I broke my ribs,” Lena later said. “But then, after sitting for ten minutes on the mats, in a semi-conscious state, I also worked on freestyle and balance beam. When it got really bad, I went up to the coach, but he only muttered through his teeth: "You're always looking for an excuse to do nothing."

In 1978, two weeks before the All-Union Youth Games, Mukhina knocked out her thumb on the uneven bars so that it completely came out of the joint. She corrected it herself - clenching her teeth and closing her eyes. But the injuries did not end there: during the warm-up before the competition, she did not calculate the run-up (they washed the floor in the hall and destroyed the marks made with chalk), fell when landing from a jump and hit her head. The choreographer secretly, so as not to attract the attention of the coaches, wore ammonia to her, and Mukhina, having stepped off the next projectile, clamped the cotton wool in her palms.

Without a warm-up, from the sheet, she worked everything out - and won.

She also won the World Championship. First - in the team, and a day later she became the absolute champion, beating, among others, the absolute champion of the Games-76 Nadya Komenech. She made it to the finals on three apparatus out of four and collected another complete set of awards, winning silver on uneven bars and balance beam and sharing gold on floor exercise with two-time Montreal Olympic champion Nelly Kim.

This insane tension could not go unnoticed. When Mukhina and I periodically met in the hall, she looked inhibited, often cried. Once she said that she did not have time to completely cross the avenue in front of the CSKA sports complex while the green light was on - she did not have enough strength. At the same time, her free program on almost all shells continued to be the most difficult in the world.

In the fall of 1979, Mukhina broke her leg at demonstration performances in England. A month and a half passed in a cast, but when it was removed, it turned out that the broken bones had dispersed. They were put in place, the plaster was put on again, and the next day (the coach insisted on this) Mukhina was already in the gym - she worked on shells, landing on dismounts on one leg. Two months after the cast was removed, she was already doing all her combinations.

“Klimenko was always terribly nervous before the competition, pulled me,” Mukhina recalled. “Probably because he perfectly understood that his own well-being and career directly depended on whether I got into the national team or not. I was extremely responsible for training. There were times when, in order to drive off excess weight, I ran at night and went to the gym in the morning. At the same time, I constantly had to listen to the fact that I was cattle and should be happy that they paid attention to me and gave me a chance. "

Mukhina arrived at the last training camp in her life in Minsk with her ankles and knees sick from overloads, and besides, she began to have inflammation of the articular bag of the hand. According to one of the coaches, she crashed because she simply didn’t push with that very injured leg in the run.

After the misfortune happened, one of the then leaders of the USSR national team said to Mukhina: "Who knew that you were really as bad as you said?"

They didn’t know then that Lena, leaving the hotel for training, every time she kept her eyes on the cars passing by, automatically guessing: if she throws herself under the wheels, will she have time to slow down or not. She tried on the ledge outside the hotel room window and calculated how she should jump, so that she would be sure. When, in that nine-year-old conversation, she told me about it, I asked in horror why she had not quit gymnastics earlier?

“I don’t know,” came the answer. “I saw my fall several times in a dream. I saw how they carried me out of the hall. I understood that sooner or later this would really happen. I felt like an animal being driven with a whip along an endless corridor. But again and again came to the hall. Probably, this is fate. But they are not offended by fate. "

Did she offend herself? Externally, no. But, as her close friend told me, Mukhina noticeably passed when she found out that her former coach returned from Italy, where he worked for many years, to Moscow. To meet with Klimenko, who in her mind remained the most terrible ghost of a past life, she flatly refused.

The death of her grandmother in the spring of last year was a colossal blow for Lena. She did not want to give her to a nursing home, despite the fact that the 90-year-old woman herself required constant care. And, having already lost her mind and feeling that she was dying, she constantly shouted to her granddaughter: "I will not leave you. Come with me!"

Mukhina also survived this nightmare. She asked, when Anna Ivanovna was gone, only one thing: when the time comes, under no circumstances should they bury her next to her grandmother. And don't do an autopsy. Leave alone.

She's probably just tired of living. I'm tired of constantly looking for an answer why in our country anything can be valuable, but not human life. Even in conversations with the closest people, which included, by and large, only two friends, Mukhina never allowed herself to complain about her fate. Although to think about it - what a horror it is that the only variety in her life was rare excursions in a wheelchair to the corridor or to the kitchen. With one single purpose: to see what is happening there - behind the walls of the room in which she spent 26 years ...

