Volunteers and rescuers found the body of Alexander Ivanitsky in a river near Moscow. The legendary wrestler drowned at the age of 83. On July 22, he went into the forest for mushrooms in the vicinity of Ruza. Earlier, his belongings and his phone were found near the Wayne River.
Alexander Ivanitsky is the winner of the 1964 Olympics and four-time world champion (1962, 1963, 1965, 1966) in freestyle wrestling in the heavyweight division. Moreover, in the international arena, he did not give a single point to a foreign wrestler. Ivanitsky is considered one of the best tacticians in the history of world wrestling, over and over again his non-standard decisions put rivals in a dead end.
The triumphant sports career of Alexander Ivanitsky might not have happened. At the age of 4, the future wrestler survived the Leningrad blockade. He was saved by the Road of Life, laid on the ice of Lake Ladoga. He believed that “big” sport was ordered for him, as well as for all those who survived the blockade. He studied at a technical school, went to a music club. And only when Alexander was 17 years old, one of his friends almost forcibly brought him to the wrestling hall. At that time, he could not even pull himself up on the horizontal bar.
Having won the 1966 World Cup, Alexander Ivanitsky left the fight in search of new motivation. He won another great victory at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, to which he approached as the chief editor of sports programs of the USSR State Television and Radio Broadcasting. It is Alexander Ivanitsky who can be considered the founding father of modern sports television. The introduction of a close-up on sports broadcasts and other solutions worked out for Moscow-1980 divided the style of sports television directing into “before” and “after”.
The Russian Wrestling Federation, coaches and members of the Russian national sports team express their sincere condolences to the family and friends of the deceased, the memory of him will forever remain in our hearts.
