Boris Shakhlin
USSR
Artistic Gymnastics
Overall Ranks
#5 among Gymnasts
#3 among Male Gymnasts
#3 among Soviet Olympians
#2 among Male Soviet Olympians
Olympic Results
1956
Team - Gold
Pommel Horse - Gold
1960
Individual All-Around - Gold
Team - Silver
Vault - Gold
Parallel Bars - Gold
Horizontal Bar - Bronze
Rings - Silver
Pommel Horse - Gold
1964
Individual All-Around - Silver
Team - Silver
Horizontal Bar - Gold
Rings - Bronze
Total
Events - 24
Gold - 7
Silver - 4
Bronze - 2
Boris Anfiyanovich Shakhlin was born on January 27, 1932 in Ishim, USSR, which is now part of Russia, but he was ethnically Ukrainian. He began training in gymnastics at age 12, and competed in his first world championships at age 22, winning team gold and a silver on the horizontal bar. He remained as part of the Soviet team for the remainder of his gymnastics career, and his first Olympics came in 1956 in Melbourne.
In the team competition, the Soviets were the defending champs, but the Japanese were improving rapidly, and they made this a tough competition. Shakhlin was the 5th-highest scoring member of the Soviet team, as one of the newcomers, but Viktor Chukarin and Yury Titov led them to another gold medal, ahead of Japan by 1.85 points.
The results from the team event decided the individual all-around medals as well, and in that event, Shakhlin finished tied for 8th place. The medals for the individual events were also determined this way. He nearly earned a medal in the vault, where he finished tied for 4th, just 0.05 points behind Titov for the bronze. He did, however, win the gold medal in the pommel horse, where his combined score of 19.25 put him 0.05 ahead of Takashi Ono for first place.
By the time the 1958 World Championships came around, he was the best gymnast in the world, and he proved it by winning 5 gold medals, including the individual all-around. He carried that momentum into the 1960 Olympics in Rome, where his own teammates and the Japanese gymnasts would be his chief competition.
1960 was the year that the Japanese gymnastics dynasty began. They were finally able to overcome the USSR, winning the gold medal by 2.5 points, leaving a team silver for the Soviets. In the individual all-around scoring, however, Shakhlin came out on top, 0.05 points ahead of Ono, giving him the toughest gold medal to earn in gymnastics.
That year is when the event finals were a separate event, with a final performance score combined with the qualifying score to determine the medals. The top 6 on each apparatus advanced to the final, and Shakhlin qualified in 5 of the 6, failing only in the floor exercise, where he finished 7th.
In the vault, he had qualified in third place, but in the final, he posted the best score, a 9.75, which raised him into a tie for first with Ono, and the pair shared the gold medal. He and Ono tied for first in qualifying for the parallel bars, but he again outperformed Ono in the final, and earned a solo gold medal as a result.
He was tied for second in qualifying for the horizontal bar, but slipped back to third after the final, ending up with the bronze medal. On the rings, he qualified #2, but teammate Albert Azaryan had an insurmountable lead, and he was content to finish with the silver. In the pommel horse, he started out in first, and held it in the final, earning him a repeat gold in the event.
He won 7 total medals in the 1960 Olympics, which at the time was tied for the most ever in a single Olympics, since surpassed by Aleksandr Dityatin and Michael Phelps. By 1962, he was still great, but had slipped slightly, winning 4 silvers and 2 bronzes at the World Championships, but no golds.
At the 1964 Olympics, he was still the top athlete on the Soviet team, but they were defeated again by the Japanese team, by an identical 2.5 point margin. He also finished in second place in the individual all-around, but wasn't all that close to the gold, as Yukio Endo beat him by 0.55 points. He qualified for the finals in just 3 of the individual events.
He was #4 in qualifying for the vault, but had a disappointing 9.525 in the final, and he ended up in 5th place. He was the top qualifier in the horizontal bar, which was his favorite event, and he posted the best score in the final as well, so he was finally able to earn his first Olympic gold in the event. In the rings, he qualified in 4th place, but a poor showing from Endo, along with a solid 9.7 from Shakhlin, enabled him to move up to 3rd and take the bronze medal.
He continued to compete after those Olympics, but earned only a single medal, the team silver, at the next World Championships. He was still planning to compete in the 1968 Olympics, but after suffering a heart attack in 1967, he decided to retire from competition. After retirement, he lived in Kyiv for most of the rest of his life, before he passed away in 2008.
At the time of his retirement, he had the record for most total Olympic medals by a man, with 13, and most individual gold medals by a male gymnast, with 6, a record he still holds. His performance at the 1960 Olympics was one of the greatest ever, with 7 total medals and 4 golds, and there is no doubt that he is one of the greatest Olympians of all time.
