"Alexander was just that - a man of incredible energy and decency." His spouse, colleagues and friends recall Alexander Kurlovich

 

 

He was gone on the 6th of April, and on the day of the funeral, an almost endless stream of people carried flowers and wreaths to the Ice Palace in order to say goodbye to the real legend of Belarusian sport. The two-time Olympic champion in weightlifting, a teacher and coach, an honorary citizen of the city of Grodno, was often called "Belarusian Hercules." A native citizen of Grodno, in 1987, he was able to lift a record weight of 260 kilogramsin a push. And at the Olympic Games in Seoul in 1988 and the following - four years later - in Spain, he performed in the heavyweight category and became the outright champion.

 

 

Glorifying Belarus at international competitions, he wrote bright pages in the history of the Olympic movement. He devoted his life to the development of sports and after the end of his career. Having finished playing at the age of 35, two-time Olympic champion, four-time world champion, winner of the World Cup, two-time European champion Alexander Kurlovich became the arbiter of the international category. For a long time he was a member of the executive committee of the National Olympic Committee, worked as a director of the Representative office of the National Olympic Committee of Belarus in the Grodno region, was a member of the executive committees of the European and International weightlifting federations.

 

- Not one generation of Belarusian athletes grew up on the example of Alexander Nikolaevich, and in the midst of sports life he was even leaving the platform. He always had a lot of plans and ideas aimed at the development of sports, said Oleg Andreichik, the head of the department of sports and tourism of the regional executive committee. The best memory of a great athlete this year will be the holding of a licensed weightlifting tournament in Grodno, which will bear his name.

 

One of the streets in the new Grodno microdistrictGrandichi will soon remind about the famous sportsman day after day. Kurlovich Street will appear here, and the wife of Alexander Nikolayevich regards this as a fair life gratitude for her husband’s devoted love for his native Grodno.

 

 

-He was offered work in other cities and countries more than once, but he was always connected with the city by a special relationship,recalls Olga Ivanovna. He loved to walk in Rumlevsky Park, and, making plans for the future, we often imagined how, holding hands, we would spend a lot of time here already quite old.

 

Prolonged pauses in the conversation, which every now and then beat out the deep breaths of the interlocutor, are nothing but the pain of irrecoverable loss.

 

-I’m ready to argue with anyone who believes that there are no perfect people, adds Olga Kurlovich. Alexander was just that — a man of incredible energy and decency. 33 years we lived in perfect harmony. He had many friends around the world, but the last 20 years we havebeen celebrating the New Year only together. This time, life decreed otherwise. On New Year's Eve, she received congratulations from numerous friends and acquaintances and just people who respected his work, for example, Tomasz Ayán,the head of the International Weightlifting Federation, and it was very nice.

 

 

His colleagues remember and speak of the Grodno Olympic champion with the same warmth.

 

- I met another 20-year-old young man with Alexander Nikolayevich. At the invitation of his coach Peter Savitsky, I came to train in Grodno and I remember the first meeting in the gym. Aleksandr Kurlovich was already a world champion then, but no one else around noticed a fully justified star. A few years after the first meeting I was lucky to be engaged under his command. I think this is the main turn in my sports career. At that time, athletes from Israel and Sweden came to train according to his programs. Aleksandr Kurlovich literally felt athletes and, as a result, sporting achievements multiplied according to the laws of a geometric progression. It was under his sports "leadership" that I, for example, became the champion of the USSR, - simultaneously recalls Albert Timerbaev,a student, colleague, friend and the deputy chairman of the regional federation of the public association Belarusian Weightlifting Union.

 

His life is also inextricably linked with weightlifting, and the most difficult stage after the departure of Alexander Kurlovich for the interlocutor was refereeing in competitions, where the main judge was always a friend and mentor.

 

-It was under Alexander Kurlovich that Grodno became the real capital of weightlifting in Belarus, says Albert Timerbaev. From 2013 in the city over the Neman, which this man loved immensely, the main weightlifting start is held - the national championship. And for the first time this fall, it began not with the words of Alexander Nikolayevich, but from a minute of silence ...

 

 

Alexander Kurlovich was especially attentive to not only the sport of the highest achievements, but also to the children’s one, understanding that future champions start their way here. In the past three years alone, in Grodno and the Grodno district, with its help and support, four halls for weightlifting have opened - in secondary schools No. 39 and No. 40 of the regional center, in Vertelishki and Gozhe.

 

- I remember that during the opening of one of the Grodno halls, Alexander Kurlovich said that we would reap the benefits of the work done at least in five years. But the "first swallow" flew faster than these forecasts. After just two years, one of the pupils of the junior sports school won the Belarusian championship among youths. Another productive figure - half of the team of the Grodno region, which participated in these competitions, is engaged in just four weightlifting halls opened in recent years, - adds Albert Timerbaev.

 

Everyone who was familiar with Aleksandr Kurlovich knew him as an open person, ready to talk about sports for hours, and strict - he loved order in everything. And with weightlifting did not leave even at home. He regularly took the barbell in his hands, even exchanging the fifth ten of his life, and it was with a sports sight that he preferred to park the car at the farthest parking lot so that he would have to walk before the trip.

 

 

Today, not only friends and acquaintances tell about the rich and productive sports past of Aleksandr Kurlovich. Home photo albums tell about numerous victories, although, as the athlete's wife confessed, he rarely flipped through them.

 

-He I didn’t like to engage in self-admiration, explains Olga Kurlovich. But a special place in the house has always been allotted to Olympic gold.

 

Like no one else, she knows by what efforts and work such awards come to life and, carefully keeping to mind her husband, waiting for the tournament named after him to take place in the sports chronicle of Grodno.