Iron Samson(1888-1962) - one of the strongest people last century. He developed a method based on dynamic exercises, with the help of which he cultivated incredible strength. He always maintained that pumped up muscles are not an indicator of strength. Power depends on strong tendons and the ability to feel the body. This is probably true, otherwise how can one explain the miracles that the strongman Alexander Zass demonstrated on stage, without possessing phenomenal physical characteristics.
Anthropometry
- His height did not exceed 170;
- weight was 75 kg;
- biceps size 42 cm;
- chest – 120 cm.
“My potential is the result of hard work and incredible mental and physical stress.”
Man-made wonders of Zass
Iron Samson devoted his entire life to the circus. People came to see a man who lifted a piano with a sitting girl and carried it around the arena. He held a structure with two circus pieces in his teeth, hanging upside down in the air, and held a rope with a tied piano in his mouth. Alexander easily caught a 9 kg cannonball fired from a distance of 80 m, broke the links of a metal chain and tied them with a bow. He could hammer a 3-inch nail with his palm and pull it out with his fingers. In his arsenal there were always many power tricks that captured the imagination of the public.
Children's hobby
Alexander Ivanovich Zass born in Vilnius. My love for the circus began with my first visit to the show. What shocked the boy the most was the number with trained animals and the performances. The event that happened at the end of the speech determined the path of life. When the circus performer invited those who wanted to unbend the horseshoe, Sasha’s father came on stage and repeated his act. The boy realized that he had potential, but it needed to be developed.
Alexander read many books about physical development, got acquainted with Anokhin’s training and. The latter’s book on body building became a sports bible for the teenager. He built a trapeze arena, stone weights, and began using dumbbells. I trained my agility with the help of a throwing board, grabbing a flying stone in the air. The sports corner was constantly improved by adding new equipment.
Iron Samson's training methods
Later, Sasha met famous athletes Krylov and Dmitriev-Morro. The guys developed a complex for him and helped him master the barbell. Every day he started from a 3-kilometer run, then unbent iron rods on his knee and twisted them into spirals. For back and chest development raised a platform with stones. After a series of approaches, I stood in a “bridge” and stretched the muscles. Morning exercises I ended up lifting bags to gain weight. First I filled them with sawdust, then every day I poured out a handful and added sand. After completely replacing the filler, I used shot. As a result, the package, which initially weighed 7 kg, became 10 times heavier.
The second training session took place in the evening. Alexander Zass practiced horse riding and developed his balance by vaulting. Special techniques for performing on a horse while moving at a gait, trot or calm walk perfectly developed balance.
Alexander did not deny the importance of power techniques and used them for himself to improve texture. At the very beginning of his career, he weighed 63 kg, and he was faced with the task of increasing his volume.
“I believe in muscles if the tendons are strong, otherwise it’s just an illusion.”
To strengthen them, I performed them to overcome resistance. To increase the contractility of muscle fibers, he combined them with dynamic practices.
Glory
There was a lot of tragedy in Zass's life. He survived the first world war, was captured, broke his chains three times and escaped. The last time he was lucky, and Alexander made it to Hungary, where Schmidt’s circus was touring. He passed the strength test and became a member of the troupe. Here he met wrestler Chai Janos and signed a contract for a world tour. The press wrote:
“Zass is the only one in the world whose mind and body are in harmony. What he does will not be repeated by anyone else.”
In total, Zass devoted 60 years to the circus. During this time came up with hand dynamometer, gun for the “Man Projectile” attraction. Hard training did not prevent me from living in good health into old age. The strongman was buried near London in the town of Hockley.
Authentic footage in the biographical video about Alexander Zass
He was called "Iron Samson." He believed that his strength was that he was Russian. Alexander Zass escaped from German captivity, carried a wounded horse from the battlefield, bent horseshoes and broke chains.
Zass and Rezazad: who is stronger?
Alexander Zass is considered a legendary Russian strongman. And in fact, everything that he showed on the circus stage did not fit into the minds of ordinary people. For example, in one of his performances, “Iron Samson” lifted a horse weighing 500 kilograms. For comparison, the most outstanding result in modern weightlifting belongs to the Iranian Hossein Rezazadeh, who pushed 263.5 kilograms. And this despite the fact that the weightlifter from Tehran weighs twice as much as Zass. Of course, there is a difference between carrying a horse on your shoulders and lifting a barbell. However, the scale of the physical capabilities of the Russian circus performer still amazes the imagination.
