Viktor Innokentyevich Sedykh - track and field athlete and Honored Trainer of the USSR, who brought up champions. A schoolboy who did not like physical education, but became an ace in the preparation of professional athletes.
An outstanding coach who made a valuable contribution to the development of athletics in the Soviet Union. A man who flew, not ran, and taught this to his students.
A family
Viktor Sedykh was born in a peasant family on January 12, 1930 in the village of Alan, Kachugsky District, Irkutsk Region. In the thirties, his father Innokenty Dmitrievich fell under dispossession, and in 1943 he died at the front. He was brought up by his mother, Krestinya Makarovna, to whom he brought cards for bread from school in the years of famine.
Viktor Innokentievich himself had a full-fledged strong family - a wife and two daughters. He met his wife in his first year at the Pedagogical Institute, where he looked out for the most beautiful girls at the lectures, until he saw her. Even before the end of the fifth year, Victor and Nelly managed not only to get married, but also to give birth to two daughters. They lived all their lives together, from stormy college youth to old age in the outback, and all his life he could rely on her support.
Education
He graduated from school in his native village. Studying was easy for him, he was an excellent student, without making any special efforts. He didn't have to cram his homework after school, and he devoted his free time to skiing and practicing on the horizontal bar. The future champion and coach dreamed of becoming a pilot. Despite his passion for skiing, he did not like physical education lessons and did not understand. He was even suspended for two weeks from school for missing lessons, but due to good grades in other subjects, he was accepted back.
The dream of becoming a pilot had to be postponed and the still skinny boy who did not like physical education went to study for a military technician in Irkutsk. In technical school, in order to gain strength and pump up, I wanted to do weightlifting. Fortunately for Soviet athletics, the coach did not accept him, fearing to take responsibility for such a skinny athlete. But the coach advised him to take up athletics, and Victor went to the stadium.
There he saw the unsurpassed sprinter of the fifties - the famous Tambovtsev. Victor was delighted with the slender runner rushing down the treadmill. And already in the mid-fifties he made the first achievement in his career - a record in the hundred-meter race in the Irkutsk region.
In 1954, already working as a technician in the road design office of the East Siberian Railway and training children in sports schools, he entered the most difficult physics and mathematics faculty of the Irkutsk State Pedagogical Institute. The test arranged in this way was successful for himself, in 1959 he completed his studies.
He never received any physical education, Viktor Innokentyevich Sedykh raised and raised the champion and coach in himself, although he said that physical and mathematical education helped him a lot in the work of a coach.
Sports career
"Running is a flight with a short touch of the ground," Viktor Sedov liked to say, and taught this to his wards.
Starting his career as a coach in 1953, Viktor Sedykh himself continued to practice and achieve success in sports. Viktor Innokentyevich was a multi-machine athlete and coached champions in various disciplines. He won a bronze medal in the 4x100 meters relay at the Second Spartakiad of the Peoples of the RSFSR in Leningrad in 1959. He achieved success in ten types of athletics: running 100, 200 m; 110, 200, 400 m with barriers; decathlon, pentathlon, triathlon; pole vault, long jump.
In 1959 he began teaching strength of materials at the Civil Aviation School and looked out for talents during training. Viktor Sedykh had his own formula for success, which he used both for himself and for his students. At the beginning of his work with the charges he was helped by his talent. By looking at an athlete, he could determine his potential.
At the aviation technical school, he met two of his wards and future champions Tatiana Goishik and Alexander Stasevich. Tatyana Goishik is a medalist of the European Winter Championship, Olympic champion at the Games in Moscow. Alexander Stasevich is a three-time winner of the international tournament for the prizes of the Znamensky brothers, a participant in the 1980 Olympics.
When he was a teacher at an aviation technical school, Viktor Innokentievich was in good standing and even received offers of promotion to rector, but he gave up his teaching career. In 1970 he decided to completely immerse himself in coaching and left the aviation technical school. Over the years of coaching, he managed to educate 12 masters of sports of the USSR and 4 masters of sports of international class. The most famous of them are: Nina Lykhina, Boris Gorbachev, Misha Prein, Alexander Stasevich, Olga Antonova, Tatiana Goischik.
Viktor Sedykh was not only an ambitious athlete, but also a stubborn and ambitious coach. He believed that in the world of sports, the coach is primary in the eternal question of what came before the chicken or the egg and what is more important. According to Viktor Innokentyevich, in the formula for success there are four percent of ability, and the rest is labor.
Battle for the Olympics
I always tried my best in relation to my charges, squeezed excellent results out of them and fought for the opportunity to show them. He brought two of his most famous students from scratch to participation in the Olympic Games in Moscow.
Goishik easily got into the national team, but the competition was very high, almost two teams. Tatiana did not participate in the preliminary race, and there was nothing to count on. Viktor Innokentyevich was able to inspire Tatyana and convince the coaching staff that she should run in the final. As a result, the Soviet team bypassed the favorites from the GDR and received Olympic gold.
Stasevich was not planned to be invited to the national team, and the coach had to bring him into shape. Viktor Sedykh "took him under his wing" and at the Games - at the Znamensky Brothers Memorial, Alexander showed the fifth result of the season in the world at a distance of 200 meters. This helped to get into the national team, and it was even predicted that he would take a prize at the Olympics, but he was injured in the preliminary race and could not continue to participate in the competition.
Envious people and awards
Despite his sporting successes, his coaching career was difficult; Viktor Sedykh had envious people. They wrote anonymous letters to him, and even were excommunicated from sports for some time. He was accused of bribery and fraud in the selection of athletes for the Olympic Games. After the games in Moscow, he was the only coach who did not receive any state awards or titles. But all this only spurred him on and made him work even harder.
They began to appreciate the unsurpassed coach after the end of their coaching career. Viktor Sedykh is an honorary citizen of the city of Irkutsk. In 1979 he became an honored trainer of the RSFSR, and only in 1991 Viktor Innokentyevich was awarded the title of Honored Trainer of the USSR. In the nineties, he was an advisor to the head of the agency for physical culture and sports of the Irkutsk region. And in 1999 he was awarded the Order of Honor.
Viktor Innokentyevich spent his last years with his wife in the village of Burdakovka, Irkutsk Region. He died on December 17, 2011, at the age of 82.