Elena VAITSEHOVSKAYA

Elena Mukhina was born in Moscow in 1960. In 1962, her mother died, her father did not want to take responsibility for a small child, and in 1965, as they say, he died. From the age of two, Elena was raised by her grandmother, Anna Ivanovna.
Elena grew up very shy, but she wanted to become a gymnast since childhood. She later said in an interview: One day an unknown woman appeared at the lesson. Introduced herself: Olezhko Antonina Pavlovna, master of sports. And he says: who wants to do gymnastics - raise your hand. I almost screamed with joy!"

Thanks to perseverance, talent and extraordinary performance, Mukhina soon got to the coach Alexander Eglit to the sports club "Dynamo". After some time, Eglit went to work at CSKA and took his students with him, among whom was the 14-year-old candidate for master of sports Elena Mukhina. In the same 1974, Eglit suggested to a fellow coach Mikhail Klimenko to take his ward to his group, and Klimenko, who had previously trained only men, agreed. The whole sports career of Elena Mukhina was subsequently connected with this coach.

Elena Mukhina and Klimenko

Mikhail Klimenko's working methods were tough, sometimes cruel. Having decided to make a world champion out of Mukhina, Klimenko emphasized the complexity of her program. The program turned out to be the most difficult, just incredible. In 1977, at the European Championships in the Czech Republic, Elena Mukhina performed a fantastic element on uneven bars, named after Mukhina's loop.
Nellie Kim said: Lena had a miracle element on the uneven bars, which was called the “Mukhina loop”. There used to be a “Korbut loop”, and then the “Mukhina loop” appeared, when Klimenko, at the suggestion of his brother Viktor, decided to improve the “Korbut loop” - something amazing happened. The audience gasps and closes their eyes, and Mukhina, like in a circus, soars over the bars and flutters in the air»

With such a program, permanent injury was inevitable. The coach drove and drove forward, not giving them the opportunity to heal or just take a break. Once, before the USSR Cup, Lena seriously injured her Achilles. The team doctor asked to remove Mukhina from minor competitions. Klimenko promised. And the next day, Lena, with terrible anguish on her face, went to the platform ...

In 1975, at the Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR, after an unsuccessful landing, Lena suffered a detachment of the spinous processes of the cervical vertebrae. With such an injury, it is impossible to turn your head. However, every day Klimenko came to the hospital and took her to the gym, where she trained all day without an orthopedic “collar” necessary for the rehabilitation of such injuries.

Before the European Championships, Elena hit her side on the lower pole of the bars so that it split. “It feels like I broke my ribs,” Lena later said. “But then, after sitting for ten minutes on the mats, in a semi-conscious state, I also worked on freestyle and balance beam. When it got really bad, I went up to the coach, but he only muttered through his teeth: " You're always looking for an excuse to do nothing". She did not even pay attention to concussions, inflammation of the joints, twisted ankles and knocked out fingers. Fearing the wrath of the coach, she hid her injuries, secretly sniffed, clutched in her hands, ammonia and went to the next projectile.

The results of this hellish work were brilliant victories at various championships. By 1979, Elena Mukhina won, and here this word is appropriate, the titles:
Absolute World Champion (1978)
Champion in team championship and floor exercise (1978)
Silver medalist in uneven bars and balance beam (1978)
European Champion in uneven bars (1977, 1979)
European Champion in balance beam and floor exercises (1977)
Silver medalist in all-around and floor exercise (1977, 1979)
Bronze medalist in vault (1977)
World Cup winner in uneven bars and balance beam (1977)
Absolute champion of the USSR (1978)
Champion of the USSR in exercises on uneven bars (1978, 1977)
Champion of the USSR in floor exercises (1977)
Silver medalist in all-around and USSR Cup in all-around (1977)
Bronze medalist of the USSR Championship in uneven bars (1977)
Bronze medalist of the USSR championship in floor exercises (1978)
She was awarded the highest badge of Olympic honor with the Silver Olympic Order of the International Olympic Committee
Cavalier of the Order of the Badge of Honor.

The tension was terrible. Elena later said: Klimenko was always terribly nervous before the competition, pulled me. Probably because he perfectly understood that his own well-being and career directly depend on whether I get into the national team or not. I took my training very seriously. There were cases when, in order to drive off excess weight, she ran at night and went to the gym in the morning. At the same time, I constantly had to listen that I was a redneck and should be happy that they paid attention to me and gave me a chance».

