My Dear Friend Yuri died the 23 June. It was with great sadness I and my family learned from his daughter Natalia and her husband Massimo, that Yuri had passed away. Still in our minds is all the kindness, warmth and hospitality that we felt from Yuri. For more than a decade Yuri has been my dear friend and also my teacher and mentor. He called me his pupil and I tried to learn everything he explained and my questions were endless.

I learned about professor Verkhoshansky in the middle of the 60´s when I was a young long jumper in Gothenburg in Sweden. The cold war was a fact and it wasn´t easy to find good articles from the east block. I was lucky to have two good coaches around me at that time. One was the local coach, Rolf Gustavsson, and the other was the national coach in Sweden Track and Field, Mr. Gustaf Laurell. Mr. Laurell was twice coach of the European Track and Field Team and a well known coach even internationally. He was from Finland and the Finnish coaches and scientists were one of few that had good relations with the Soviet in sports. They were sometimes invited to camps and seminars in Soviet. The Finnish coaches made summaries from those seminars. Mr. Laurell got the summaries from his friends and translated it into Swedish. Many times the name Yuri Verkhoshansky was mentioned and we understood that Yuri was the man behind a lot of the interesting research in Soviet. I still have some of those early handwritten summaries in my archive. Both coaches, Gustavsson and Laurell, tried to implement Verkhoshanskis new research in our daily training with good result. So, by many coincidences, we were a group of athletes in Gothenburg who used Yuri Verkhoshanski´s methods in the middle of the 60´s. We were certainly one of few teams who did it in the west at that time.

Some years later I became a specialist coach in Track and Field. I had a huge success with sprinters. My young team of four 17-year old girls became Swedish senior champs in relay 4x100m and noticed a new Scandinavian junior record at that time. Later I had jumpers and javelin athletes at high levels. I still used all I learned about Yuri’s methods and I was supported by Mr. Laurell. Still not so many knew about Verkhoshansky in Sweden and Laurell was my supporter. I then came to work with other sports and more with teams. We knew that Yuri had helped many teams in Soviet, like the famous ice hockey team with the ´Super-5´ with coach Tarasov and later Tishonov. Now Mr. Laurell and I began to feel that we had not fully understood every detail in Yuri’s methods. We tried harder to find articles in German to come closer to the original texts but still we were not satisfied. I found out that Yuri had left Soviet in the early 90´s and now lived in Italy, Then I decided to try to get a possibility to meet him. After a quite intensive mail- and phone communication we got an invitation from Yuri to see him in Rome. With support from among others, the Swedish Olympic Committee, we met Yuri in his home for three days. What a memory! His kindness and hospitality was overwhelming and our discussions were long and every day supported by his wife Carla. We looked thru his library and archive and discussed endless questions about his research. We learned a lot and got a new friend and Yuri learned that he had a lot of supporters in Sweden who wanted him to come for a seminar. 

From that time we met several times and he gave me a lot of help with coaching my teams in Volleyball and Basket. They won about a dozen Swedish championships during the years, 1998-2008. Yuri’s methods and help were also very important when I during several years was responsible for the physical training with diving athlete Anna Lindberg. She reached a 5^th place in the 3m diving final in Sidney 2000.

In 2003 I asked the Swedish Olympic Committee to invite Yuri. He was invited and held a seminar in Stockholm for three days with a group of top coaches. Yuri found out that he was among enthusiastic friends and supporters and his engaged spirit and his warm humor was highly appreciated by all of us. After the seminar he stayed at my place for some days. My son Joel helped him transform his transparent slides into a modern CD and Yuri went through my library and archive and made copies of reports and training programs.

Yuri was also invited to Sweden for a second time in 2007. The interest was great and coaches from all parts of Sweden tried to get a place to the seminar. Unfortunately Yuri´s health was bad and he had to cancel the seminar. There is a huge interest in Sweden for Yuri´s research and all his books. I´m often invited to hold seminars about how I have put his research into practice with my athletes.

Later we decided to publish a book in Swedish. Yuri wrote his part and at last I´m nearly ready with my part. Hopefully it can be published later for the Swedish coaches and other interested readers.

I and my family have lost a Dear Friend and we all have lost one of the world´s most brilliant scientific researchers in Sport.

The last years I and my family have been dear friends with Yuri´s daughter, Natalia, and her husband, Massimo. We have felt the same kindness and hospitality as we did with Yuri. My family and I would like to send our deepest sympathies on your sad loss.

Nils, Hélène, Johan and Joel – the Holmdahl family

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