Text 7. Pregnant Championships

When the 1998 Winter Olympics ended in Nagano, it became known in Moscow that Yelena Vyalbe, the well known skier, five-time world champion and winner of the Olympic relay, was an expectant mother. Apparently, she had already been pregnant while competing in the Olympics.

Coaches, athletes, and sports doctors have long known about the “hormonal explosion” that occurs in a female organism at early stages of pregnancy and how it can sometimes be used to good advantage.

Forbidden Fruit

Three and a half months before a competition a female athlete becomes pregnant, and two months later – during which time the organism builds up a good deal of energy – the fetus is aborted. After abortion, the woman is given some time to recuperate and then is put through a rigorous training program under tremendous strain and pressure. This is a great method to ensure good results. After all, the 1OC

antidoping commission is yet to open a season on pregnant women athletes. The most bitter episode in the life of Marina Logvinenko, a double Olympic shooting champion and silver medal holder at the 1996 Atlanta Games, was her “contract” pregnancy. I have it from Marina herself and her husband, also her coach, Vladimir. (I should explain that in the following conversation, the husband and wife referred to the Seoul-88 Olympics).

Vladimir Logvinenko:

“At the time Marina was No. 1 in the Soviet team. She held all conceivable records. Even so, that time around they wanted a 150 percent guarantee of her victory in the Olympic Games. So, the chief physician of our national side worked on my wife and me for a long time, insisting that Marina arrive in Seoul at an early stage of pregnancy and then presumably she would be unmatched.”

Marina Logvinenko:

“And so I was. Quite unmatched in feeling violently sick a couple of days after our arrival in the South Korean capital: I had acute toxicosis and vomited nonstop. Within two weeks I lost 13 kilograms.

So those who knew what was going on were impressed even by my third position in one of the pistol exercises.”

Fans are already accustomed to the fact that from time to time newspapers publish investigations into these practices. Thus, not so long ago, readers were let into a stunning secret. “Sex the night before the competition was the secret weapon of a women’s team in one socialist country that produced fantastic results.”

Text 8. Free-diving: Tanya Streeter

As a child, Tanya Streeter always loved swimming in the sea – she grew up in the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean. She could always dive the deepest for seashells. But she didn’t know then that she could dive deeper than anyone else in the world.

Tanya discovered her diving abilities in 1997, when she joined a class in free-diving. Free-diving is a new sport. It’s very dangerous, because you dive with no oxygen. There were only men in class and no one wanted to dive with her because she was a girl. But her class was surprised when they saw how long she could swim underwater. Her teachers immediately wanted to train her.

A few months later, Tanya started breaking records. She can swim underwater for nearly six minutes with just one breath! In 2003, she broke the world free-diving record. She dived 121 metres with one breath.

She says: ‘At the bottom of the sea I’m calm. I love the peace and quiet down there. Coming up again is very difficult. You can’t think about the pain!

I’m not planning to break any more records for a while. I’m going to wait and see if anyone breaks my last record. In the future I’m going to teach free-diving and work for the sea-life conservation’

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