Mukhina came to Minsk for the last training camp in her life with ankles and knees sick from overloads, and besides, she began to have inflammation of the articular bag of the hand. According to one of the coaches, she crashed because she simply didn’t push in the takeoff run with that very, recently injured leg. These were training camps for the Moscow Olympiad. July 1980 Mikhail Klimenko left for a couple of days in Moscow. Elena worked independently and at one of the training sessions she decided to try a unique combo - after a fly and the most difficult (one and a half somersaults with a 540-degree turn) jump, the landing should not have taken place on her feet, as usual, but with her head down, into a somersault. The gymnast unsuccessfully pushed, she did not have enough height, and in front of the head coach of the women's team Aman Shaniyazov, the coach of Lidia Ivanova and the coach of the acrobatics team, she fell headlong to the floor, injuring her cervical vertebra.
The first operation on the spine was performed by Mukhina only a day after the injury. Some of the key surgeons were on vacation. The operation lasted several hours, but due to the delay, the result was largely disappointing - Mukhina remained almost completely paralyzed. After another operation, a fistula formed in the side of the gymnast, which did not heal for a year and a half. Each time, with tremendous difficulty, doctors managed to get Mukhina out of a postoperative coma - the body refused to fight for life. Elena said in an interview: After all these countless operations, I decided that if I want to live, then I need to run away from hospitals. Then I realized that I needed to radically change my attitude to life. Not to envy others, but to learn to enjoy what is available to me. Otherwise, you can go crazy ... Of course, at first I was terribly sorry for myself. Especially when she returned home for the first time after the injury, from where she left on her own feet, and where everything still assumed the presence of a person on her feet. In addition, almost everyone who came to visit me asked: “Are you going to sue?"When the journalist asked Mukhina what she thought about this, Lena replied:" It was I who taught Klimenko that I can train and perform with any injuries...»

After the misfortune happened, one of the then leaders of the USSR national team told Mukhina: " Who knew that you were actually as bad as you said?"
They didn’t know then that Lena, leaving the hotel for training, every time she kept her eyes on the cars passing by, automatically guessing: if she throws herself under the wheels, will she have time to slow down or not. She tried on the ledge outside the hotel room window and calculated how she should jump, so that she would be sure. Later, close friends asked why she did not quit gymnastics earlier?
"Don't know, was the answer. - I have seen my fall several times in my dreams. I saw how they carried me out of the hall. I knew that sooner or later it would really happen. I felt like an animal being whipped down an endless corridor. But again and again she came to the hall. Perhaps this is fate. And do not take offense at fate".
For eight years, Lena Mukhina was operated on several times, and after numerous operations in the summer of 1985, she was offered to turn to Valentin Dikul. However, as a result of huge loads on the body, after a couple of months, she again ended up in the hospital - her kidneys failed. But Mukhina did not give up. A few years after a terrible fall, she could sit a little in an armchair, hold a spoon, write a little. Teachers came to her, lectured, took exams. She managed to graduate from the Moscow Institute of Physical Education. All this while sitting or reclining.
Mukhina's coach, Mikhail Klimenko, settled in Italy. When he returned to Moscow for a while and wanted to meet Elena, she flatly refused, although she treated the rest of her associates very well and tried to live very optimistically.
In 2005, Elena experienced a terrible tragedy - the death of her grandmother. Elena did not want to give her to a nursing home, despite the fact that the 92-year-old woman herself required constant care. And, having already lost her mind and feeling that she was dying, she constantly shouted to her granddaughter: "I will not leave you. Come with me!"
Mukhina also survived this nightmare. She asked, when Anna Ivanovna was gone, only one thing: when the time comes, under no circumstances should they bury her next to her grandmother. And don't do an autopsy. Leave alone.
For the last six years, Lena Gurina lived with Elena, with whom she performed together. It was such a wonderful tandem - two gymnasts, they understood each other very well. Tamara Zhaleeva recalls conversations with Elena Mukhina on the phone: “ And you know, Tamara Andreevna, Lena Gurina and I are watching and deciding: how is this music? Suitable for this gymnast or not? Yulia Lozhechko, for example, or Anya Pavlova? I say: no, it doesn’t fit - and it turns out that Lena thinks so too».
In recent years, Elena Mukhina lay all the time. Zhaleeva often visited her. They discussed modern gymnastics, programs. Tamara Andreevna recalls that she once asked Elena: “ What hurts you, that you are all sick this year? And she suddenly says: “Tamara Andreevna, how long do they live with my diagnosis? You know how many operations I have had, everything hurts. And the kidneys, and the liver, and the heart - the whole village. And I'm lying. After all, they don't live that long!» I tell her:« Lenochka, dear… Don’t think about it!” - "How not to think - I already live so much." That's how we talked. I had no idea that everything would happen so quickly. I went to see her on the 26th, and Lenochka Gurina said: “She fell asleep, didn’t want to be woken up.” I left - I didn’t even say hello, nothing, and somehow my heart ached so much ... The next day she died. At three o'clock in the afternoon she said: "Lena, I feel very bad." And she began to choke. At five o'clock she was gone».

