About Alexander Dityatin
Alexander Nikolaevich Dityatin was a Russian gymnast, three-time Olympic champion and Honoured Master of Sports of the USSR. Winning eight medals at the 1980 Summer Olympics, he set the record for achieving the most medals of any type at a single Olympic Games. The American swimmer Michael Phelps has now twice equalled this record, at Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008. Dityatin competed for the Leningrad Dinamo sports society. Dityatin's first Olympic success was at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, where he won two silver medals: on the rings and in the team competition. Two years later, he won the Spartakiades in the USSR, an event which was followed by a growth spurt in which he grew 12 cm in one year.
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