A man of his time
Meanwhile, in Tsarist Russia there were many other athletes who earned their living by performing strength training in circus tours. For example, Evgeniy Sandov easily squeezed 101.5 kilograms with one hand. Ivan Zaikin surprised by the fact that he carried a ship's anchor weighing 409 kilograms. And “Russian Lion” Georg Hackenschmidt easily spread his arms with two-pound weights to the side.
At that time, every Russian boy dreamed of becoming a circus strongman. By the way, Alexander Zass himself said in his memoirs that he was greatly impressed by the circus performer Vanya Pud, who lifted huge barrels of water. This happened at the age of seven, and young Shura - as he was called in the family - played circus strongman, trying to lift a wooden tub.
Get over yourself
In his childhood games, Zass took on weights that he could not even lift adult. The boy did not succeed, but Shura did not give up and pushed for a long time. last bit of strength. In essence, he performed isometric-static exercises, concentrating muscle tension through willpower. The result was not long in coming. After some time, the future “iron Samson” easily lifted the saddle, although quite recently he needed considerable effort to do this. He saw an obvious correlation between desperate attempts to achieve the “impossible” and increasing strength. However, recognized athletes of that time did not see the point in such training, preferring to “pump up” their muscles with dynamic exercises.
Scientific explanation
It will take decades scientific research to explain this “Samson” phenomenon. It turns out that human energy depends on metabolism in the body, which is carried out in two ways - aerobic and anaerobic. Dynamic variable exercises such as squats stimulate the aerobic system. And with static loads - anaerobic, the same one that is the biochemical basis of strength capabilities.
Raise the horse, break the chain...
Since Alexander Zass mainly trained using static methods, he developed unique strength capabilities that he himself was not aware of. In 1914, as a cavalryman of the 180th Vindavsky Regiment, he was ambushed by Austria. He himself was not injured, but his horse was wounded in the leg. Without thinking twice, he picked up his four-legged friend and carried him half a kilometer to the camp where the regiment was located.
Having done this, Zass believed in the unique capabilities of his body and in the strength of his spirit. Finding himself in captivity, the strongman, shackled, broke the chain and straightened the bars of the prison bars. Later, recalling his escape, “Samson” admitted that without the concentration of moral strength he could hardly have accomplished this. Later, this property was noted by the director of the English Camberwell Athletic Club, Mr. Pullum, writing about the “Russian strongman” as “a man who uses his mind as well as his muscles.”
Fortitude
Nowadays it has been proven that moral strength actually significantly increases a person’s energy. In particular, scientists from the American Sports Association experimentally established that the muscular abilities of a person under hypnosis, when he was told that he has incredible strength, are significantly higher than when doping is introduced into the blood. The fact is that the force of muscle contraction depends on the power of the electrical impulse coming from the brain along the central line nervous system. The more intense this impulse, the more calcium ions are released, affecting a person’s strength.
Alexander Zass did not know all these scientific intricacies, but he believed that the concentration of mental strength increases physical strength. And he also believed that the “strength of spirit” in the Russian people is strong.
A Love Called Betty
Having joined the English circus, Alexander Zass developed a unique circus act in which pianist Betty Tilbury acted as an assistant. The act consisted of the strongman hovering under the circus dome and holding a rope in his teeth, on which was suspended a platform with a piano and a girl playing music.
Soon love broke out between them, lasting ten years. However, Zass liked other women and had fleeting affairs. “We can’t fix you, we’ll remain just friends,” Betty once told him and married the clown Sid. But the “Russian Samson” never found his family. He wrote to his sister Nadezhda in letters that he was endlessly lonely.
Alexander Zass was born on February 23, 1888 on an unnamed farm in the Vilna province, part of the North-Western region Russian Empire. Shura was the third child in the family. In total, Ivan Petrovich and Ekaterina Emelyanovna Zassov had five children: three boys and two girls.
Soon after the birth of Alexander, the Zass left the Vilnius region and moved to the outskirts of Tula, and when the boy was four years old, the family moved to Saransk. The reason for the change of place was that my father received the position of clerk. Despite the fact that the landowners' estates, which were managed by Ivan Petrovich, were located between Saransk and Penza, the Zasses lived mainly in the city itself. It is curious that both the town house itself and the bank accounts were registered not in the name of the head of the family, but in the name of the mother, who was a very purposeful and strong-willed woman. It is known that she even ran and was elected to the Saransk City Duma. Ivan Petrovich, skillfully managing the household, involved all his children in work. Later, Alexander Ivanovich recalled: “My childhood was spent in the fields, because our family was essentially a peasant family. There was plenty of food and drink, and yet we had to work hard for everything we had.”
