Tamara Press

Tamara Press
Tamara Press (1960)
Full name	Tamara Natanovna Press
nation	Soviet Union
birthday	May 10, 1937
place of birth	Kharkiv ,  Soviet Union
size	180 cm
Weight	102 kg
date of death	April 26, 2021
Place of death	Moscow ,  Russia
Career
discipline	Shot put , discus throw
Best performance	18.59 m (shot put) 59.70 m (discus throw)
society	VSS Trud
Medal table
Olympic games 3 × 1 × 0 × European championships 3 × 0 × 1 × Indoor European Championships 0 × 1 × 0 × Universiade 5 × 0 × 1 ×
Olympic games gold 1960 Rome Shot put silver 1960 Rome Discus throw gold 1964 Tokyo Shot put gold 1964 Tokyo Discus throw  European championships gold 1958 Stockholm Discus throw bronze 1958 Stockholm Shot put gold 1962 Belgrade Discus throw gold 1962 Belgrade Shot put  European Indoor Championships silver 1966 Dortmund Shot put  Universiade gold 1961 Sofia Shot put gold 1961 Sofia Discus throw gold 1963 Porto Alegre Shot put gold 1963 Porto Alegre Discus throw gold 1965 Budapest Shot put bronze 1965 Budapest Discus throw

Tamara Natanowna Press ( Russian Тамара Натановна Пресс , Ukrainian Тамара Натанівна Пресс ; born May 10, 1937 in Kharkiv , Ukrainian SSR ; † April 26, 2021 in Moscow ) was a Soviet shot putter and discus thrower in 1960. With her younger sister Irina Press , also a track and field athlete, she formed a pair of sisters. who won almost everything there was to win in her playing days.

Sporting successes

At the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome , Tamara won the gold medal in the shot put and the silver medal in the discus throw. At the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 1964 , she won gold in both disciplines. She set six world records in both the shot put and discus throw. She was also successful at European championships: in 1958 in Stockholm she was third in the shot put, in 1962 in Belgrade she was European champion in the shot put and discus throw.

She set a world record in the shot put with a width of 18.59 m at the first European Athletics Cup for women in 1965 in the Kassel Auestadion .

Talk about gender

The two sisters Tamara and Irina were said to have sex that could not be determined. They were at least considered to be hermaphrodites by some ; according to another opinion they were doped with male hormones. The two sisters were often referred to as "Press Brothers" in the media. After sex determination had become mandatory for all international female athletes in 1966 (these tests were abolished in Sydney in 2000), both female athletes disappeared from the competition stage. In the western press this withdrawal was understood as an admission. This is denied in the Russian newspapers to this day.

Place in contemporary history

The Press sisters symbolized the happy times of the Soviet Union after Stalin's death. The thaw prevailed that later shaped the politics of Mikhail Gorbachev . Tamara and Irina were the most popular sportswomen in the USSR , their biographies typical of that period. The father died in the war. They grew up far from their homeland because it was occupied and destroyed by German troops. Later they graduated from Leningrad State University .

The time after competitive sport

After their nomination for the European Championships in 1966 had been withdrawn by the Soviet Association, the two made professional careers. Irina went to the border troops of the KGB and became an officer there. Tamara became a civil engineer, wrote numerous specialist books about her job, but also about sport. Later both held numerous honorary positions in Russian sports. Tamara Press died in April 2021 at the age of 83.

Western coverage

Although there is no medical evidence that Tamara Press was not a woman or intersex , this suspicion was repeatedly expressed in Western media. When she stopped competing after the mandatory sex tests were introduced in 1966, this solidified the suspicion that she was not a “real woman”. Der Spiegel wrote on November 13, 1967:

“The experts didn't trust any woman to set a real world record in discus throwing. For seven years it had belonged to a Soviet citizen who weighed 98 kilos, neither smoked, drank nor flirted and only ended her career after a sex test for athletes was introduced in 1966. "

So far there is only one scientific study that deals with Tamara Press's gender representation in the contemporary Western press. In this, the sociologist Dennis Krämer argues from a post-structuralist perspective that the press at the time portrayed Tamara Press' female gender, like that of her sister Irina , not systematically as unfeminine because it showed male features, but primarily because the Soviet one Sportswoman in stark contrast to the then western-conservative ideal of women of the delicate housewife and mother. The threats that were recognized in her as an athlete did not originate from her real body, but were in direct political relation to the conflict situation at the time during the Cold War. Against this background, Tamara Press' body was primarily seen in the western media as strange, different, strange and abnormal because behind its appearance the manipulative influence of an ideological machine of communism during the Cold War was suspected.

Web links

Commons : Tamara Press  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Tamara Press in the database of Olympedia.org (English)
• Tamara Press in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ушла из жизни олимпийская чемпионка Тамара Пресс. In: stadium.ru. April 26, 2021, accessed April 27, 2021 (Russian). 
2. ^ Adam Augustyn, Chelsey Parrott-Sheffer, Amy Tikkanen: Tamara Press - Soviet athlete. In: Encyclopædia Britannica . May 6, 2020, accessed April 27, 2021 . 
3. ↑ 1953 it all started: A short history of the Auestadions . In: Hessisch Niedersächsische Allgemeine (Hrsg.): Special topic Auestadion . October 22, 2010.
4. ↑ Ulli Kulke: Never without your razor. In: Welt.de . May 10, 2007, accessed April 26, 2021 . 
5. ↑ Between fame and suspicion. In: Allgemeine Zeitung . April 26, 2014, archived from the original on January 12, 2020 ; accessed on April 27, 2021 . 
6. ^ L'ancienne championne soviétique Tamara Press est morte. In: lequipe.fr . April 26, 2021, accessed April 27, 2021 (French). 
7. ^ Athletics / Westermann: Eine Viecherei. In: Der Spiegel . 47/1967, November 13, 1967, accessed April 7, 2017 . 
8. ↑ Dennis Krämer: Media Practices of Gendering. The gender of the siblings Tamara and Irina Press in the Western sports discourse during the Cold War . In: Gabriele Klein, Hanna Göbel (Ed.): Performance and Practice. Practical explorations in dance, theater, sport and everyday life . Transcript, Bielefeld 2017, ISBN 978-3-8376-3287-3 , p. 191-209 .