Elena Vyacheslavovna Mukhina died on December 27, 2006 and was buried in Moscow at the Troekurovsky cemetery.

Text of the article "A tragedy 26 years long", author Elena Vaytsekhovskaya
Text of the article "Mukhina's Loop", Novaya Gazeta, author Andrey USPENSKY
Text of the article “Elena Mukhina died”, author P. Krasnov
Site materials chtoby-pomnili.com

The biography of Elena Mukhina is an example of incredible talent and hard work. The most promising Soviet gymnast, who, as a result of an injury, was bedridden for 26 years. What was it - a coincidence, an unsuccessful choice of a coach or karma, as the Buddhists say? ..

Family and childhood

The future great gymnast was born on June 1, 1960 in Moscow. Elena's mother died when the girl was two years old. There is rather vague information about her father: apparently, he simply created another family, in which the daughter from her first marriage did not fit. Elena was raised by her grandmother.

As a child, she dreamed of becoming a gymnast. And when the master of sports Antonina Pavlovna Olezhko entered her class and invited those who wished to study in the gymnastic section, Lena almost screamed with joy.

Later, she got into a group with coach Alexander Eglit, and under his leadership, at the age of 14, she became a candidate for master of sports. In 1974, Eglit handed over the ward to his colleague Alexander Klimenko, who had previously trained only men.

Vladimir Golubev, a journalist and master of sports in gymnastics, later wrote that Klimenko "was an incredible maximalist." “Mikhail showed me Lena Mukhina, very modest, very sweet. He said: "She will be the world champion." I didn’t believe it in my heart - such quiet people don’t know how to get angry, and without anger you won’t get into the champions. Guessed wrong. Klimenko immediately and firmly decided that Mukhina's trump card would be incredible complexity. “Designed” a fantastic program for Lena.”

First major victories

In 1977, Elena became second in the all-around at the USSR Championship and participated in the European Championship in Prague, where she won three gold medals in various apparatus, conquering the judges and fans with the highest technique. She lost by a small margin only to the famous Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci. It was in Prague that Elena demonstrated the most difficult element on the uneven bars, later named after her: the Mukhina loop. The gymnast literally fluttered in the air, making flips in all planes.

In 1978, new achievements: Mukhina won the national championship, and became the absolute champion at the World Championships in France. She collected a full set of awards, winning silver on uneven bars and balance beam and sharing gold on floor exercise with two-time Olympic champion Nelly Kim. Kim said in an interview: “But the absolute winner was Elena Mukhina, the absolute champion, without any reservations. The most difficult program, virtuosity, softness, femininity.”

The result is striking against the backdrop of a series of injuries received by the athlete on the eve of the championship. In the same 1978, Elena knocked out her thumb, corrected it herself and continued training, despite the damaged ligaments. Then she hit sideways on the lower pole of the bars so that it split. Subsequently, Elena said: “It feels like I broke my ribs. But then, after sitting for about ten minutes on the mats, in a semi-conscious state, she also worked freestyle and beam. When it got really bad, she approached the coach, who, without understanding the situation, replied: “You are always looking for an excuse to do nothing.”

At the warm-up before the competition in the hall, the floor was washed and the markings applied with chalk were erased; as a result, Mukhina made a mistake with the run-up distance, fell and hit her head.

But the achievements of the athlete were impressive: the champion of the USSR, Europe, the world. Only the gold of the Olympics remained.

Wear training

Professional sports are always associated with injuries, but it is necessary to follow the recovery regime, which Mukhina did not do. She already had several broken ribs, concussions, twisted ankles, knocked out fingers. The gymnast trained with ammonia so as not to lose consciousness from pain. In 1975, at the Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR, after an unsuccessful landing, the athlete suffered a detachment of the spinous processes of the cervical vertebrae. With such an injury, it is impossible to turn your head, but the coach came to Elena to the hospital every day and took her to training, where she had to work without an orthopedic “collar” necessary for rehabilitation.