By his own admission, Alexander's childhood years were not particularly interesting and consisted mainly of hard work. As he grew older, his father began sending him on long trips on horseback with large sums of money, which he had to deposit in the bank into the account of the owner of the estates. In the future, his father wanted to give Alexander a technical education and dreamed of seeing his son as a locomotive driver.
Zass himself did not have the slightest desire to drive locomotives. Traveling around different cities and villages, he had the opportunity to see quite a lot of traveling troupes and tent circuses, for which Russia was famous in those days. The life of a circus performer seemed to him the most beautiful in the world. However, Alexander could not allow himself even a hint of such thoughts - his father was very strict and could mercilessly flog him for disobedience.
One day, Ivan Petrovich took his son with him to the fair to sell horses. In the evening, after a successful transaction, they went to a performance of a traveling circus located nearby. The sight he saw struck the boy to the core: To the music, screams and laughter, people soared in the air, horses danced, jugglers balanced various objects. But he especially liked the strongman who could easily lift heavy weights, break chains and twist iron bars around his neck. Many spectators, including Father Alexander, following the invitation of the presenter, got up from their seats and tried without special success repeat these tricks. Returning to the inn, father and son had dinner and went to bed. But sleep did not come to Alexander, slipping out of the room, he rushed to the circus tent and, having paid the required amount from his pocket money, went in to watch the performance again.
He returned home only the next morning. The father, having learned about his son’s absence, took a shepherd’s whip in his hands and flogged him. Alexander spent the rest of the day and all night in a separate room without food or sleep, tormented by a fever. Early in the morning he was given some bread and told to go to work immediately. Already in the evening, the father informed his son that he was sending him to a distant southern village for a year as a shepherd. There, a twelve-year-old teenager had to help shepherds graze a huge herd - almost 400 cows, 200 camels and over 300 horses. From morning to night, he was in the saddle under the scorching sun and made sure that the animals did not fight, did not wander off and did not climb into other people's possessions.
All the time spent away from home, Alexander did not stop thinking about the circus and its wonderful life. He learned to shoot well - more than once or twice the shepherds had to fight off wolves. Communication with animals also gave a lot to the future circus actor. He tried to teach horses the same tricks that he noticed from riders in the circus, and improved in horse riding and vaulting. Soon the boy began to feel as confident on the horse’s back as on the ground. However, what especially surprised the shepherds and what Alexander himself considered his main victory was his friendship with the guard dogs. He managed to find common language with six huge, ferocious and merciless wolfhounds, who then accompanied him everywhere.
After returning to Saransk, Zass began collecting magazines and various instructions “on improving the figure and developing strength.” Reading them, he tried to understand the intricacies of sports and circus terminology, learned athletic exercises, learned about famous wrestlers, gymnasts and strongmen. Alexander's favorite hero was the outstanding athlete of the nineteenth century, Evgeniy Sandov.
Zass's early day now began with gymnastics and jogging. He spent his free minutes in the backyard of the house, devoting them to performing various exercises. He didn’t have any dumbbells or weights, so the guy tied stones of varying weights to wooden sticks. In addition, he carried cobblestones, trying to hold them only with his fingers, and jogged with a calf or foal on his shoulders. Zass also trained with thick tree branches - he tried to bend them without support with just his hands. Later, he made two horizontal bars for flying from one bar to another.
The first successes came as a reward for hard work - Alexander felt his body getting stronger and filled with strength. He learned to “spin the sun” on a bar, do one-arm pull-ups, and catch 8-kilogram stones thrown from a throwing board. There were also injuries. One day he failed to hold a stone projectile and fell with a broken collarbone. After spending a month with his arm in a sling, he started all over again.
Many years later, having already become famous, the circus athlete, based on his childhood experiences, will create an entire training system, the basic principles of which will be recognized throughout the world. These are the so-called isometric exercises. Their characteristic feature- muscle tension without contractions, without movements in the joints. Alexander Zass argued that it is not enough to make do with only traditional methods of muscle development, namely muscle contraction under load. Seemingly futile attempts to strain tendons and muscles, such as when bending a steel bar, are very useful for developing strength. Time has completely confirmed his point of view.
Having become older, Zass turned for help to famous athletes of that era - Pyotr Krylov, Dmitriev, Anokhin. They all reviewed the young man's letters and sent him their methodological recommendations. By training according to their exercise systems, Alexander Ivanovich further developed his abilities. None of his peers could do what he did. Weighing 66 kilograms, the young man confidently twisted right hand 80 kilograms, juggled 30 kilogram weights. Rumors about his extraordinary strength quickly spread throughout the surrounding villages and villages. They began to invite him to various parties and celebrations, where people were not averse to measuring their strength with him. However, for all his outstanding abilities, Alexander Ivanovich grew up as a surprisingly calm and not pugnacious person; in the summer he took care of his father’s affairs, and in the winter he attended school.
