Vsevolod Mikhailovich
Bobrov
1922-1979
Vsevolod Mikhailovich Bobrov was a Soviet footballer, hockey player, football and hockey coach. He was an Olympic champion (1956), Honoured Master of Sports of the USSR (1948), Honoured Coach of the USSR (1967). He was a member of the CPSU from 1952. He was a colonel. He was the only athlete in history to take part in both the Summer (1952) and Winter (1956) Olympic Games, captaining the national team both times. Vsevolod was born in Morshansk, the Tambov governorate. From a young age, Vsevolod played hockey in the winter and football in the summer. In 1938 he was invited to play for the Dynamo team. After leaving school, Vsevolod worked in the factory that was evacuated to Omsk at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, where Bobrov began playing for the city’s football team in 1942. In 1945, he made his debut in the USSR championship at the Stalinets Stadium in Cherkizovo, scoring two goals against Moscow Lokomotiv, and was soon selected for Moscow Dynamo making a triumphant tour around Great Britain. Between 1947 and 1953, Bobrov combined his footballing prowess with hockey. He scored many crucial goals. In the USSR football championships, he scored 97 goals in 116 games. V.M. Bobrov was the only participant in the history of sport who captained both football and hockey teams at the Olympic Games. In 1954, the USSR national team made a sensational debut at the World Hockey Championship, where it won first place, and V.M. Bobrov was recognised as the best forward in the world. In 1953 he became the head coach of the Moscow Air Force Club. However, his greatest successes as a coach came in the 1960s and 1970s – with the Spartak (Moscow) hockey team, which won the USSR championship in 1967, and with the USSR national hockey team, which won the world championship twice under his leadership and for the first time played a series of matches against Canadian professionals.
Address: Moscow, Leningradsky Prospekt, 75, building 1
