Alexandra Georgievna Tschudina

Alexandra Tschudina, 1952

Alexandra Georgijewna Tschudina ( Russian Александра Георгиевна Чудина ; born November 6, 1923 in Kramskaja in the Tula governorate ; † October 28, 1990 ) was a Soviet athlete. With a height of 1.88 m, her competition weight was 73 kg.

Alexandra Tschudina was an extremely versatile athlete. She played ice hockey, basketball, cycling and tennis at a high level. For years she was among the best in the world in both athletics and volleyball .

Career in athletics

International championships

Alexandra Tschudina won two silver medals and one bronze medal at the Olympic Games. At European championships she won gold once and silver twice.

The Soviet team appeared at the European Championships in Oslo in 1946 for the first time ever at international championships in athletics. Alexandra Tschudina started in the high jump . With 1.57 meters she won silver behind the French Anne-Marie Colchen , who was the only one to cross 1.60 meters. The world record holder Fanny Blankers-Koen only finished fourth in this competition.

After the Soviet Union did not take part in the 1948 Olympic Games and Tschudina did not take part in the European Championships in 1950 , Alexandra Tschudina only faced the world's elite again at the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki . The all-around competition, their strongest discipline, was not on the Olympic program for the first time until 1964. First Tschudina competed in the long jump and won silver with 6.14 meters, ten centimeters behind Yvette Williams from New Zealand . The next day Tschudina was second in the javelin throw with 50.01 meters , the Czech Dana Zátopková won with 50.47 meters. Three days later Tschudina won her third medal at the third start. With 1.63 meters she won bronze in the high jump behind the South African Esther Brand and the British Sheila Lerwill .

Alexandra Tschudina completed an even more extensive program at the 1954 European Championships in Bern . She started with 47.05 meters and a fifth place in the javelin throw. The next day the pentathlon began with the first three disciplines. The long jump final then began between the high jump as the second discipline and the 200-meter run as the third discipline. Here Tschudina won silver with 5.93 meters, eleven centimeters behind the British Jean Desforges . On the second day of the pentathlon, Tschudina finally won gold with 4526 points (4020 points according to today's rating) ahead of the Germans Maria Sander , Maria Sturm and Lena Stumpf . In the high jump, which took place one day after the pentathlon final, Tschudina took 6th place with a crossed 1.60 meters.

Between 1949 and 1955, Alexandra Tschudina won ten gold medals at the World Student Games.

Soviet championships

With 31 individual titles, Alexandra Tschudina was by far the most successful athlete at Soviet championships.

In detail, it won the following titles between 1945 and 1956:

• 400 meter run: 1945
• 80-meter hurdles: 1949, 1950, 1951
• High jump: 1946, 1947, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1953, 1954
• Long jump: 1947, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1953, 1954
• Javelin throw: 1948, 1953, 1955, 1956
• Pentathlon: 1946, 1947, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1953, 1954, 1955

World records

In the pentathlon, Alexandra Tschudina set five world records, but the world records of 1947, 1949 and 1950 were not officially recognized. Her world record of August 8th and 9th, 1953, set in Bucharest, with 4704 points according to the 1954 table was recognized. On September 6th and 7th, 1955, she scored 4,750 points in Moscow with the following individual performances: 13.94 meters (shot put), 1.64 meters (high jump), 26.3 seconds (200-meter run), 11.5 seconds (80-meter hurdles) and 6.04 meters (long jump). According to today's table, this number corresponds to 4232 points.

On May 22, 1954 Tschudina jumped 1.73 meters in Kiev, a world high jump record.

On July 12, 1950, Tschudina was a member of the 4-by-200-meter relay, which ran a world record of 1: 40.6 minutes in Moscow.

Top performances

• 80 meter hurdles: 11.3 seconds (1950)
• High jump: 1.73 meters (1954)
• Long jump: 6.24 meters (1953)
• Shot put: 14.33 meters (1955)
• Javelin throw: 52.75 meters (1953)

Career in volleyball

Due to her height, her jumping ability and her arm strength, Alexandra Tschudina was also an outstanding volleyball player.

As the star of the dominant Soviet team in the 1950s, she won the title at the first three women's world championships in 1952, 1956 and 1960.

In 1949, 1950, 1951 and 1958 she won the European championship , only in 1955 the Soviet team lost to the team from Czechoslovakia in the final.

When volleyball was first part of the program at the Olympic Games in 1964, Alexandra Tschudina had ended her career.

literature

• ATFS (ed): USSR Athletics Statistics . London 1988
• Peter Matthews (ed): Athletics 1991 . Windsor 1991 ISBN 1-873057-03-2
• Ekkehard zur Megede: The Modern Olympic Century 1896-1996 Track and Field Athletics . Berlin 1999, published by the German Society for Athletics Documentation eV
• Alexandra Tschudina , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 03/1953 from January 5, 1953, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)