Tamara and Irina Press were Ukrainian athletes who dominated track and field competitions at the 1960 and 1964 Olympics. Their masculine physiques caused speculation about their gender, leading to mandatory gender verification for the Olympics. They won five titles for the Soviet Union and set 26 world records. The sisters never had their chromosomes tested, but their records and medals remain official.
Tamara and Irina Press were Ukrainian athletes who competed in the 1960 and 1964 Olympics. They were at the center of a scandal that eventually led to mandatory gender verification for the Olympic Games.
The sisters were born in Kharkiv, Ukraine in 1937 and 1939. They were part of the rigorous and dynamic Olympic team that the Soviet Union assembled to dominate the Olympic Games, as part of a model to fight the Cold War with United States. States in non-military arenas.
The Press Sisters, as they were called, dominated track and field competition at the 1960 Rome Olympic Games and the 1964 Tokyo Games. Tamara Natanovna Press won the gold medal in the shot put at both Olympics, and has won silver in the discus throw in the 1960 Games and gold in 1964. Irina Natanovna Press won gold in the 80m hurdles in the 1960 Games and gold in the pentathlon in 1964.
Together, Tamara and Irina won five track and field titles for the Soviet Union and set 26 separate world records. Tamara absolutely shattered the world record during the Games, beating the existing record by a full 2 feet (0.6m). Irina equaled the world record during those same Games in the 80m hurdles.
Both Tamara and Irina Press had somewhat masculine physiques, and this caused a lot of speculation at the time. There was a huge backlash in the West for the Eastern Bloc winning streak during the 1960s, and much of that focused on the gender of the contestants. Reporters often referred to the sisters pejoratively as the Press Brothers, and it was often speculated that they were in fact men, or at the very least receiving large doses of hormones.
In 1966, the European Championships introduced the mandatory test of chromosomes to determine the sex of competitors, although the method was not entirely reliable. Tamara and Irina were immediately withdrawn from the European Championships by the Soviet Union, fueling much speculation that they were in fact men competing as women.
Both disappeared from the public eye at this point, with the official line being that they had returned home to care for their ailing mother. Irina Press died in 2004 and Tamara is survived by her. He is a qualified civil engineer and has written extensively on both this field and the sport. Tamara holds an honorary title in the Russian sports world, as did Irina before she died.
Tamara and Irina Press never had their chromosomes tested and the speculation has since fizzled, though there remain those who will always believe they were men competing as women or women who had hormone injections. The Olympic committee has never pushed the matter, however, and their records and medals remain official.
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