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THE CHINA MAIL TUESDAY, JUNE 10, 1958.
HERE'S A SPORTS SCOOP from MOSCOW
SPORTS SCOOP
SQUADS OF SEVEN-YEAR-OLDS ARE
DRILLING DAILY TO WIN LAWN TENNIS
GLORIES FOR MARXIST MASS SPORT
Russia's great Wimbledon plot...
Andrey Potanin, aged 17, is a Wimbledon junior "possible." He is a student at the University of Len- Ingrad, where his parents teach physical education. He is Russia's No. 2 player and a Master of Sport.
ン
44 PASCIVET HAVE PUCHE COSETCYDE MPABHTEABCT80!
-Slogan above Russian tennis portitone... are below.
IF workmen from the Lawn Tennis Association arrived at your club this morning and fixed this placard, in foot-high letters, over the pavilion door: LONG LIVE OUR BELOVED -PEOPLE'S GOVERNMENT! you would think it to be the
end of your little world of fun and game.
For Russia, where I have seen such slogans, it is the beginning. And I also choose it as the beginning of a report from Moscow which is much more than a sports story. I wish it were not so sinister.
In the past two weeks I have tried to solve the problem why the Russians, of whom not more than one in 2,000 has ever heard of lawn ten- nis, are being subjected to a mass conditioning for the game;
Why thousands of children from the age of seven are being recruited and drilled with tennis rackets all over the vast regions stretching from the Baltic to Central Asta:
The skeletons in Lenin's laboratories of sport
THESE two pictures show the thoroughness with which Russia gives her sports stars a scientifle education. They were taken at the Moscow Institute of Physical Quituro- where the leaders of the Marxist mass sport move. mont are trained for four yours.
TOP : Lenin's portrait . Is on the chemistry laboratory wall, the politl cal Inspiration for stu denta as they experiment.
What, you may well ask, has all this to do with sport? Simple. Thes youths are training to b Soooor-ocaches.
TRIGHT: Study the fases of these young man. Thay are being lectured:in ana- tomy, and in their hands fa'a human skull. That's fino, becausa "those" "atus" dents are members of the Russian national · I œ.ee hockey team. It's a tough Harriez les hõskey |
And why, in September, new schools at Leningrad and Moscow will enrol specially chosen healthy toddlers for athletic and tennis training for four hours a day.
The answer is the real story behind the arrival in. London at the end of the week of Russian teenagers to play in our tournaments for the first time.
war
Innocently they will be taking Russia Just IS NOT a lawn the first step in a cultural cold tennis country. It has no lawns. The object is the subtle The vast majority of s task of capturing Wimbledon as 200,000,000 people have no more propaganda for the Marxist interest in winning a Wimble- mass sport movement,
don trophy or the Davis Cup the because Propaganda,
than have the Americans vi Soviet Council of Ministery has winning the. Ashes.
Their given its political authority to
summer already the All Union Committee of overcrowded with other sports, Sport and Physical Culture to for few of them can be played
the undertake this task and to pre-in
winter. And, finally, para urgently for it.
they have nothing in common Subtle because the Russians with the shamateur sophistica- and ridi- are Wimbledon as a cute bil of tions which garnish bourgeois pageantry which the culo the game in the West, Soviet Union could exploit in
100,
WHY BOTHER?
REPORT from J. L. MANNING PICTURES by JULIE HAMILTON.
Anna's actress mother and composer father are chauffeur-driven
Anna Dmitrieva is Moscow's "Little Mo" and will play as a junior at Wimble. don this year. This 17-year-old school- girl is already a Master of Sport and ranked No. 8 among Russian women players. Talking to her hore (right) is her mother, Pastuhova Dmitritvà, an actress at the Red Army Theatre,
Anna's stop-father is Molchanov, 'the composer, and the family is of the new "middle-class" of Russia. They even have a chauffeur-driven 1858 Volga car.
LEFT: "Anna, a left-hander, trova a two-fisted backhand. "Hor grandmother dominates her life and Inspires the tennis which her great-uncle, Verbitskil, a famous actor of the Mxat Theatre, taught her. Maonbra family joke : Unele Verbitskii diad two days after Anna firét beat him at tennis,
the aes of the world's impres- slonable and sports-minded youth.
So, why do the Russians Subtle,
the bother to play at all? because Russians have decided to strike The answer is that they are. at a time when an increasing being ordered to play it From number of the world's best.
But I write this more in pity Shaterni Street, Moscow,
sport and constant pro- Section, freely described to me velopment of sport, a world of tennis players are turning pro-headquarters of the All. Union
paganda Gmong the Pioneers their ten-year plan. It is difference between the Soviet than in protest, for we have to fessional. They don't need their Committee of Sport, which is and Komsomol League- the 1. To bulkt tennis courts at the Union and the West.
live together. When i warned cosmic scientists to tell them responsible only to the Council
rate of 500 a year and double I admire Quasión sportsmen about all this after my first trip
many of the production of equipment and women. I like
to Russia in 1855, the Lawn how to catch a falling star. and of Ministers, this decree has
Association put it in their pocket.
circulated been issued:
at three factories at Talinn, the officiala I have talked with. Termie
And you will take in your heart Leningrad and Moscow.
to their council members an To produce tennis coaches of happy, ribboned-haired 17-year-article I wrote.
Anna Delrieve high educational standards at old schoolgiri the rate of 50 a year at special | and her companions when they Institutes in Moscow. Lenin- cung to Junior Wimbledon grad, Kiev, Tiila, Livov, and bewildered and bashful. Alina Ata.
must
Bovies peoples The COLD WAR ON master lawn tenstist
And I have no doubt they After all, supremacy in Olymple Games was
will.
chlidren's and young people's Communist organisations.
All this is backed by State physical education and research
which sclenüße 2. institutes in study becomes the basis of sparting development, In this -So, I repeat; If you sit in the the sun at Wimbledon this year you established in 1950 after only the Russians are yours ahead of any other country I bave must know that there is a cul- their second attempt.
vidiod probably using tural cold war on its hot in too, has been assaulted success methods other counteles would 3.
fully.
roat,
Henley,
But your first question will be And if the Derby is atlllscom. this: Why do I smell a plot spared a Russian challenge, it merely because the Russians, is only because their racing is want to play a game of lawn run by the Ministry of Agricul- tennis? i will tell you.
ture which, judging by the food
THE PLAN
friends. Michail
لعات
I hope I have opened
their eyes to what in an-
15 years,
NO ESCAPE other Len
To organise groups of seven- year-old children for special. training, dest as, track and eld athletes, then as tennis players. These, indeed, are the child puppets of Soviet the cold, calculating all Union the Communist challenge. sport.
tact
What I find domcult is to Wimbledon 'can expect from shake bands over the net with
Commillice of Sport and Physi-
Drobny ran away from it To establish and widen con- cal Culture,
It is they who have made with leading tennis
plot against Wimbledon once- but there is no natlens and to participate in this tournaments.
and for no repsons other than There, in this politica- the stepping up of poikien pro- escape now.' scientific organisation; and de- pagando,
My I have had to eat In Moscow Pesak. vice-pecalden of the 4. must be very worried
about All Union Commit.ce, end other matters. Or ought to be..Berlitz Gelman, chief national How is this non-tennis nation lawn tennis coach, as well 94. to do all this? By the devil Kollegorskiy, administrative kend ishly efficient machinery of of the Russian Lawn Tennis
THE GAMBOLS
TRUST
SORRY, MÍN GAMBOL, YOU ALIVE NO MONEY YOUR ACCOUNT
Be Barry Ave Aily
Time on your hands..
ION 10
RARE
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