It’s the summer of 2020. Moldova is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games, the event that left a remarkable trace in the sport’s history of the country.
The anniversary is covered in the media. The ones who were a part of those Olympic memorable moments share their recollections with the press with a nostalgic sadness. The majestic Olympic Torch relay began at Leuseni, at Moldova’s border with Romania. The flame crossed the territory of the then Soviet Republic of Moldova, then continued onwards to Ukraine before reaching Moscow, where Moldovan national ballet Joc would represent the Republic at the Opening and Closing Ceremonies. And of course, the witnesses of those events also talk about the successes of the small number of disciples of Moldovan sport who represented the USSR at the Moscow 1980 Olympic Games.
One of the people that shared his memories in an interview with a local radio station was the NOC President Nicolae Juravschi, a double Olympic Champion of Seoul 1988 in canoeing. Speaking about the Moscow Games he highlighted the fact that it is particularly important to remember that these Games brought Moldovan sport its first ever Olympic Gold. “Larisa Popova earned gold in rowing,” President Juravschi told the listeners. The question is, how should we interpret such statements for the person who has been at the head of the Moldovan Olympic movement for the last 20 years?
In fact, Larisa Popova’s medal became the 2nd Moscow 1980 medal earned by a disciple of Moldovan sport. It also became the 4th medal earned by a representative of Moldovan sport at the Olympic Games. Why would the NOC President confuse sports fans and the general public in such a way?
If we pull up the official results of the Moscow Olympics, we can see that on June 23, 1980 the Soviet Union’s women’s gymnastics team took the team all-around gold. One of the champion gymnasts was Stella Zakharova, a graduate of Chisinau (capital of Moldova) sports boarding school. The rowing double sculls final, where Larisa Popova took gold, was held 3 days later, on June 23. Larisa Popova from Tiraspol and Yelena Khloptseva, her partner from Belarus, did not leave their main rivals from East Germany any chances by confidently leading the 1000 m race held at Moscow’s Krylatskoe rowing canal.
We could have regarded the whole “who was first” situation a simple error from Nicolae Juravschi’s side, if it weren’t for one thing… As he recalls in the same radio interview, at the time of the Moscow Olympic Games he was a student of the above-mentioned sports boarding school. It’s hard to believe that our famous Olympian could forget how extatic the whole Republic of Moldova was when the news about gymnastics gold at the Olympics broke. The ones who were simply buzzing with excitement were the teachers and pupils of the said boarding school. How couldn’t they be, when Stella Zakharava, a gymnast who has trained at the school from the moment she took her first steps in the sport to the moment of Olympic glory was part of the victorious team? Especially taking into account that no former student of the school has ever stepped on the Olympic podium before her.
We should also highlight the fact that from the moment she started studying at the sports boarding school and throughout her entire career Stella Zakharova was coached by Vladimir Kuksa. His wife Maria worked as Stella Zakharova’s second coach and choreographer. Is it possible to believe that President Juravschi did not know this back then and does not know it now?
Does the fact that Stella Zakharova was the one who won Olympic Gold a few days before Larisa Popova did somehow belittle Popova’s achievement? Of course not! Having won the gold in Moscow, Larisa Popova became the first Moldovan athlete to step on the Olympic podium in two different editions of the Olympic Games. In Montreal, she earned a silver, 4 years later she scored gold.
What’s the secret behind Juravschi’s selective memory? One possible explanation is the fact that these days Stella Zakharova lives and works in Kiev. Larisa Popova, on the other hand, is Moldova NOC Vice President and a staunch supporter of Juravschi’s. But that’s not the only Olympic gold medal that keeps getting forgotten by Nicolae Juravschi and the other NOC employees, and in the second case we definitely can’t consider the confusion to be a simple missunderstanding. The very first disciple of Moldovan sport to become an Olympic Champion (in canoeing K-4 event) was Yuri Filatov. This happened in Munich in 1972. Four years later, in Montreal, Filatov became a double Olympic champion.
Yuri Filatov was brought up as an athlete at the famous Dubasari canoeing & rowing school on the banks of the river Nistru. Vadim Marchenko, his first coach was instilled with the love for kayaking. Vadim Kachur who worked in Dubasari and Nikolay Kostyuchenko from Kyiv were the the ones responsible for briniging Filatov to Olympic glory.
The city of Dubasari remembers Yuri Filatov very fondly. Every year the city hosts a youth canoeing competition named in his honor. But in Chisinau, the NOC prefers to not remember about his existence. Why so?
The story is a long one. Having graduated from hight school in Moldova, Filatov chose to pursue higher education in Kyiv. Two of his more-experienced K-4 partners Vladimir Morozov and Yuri Stetsenko were alread training there. At that point, Morozov already was a double Olympic champion. The fact that Filatov chose to leave Moldova and move to Kyiv deprived Moldovan sports officials of performance bonuses for Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR of 1971, just before the Munich Olympic Games. After the 1972 and 1976 Olympic Games, Filatov received Soviet State awards, in recognition of his acheivements. So did his Moldovan coach Vadim Kachur. The top sports officials from Chisinau, on the other hand, got nothing…
Whether the Moldovan NOC likes it or not, Yuri Filatov is the one who will forever be the first disciple of Moldovan sport who became an Olympic champion. He also is the first and only one who became a double Olympic champion by earning a gold medal at two subsequent editions of the Olympic Games.
The book entitled “25 years of Moldovan NOC” is the first official publication since the creation of the Moldova NOC to mention Filatov as an Olympic champion. The author and the editor of the book, who insisted on his inclusion in the list have suffered for their determination. But that is another story… The omerta around Filatov’s name was broken.
A “documentary” film, created under the aegis of the Moldovan NOC and released by its press officer in April 2020 hastily mentions Filatov and his Olympic victories. But that’s it. He isn’t “one of ours” after all… First, he moved to Kyiv, then to Moscow! Even today, at the time of writing, you can barely find a mention of Filatov on the official website of the Moldovan NOC. He’s not listed on the page with all the other disciples of Moldovan sport who have managed to earn an Olympic medal! I think that the glorious pages of Moldovan history should be carefully preserved, they mustn’t be re-written or faked, crossed-out, or left to oblivion. But Moldovan NOC probably keeps thinking that one of their own is closer to the heart, choosing to shamefully re-write the sport’s history of the country, this tradition originated back in the authoritarian days of Moldovan history.
And now we have a question, do Yuri Filatov’s achievements somehow belittle Nicolae Juravschi’s achievements? Someone probably thinks so.
Let’s get back to the above-mentioned interview. At the very end, Juravschi says that it’s very important that such veteran athletes as Larisa Popova, Gusman Kosanov, and Stella Zakharova have been trained in Moldova and that they keep serving as an example for young athletes.
We can undoubtedly agree about Popova and Zakharova. But Gusman Kosanov, the man whom both Moldova and Kazakhstan consider to be the first Olympic medallist, is a different story. It’s very unfortunate that the man who led the Moldovan Olympic movement for the last 20 years does not know that the Rome 1960 silver-medallist and Tokyo 1964 participant Kosanov, tragically died 30 years ago, having committed suicide at the age of 55.
In 2010, the Moldovan NOC led by Nicolae Juravschi completely ignored the 50th anniversary of Moldova’s debut at the Olympic Games and the first Olympic medal – the one that was earned by Kosanov.
That’s the attitude toward history…