100 years of the legend of the national sports commentary

The 100th anniversary of the birth of Nikolai Ozerov will be celebrated on December 11th. He was a 24-time USSR tennis champion, commented on sporting events on radio and television for 38 years and was a truly popular commentator. Work on television made him the most recognizable and beloved “voice” of the country. His reports always began the same way: “Moscow speaks and shows!”

TASS hosted a press conference dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the birth of the legendary sports commentator, People’s Artist of the RSFSR Nikolai Ozerov. The event was attended by two-time Olympic champion, captain of the Spartak hockey team and the USSR national hockey team, commentator Boris Mayorov, defender of the Spartak football team and the USSR national football team, champion of the USSR in 1969 Evgeny Lovchev, chairman of the Russian physical culture and sports society Spartak Andrey Slushaev, Chairman of the Presidium of the Russian Association of Sports Commentators (RASK) Alexei Efimov, sports commentator Viktor Gusev, TV presenter, actor, member of the RASK Sergey Belogolovtsev.

“It was Ozerov who made the profession of a sports commentator a cult one, everyone began to know it, discuss it, criticize it, parody it, love it. The profession has become iconic, noticeable, and our association remembers and loves him. On December 24, the fourth ceremony of the all-Russian award of sports commentators “Voice of Sport” will take place, one of the awards is dedicated to Ozerov, and it will always be so, ”said Alexei Yefimov, opening a meeting with journalists at TASS.

The two-time Olympic champion and multiple world hockey champion Boris Mayorov recalled the peculiarities of Ozerov’s reporting style: “Once in 1963, during the World Championship, he kept the air until I got up from the ice to him in the commentator’s room and gave him an interview. To make you feel such contact with the team – that was in his reports.

In the late 1980s, Ozerov was elected chairman of the Spartak sports society.

“He was the person who returned this society to us, he defended it, and we are grateful to him for this,” Andrei Slushaev, chairman of the Spartak society, emphasized, answering one of the questions from media representatives.

Nikolai Nikolaevich Ozerov was born on December 11, 1922 in Moscow in the family of opera singer Nikolai Ozerov. In 1934 he became the Moscow boys’ tennis champion. Since 1941 he has been a master of sports in tennis, since 1947 he has been an honored master of sports in tennis. In 1941 he entered the acting department of GITIS, from which he graduated in 1946 and went to work at the Moscow Art Theater, where he played more than 20 roles.

On August 29, 1950, he made the first independent report on the Dynamo-CDKA football match. He has reported from fifteen Olympic Games, thirty Ice Hockey World Championships, eight World Football Championships and six European Football Championships. In total, as a commentator, he visited 49 countries of the world.

In 1973 he was awarded the title of People’s Artist of the RSFSR.

He died at the age of 75 on June 2, 1997. He was buried at the Vvedensky cemetery in Moscow.

“In his heart he always remained an athlete,” Viktor Gusev, who became a follower of Nikolai Ozerov in the commentary business, once said about the Master of Reporting.

We always remember Nikolai Nikolaevich Ozerov.

Vladimir Sabadash.

Photo by Sergey Vinogradov