Klimenko had a style of work tailored for male athletes - too hard for the fragile and soft Elena. She was extremely hardworking, always trained to the limit of her strength, often with untreated injuries. But the coach was always dissatisfied and rude. It was his professional tactic, even in front of the cameras. Elena herself later recalled her training as a "nightmare slavery."

The health of the athlete was undermined. In 1980, she suffered from undertreated knee and ankle injuries after injuries, and she was also tormented by inflammation of the articular bag of the hand. Mukhina complained that she did not even have time to cross the road before the red light turned on: she did not have enough strength. At demonstration performances in England in 1979, she broke her leg, but when the cast was removed a month and a half later, it turned out that the bones had parted. They were put in place, they were plastered again, but the coach insisted that the very next day Mukhina started working on shells. When dismounting, she landed on a healthy leg.

Elena said: “Klimenko was always nervous before the competition, pulled me. Probably because he understood very well that his own career and well-being depended on whether I got into the national team or not. I took my training very seriously. There were cases when, in order to drive off excess weight, she ran at night and went to the gym in the morning. At the same time, I constantly had to listen that I was a redneck and should be happy that they paid attention to me and gave me a chance.

In fact, any coach would have gladly taken Mukhina at this stage: she was the strongest in the CSKA club. She was considered one of the contenders for the gold of the Moscow Olympics in 1980. As Nelly Kim said in an interview: “The most hardworking of us was Lena. Due to an injury, she missed the 1979 World Cup and now worked tirelessly, making up for lost time and dreaming of becoming a participant in the Olympic Games.

But the dream was not destined to come true. In preparation for the Olympics, in Minsk, Elena worked independently and decided to try a unique combination: after the most difficult jump, land in a somersault. Klimenko left for Moscow that day, banning Elena from amateur performances: “You will perform somersaults only in front of my eyes, with insurance!”

The gymnast did not have enough height. In front of the coaching team, she fell to the floor, injuring her cervical vertebra.

Later, Elena recalled: “I did it, I fell and I don’t understand - why is everyone running to me? I want to get up, but I can’t get up, but my head is clear. I want to move my hand, but I can't. And then I just thought and said to myself: this is a disaster. “I have seen my fall several times in my dreams. I saw how they carried me out of the hall. I knew that sooner or later it would really happen. I felt like an animal being whipped down an endless corridor. But again and again she came to the hall. Perhaps this is fate. And they are not offended by fate.

Elena Davydova became the champion at the 1980 Olympics. After the award, she said: “Of course, I am happy with my victory, but another gymnast, Elena Mukhina, should stand on the podium. She deserves more than all of us."

Life after a fatal injury

The operation on the vertebra was done only a day later. Perhaps it was this delay that cost Elena almost complete paralysis. The gymnast was operated on several times, and doctors hardly brought her out of a medical coma. The recovery processes were extremely slow, a fistula formed in the side, which did not heal for a year and a half.

“After all these countless operations, I decided that if I want to live, I have to run from hospitals. Then I realized that I need to radically change my attitude to life. Not to envy others, but to learn to enjoy what is available to me. Otherwise, you can go crazy. I realized that the commandments “do not think badly”, “do not act badly”, “do not envy” are not just words. That there is a direct connection between them and how a person feels. I started to feel those connections.”

Elena Mukhina admitted that all her life she dreamed of being able to just lie down as much as she wanted, read a book, relax so that no one would touch her. And now her wish came true, but at what cost ...

The Moscow City Council allocated a two-room apartment to Elena Mukhina. The sports committee turned to medical students for help to take care of the paralyzed gymnast. She was visited by coaches and athletes, taken out for walks. Coach Tamara Zhaleeva told about her: “I read a lot, watched TV, analyzed - I was very smart. She was very interested in space, she believed that signals were possible. In recent years, Lena has become a believer; although she was immovable, and cared for her grandmother, she had a healing gift. She treated her. And my grandmother lived to be 92 years old.”

In 1985, on the advice of friends, Elena turned to Dikul, but as a result, after a couple of months, her kidneys failed. Although a few years later, the gymnast learned to sit, hold a spoon, write a little. She managed to graduate from the Moscow Institute of Physical Education, teachers came to her house.

In 2005, her grandmother died. Elena's closest person, she screamed before her death that she would not leave her granddaughter and take her with her. After that, Elena asked under no circumstances to bury her next to her grandmother and not to perform an autopsy.

Elena Mukhina died on December 27, 2006 and was buried at the Troekurovsky cemetery in Moscow. On this day, one of her gymnast friends Elena Gurina came to visit her. At three o'clock in the afternoon, Mukhina began to suffocate, and two hours later she was gone.