Born: 27 January, 1932, in Ishim, Siberia.
Died: 30 May, 2008, in Kiev, Ukraine, aged 76. BORIS Shakhlin was a brilliant Soviet gymnast of the 1950s and 1960s who won six individual Olympic gold medals, a record for men's gy
mnastics.
Shakhlin was known as the Man of Iron for what the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame called his "steely determination and calm consistency" and for his powerful frame, displayed particularly on the horizontal bar and rings. He won 13 Olympic medals, performing in three summer games, and he captured the individual all-around title at the world championships in 1958.
Shakhlin's most stunning performances came in the 1960 Rome games, where he was the only athlete to win four gold medals. He also captured two silver medals and a bronze. He finished first in the individual all-around, the parallel bars, the pommel horse and the vault, took silver in the rings and, as a member of the Soviet team that was runner-up to Japan, took third in the horizontal bar.
He also won 13 medals in world championship competition, including five golds in Moscow in 1958.
Shakhlin was born in Siberia, where his father was a railway worker, and began taking gymnastics lessons at age 12. He moved to Ukraine in the early 1950s and trained there with the renowned Soviet gymnast Viktor Chukarin.
Shakhlin made his Olympic debut at the 1956 Melbourne games, winning gold in the pommel horse and as part of the first-place Soviet team.
Although he captured four golds in Rome, his most cherished medal was the bronze he won there in the horizontal bar. He completed that routine with a bloody hand, which he had injured in the final round.
In his final Olympics, the 1964 Tokyo games, Shakhlin finished in a three- way tie for silver in the individual all-around and won gold on the horizontal bar.
A year after taking part in the 1966 world championships, he sustained a heart attack, ending his competitive career at 35.
Shakhlin was a member of the International Gymnastics Federation's technical committee from 1968 to 1992 and was an international gymnastics judge.
When his brother Arkady died in Siberia in 2000, Shakhlin had to sell some of his medals to pay for funeral expenses. "Whether or not to sell my medals was not subject to debate, and especially not subject to criticism," he said in an interview.
The gymnastics federation lauded Shakhlin for displaying "the importance of concentration and mental rehearsal" and cited his "ability to shut himself from the world" and his "extraordinary stability of performance".
It added: "Nobody recalls ever having seen Shakhlin fall from an apparatus."
He is survived by his wife, Larisa, a former gymnast; a daughter; and a granddaughter.
The full article contains 468 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
