Russians Are Coming
Team CCCP Weightlifting arrived to the United States in May 1958.
The original black-and-white photo might have looked a bit comic. The authors even called them as “clowns” from Moscow. My guess is that these guys are rather tired and jet lagged after a l-o-o-o-n-g flight from Moscow to America. I won’t be surprised if for most of them it was the first time overseas.
Anyway, here they are left to right:
Yakov Kutsenko (head coach and manager, Kiev), Viktor Bushuev (67.5kg, Gorky), interpreter (?), Yevgeny Minaev (60kg, Moscow), Alexander Bozhko (coach), Vladimir Stogov (56kg, Moscow), Alexey Medvedev (90+kg, Moscow), Fedor Bogdanovsky (75kg, Leningrad), Trofim Lomakin (82.5kg, Moscow), Arkady Vorobyev (90kg, Moscow)
In a few days, these athletes took part in the USA vs. USSR weightlifting series held in Detroit, MI, Chicago, IL and NYC, NY.
The full coverage of these three historical matches is available here.