- Tamara Press
Tamara Natanovna Press ( _ru. Тамара Натановна Пресс) (
May 10 ,1937 inKharkiv ,Ukraine ) is a former Sovietshot put ter anddiscus throw er in the 1960s. She competed for VSS Trud. Together with her younger sisterIrina Press , who was also atrack athlete, she was half of the "Press Sisters", a duo who won almost everything that there was to win in track and field, except for distance running.At the
1960 Summer Olympics inRome , Italy, Tamara won the gold medal in the shot put and the silver medal in the discus. At the1964 Summer Olympics inTokyo , Japan, she won the gold medal in both events. In the shot put and in the discus throw she set six world records.Tamara was also successful in the European championships. In 1958 in
Stockholm she was third in the shot put, and in 1962 inBelgrade she was the European champion in the shot put as well as the discus.Questions regarding gender
It was said of both sisters that their
gender could not be determined. Some even thought that they might behermaphrodite s - still another opinion was that they were being injected with male hormones in order to make them stronger. Detractors called them the "Press Brothers". [ [http://www.straightdope.com/columns/080822.html "Switch hitter: If a man has a sex change can he compete in the Olympics as a woman?"thestraightdope.com ;August 22 ,2008 ] ] After gender verification for all international sporting female events was made mandatory in 1966 (curtailed in Sydney in 2000), both vanished from the sporting scene. The Western press took that as a confession by the Soviet Union. Russian newspapers deny the allegations to this day.Legacy
The Press sisters came to symbolize the paranoid time in Soviet Union after the death of
Joseph Stalin , abolished by the policies ofMikhail Gorbachev . Tamara and Irina were popular female Soviet sports stars. Their biographies were typical of the time: their father had died in the Great Patriotic War, and they grew up far from their home areas - since the German troops had occupied and destroyed them. Later on, they studied at the University of Leningrad.Later life
After the Soviet sports federations withdrew their candidacies in 1966, both of the Press sisters began other careers. Tamara became a civil engineer, and wrote numerous books about her field, as well as about sports. Today, she holds an honorary office in Russian sports, as did Irina before her death in 2004.
References
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