Estonia’s first Winter Olympic champion, Ants Antson, passed away on October 31, 2015. The Kopli boy who won the 1500-meter speed skating gold at the 1964 Innsbruck Olympics showed throughout his life how high simple, everyday movement can take a person. This is the story of a man who made a whole generation hold its head up — and whose beaten path new arrivals will not let grow over.
Ants Antson — the Kopli boy the war couldn’t break
Ants Antson was born in Tallinn on November 11, 1938 and grew up on the Kopli peninsula, an area of shipyards and ports. He was, quite literally, in the thick of the war. Fuel tanks set ablaze by bomb hits gave off a blinding light that was never forgotten — no later victory erases images like that.
The boys of that neighborhood had one sure defense for keeping their spirits up during the war and the hard postwar years: movement. Sport, as far as conditions allowed. You could run and throw stones. A few lucky kids were given a ball, which the whole gang played to shreds. Skates that strapped onto boots were found for the ice — and that was enough.
The area’s only school had no gym or sports field. Yet out of this steady movement grew star athletes. Four javelin throwers — Harry Vallmann, Ronald Ilves, Charles Vallmann and Vambola Poljakov — became Estonian champions. Kalju Poljakov won gold in the hammer throw. The building at 13 Kaluri Street had four apartments; in three of them grew up members of the national speed skating team: Ants Antson himself, Osvald Tukman and Ants Saks. Add to that Toomas Kirss from across the way. One district, one building, a whole host of names that reached the top.
Innsbruck 1964: Ants Antson’s Olympic gold
The winter of 1964 was a turning point for Antson. First in Oslo: all-around European champion. Then in Innsbruck: Olympic champion in the 1500-meter speed skating event. To cap off the year, he received the award for the world’s best speed skater. Three peaks in a row — from one man who had started out with skates strapped to his boots.
Most telling of all, though, is Antson’s own later explanation. After Innsbruck he insisted in interviews that the Kopli boys had no special sporting ambitions. They wanted to leap around in the fresh air. To test their strength against their friends. To try themselves in all sorts of situations. To enjoy their growing health. It was from exactly this soil that Estonia’s first Winter Olympic champion grew — not from a planned project, but from the everyday joy of movement.
Salt Lake City 2002: when Ants Antson kept his fingers crossed
At the Winter Olympics, held since 1924, Estonia had gone without gold until Antson. And it went without again for 38 years after his triumph. That lasted until the 2002 Salt Lake City Games, when cross-country skier Andrus Veerpalu made Estonian grit count on the punishing climbs.
Antson saw it with his own eyes. He stood in the Soldier Hollow stadium and kept his fingers crossed for his younger compatriot. Later he admitted, covering his emotion with a joke: “I was standing in the Soldier Hollow stadium when Veerpalu came down to the finish, and I was especially glad about his gold. I had grown rather tired of the title ‘our only Winter Olympic champion’ and the obligations that come with it. It felt lighter right away.”
That one sentence holds the whole of Antson — friendly, self-ironic, a man who carried his historic role with ease and took genuine joy when someone new stepped up beside him.
Ants Antson’s legacy
Ants Antson meant a whole epoch in the Estonian sports landscape. The man whose memory we honor these days with bowed heads, and whom we hold up as an example to new generations, carried the title “our only Winter Olympic champion” for almost four decades. It is a heavy burden and at the same time an invaluable gift — because it was precisely such a long solitude at the top that turned his story into a kind of compass for many young Estonian athletes.
Thank you for what you did, Ants! Surely new athletes are already on their way who will not let the path you trod grow over.
FAQ
When and where was Ants Antson born?
Ants Antson was born in Tallinn on November 11, 1938 and grew up on the Kopli peninsula.
In which event did Ants Antson win Olympic gold?
In speed skating over 1500 meters at the 1964 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck. In the same year he also became all-around European champion and received the award for the world’s best speed skater.
How long was Ants Antson Estonia’s only Winter Olympic champion?
38 years — until Andrus Veerpalu won Olympic gold in cross-country skiing in Salt Lake City in 2002.
The Estonian Bodybuilding and Fitness Federation extends its deepest condolences to level 7 bodybuilding and fitness coach Fred Antson.
Author: EOK
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