The turning point in his fate came in the summer of 1908. Despite Alexander's timid protests, Zass Sr. sent the twenty-year-old guy to Orenburg to the local locomotive depot to study as a fireman, or, if he was lucky, as an assistant driver. And at the beginning of October, Orenburg newspapers announced the arrival in the city of “the first-class Andrzhievsky circus with its huge troupe.” Alexander, of course, came to watch the performance. A couple of days later, Zass, having mustered up his courage, appeared before the director, to whom he told about how he was attracted to such a life. Dmitry Andriyuk, and this is how Andrzhievsky was actually called, was himself an excellent trainer and wrestler, and performed athletic performances. To Alexander’s great surprise, he said: “Do you want to work in the circus? Well, okay, you can join us as a laborer. You will help where needed. But life here is difficult, no doubt about it. You will work long hours, and it may happen that you will have to go hungry. Think carefully." However, Alexander did not hesitate.
At first, the young circus performer really had a hard time. In addition to various “menial” labor such as cleaning animals or cleaning the arena, he helped the athlete Kuratkin during his performances. Over time, Kuratkin became attached to the young man - he taught him various tricks of circus strongmen, and trained him in balancing with heavy objects. And a few months later, Alexander received his own, small number - in a demonstration of strength, he threw a huge stone over his head from hand to hand. He wrote to his family that he was diligently studying to become a locomotive driver. This was only partly a lie - Zass really put his whole soul into the hard work of a circus performer.
Andrzhievsky's circus tent operated for six months in Orenburg and nearby settlements, and as soon as the fees began to fall, the troupe got ready to go. Zass had to make a difficult decision - to go to his father in Saransk and inform him of his choice of life path or to openly continue his circus career. Andrzhievsky, having learned about this, ordered Zass to return home, repent and trust in his father’s mercy. He refused all the young man’s requests to take him with him.
However, Zass did not go home at all. He took the train to Tashkent, and upon arriving in the city he immediately went to the circus of the famous entrepreneur Yupatov. He had heard a lot about Philip Afanasyevich. Yupatov kept his circuses in Tashkent, Samarkand and Bukhara; his troupes included the most famous “stars”, each of them an unsurpassed specialist in his genre.
The performance of the Tashkent troupe made a huge impression on Zass. After the Andrzhievsky Circus, the performances performed amazed us with their unique technique, brilliant invention and purity of execution. When the performance ended, the young man went to the ringmaster to talk. Introducing himself as an artist from the Andzhievsky Circus, he explained his desire to get a job with Yupatov very simply: “I want to earn more.” Half an hour later he was already invited for negotiations with the director of the circus, who, barely looking at Zass, announced that he was ready to hire him as a laborer on the condition that he pay a “deposit of integrity” of 200 rubles. Alexander did not have that kind of money, and he was given a week to get it.
The very next morning he wrote a letter to his father, saying that he had found a promising job with a good salary. He wrote that a large enterprise offered him training, but required him to pay 200 rubles as proof of integrity. Four days later, the required amount of money came from his father along with congratulations, and Zass became a full participant in Yupatov’s performances.
Initially, he became an assistant to the legendary trainer Anatoly Durov. After six months of working on his team, Alexander was unexpectedly transferred to the cashier position. Wages there was more in this place, and Zass even managed to repay the debt to his father, who now did not particularly go into the essence of his son’s “profitable” work. And soon he was returned to the arena, but not to Durov, but to the troupe of horse riders. As soon as Alexander got used to this friendly and fun company, he was transferred to aerialists. This is how Philip Afanasyevich raised young circus performers. In order to identify their true inclinations, and also to have replacements if necessary, he “passed” them through many specialties. Zass, despite the fact that he liked the work, did not stay with the trapeze gymnasts for long and was sent to a group of wrestlers led by the 140-kilogram giant Sergei Nikolaevsky.
Some time later, after numerous discussions, a plan was born for Alexander to perform independently, not related to wrestling matches. The basis was strength exercises, in which Zass was especially good - breaking chains with the force of his chest and hands, bending iron rods. These tricks were complemented by less difficult numbers, but also very effective. For example, demonstrating strength pectoral muscles, Alexander lay on his back, and on his chest there was a platform that could accommodate up to ten people. And Alexander could successfully hold the platform in his teeth on which the two heaviest wrestlers were sitting.
People flocked to Yupatov's performances, and the box office was excellent. However, the happiness of circus performers is short-lived. One dark August night, the circus menagerie caught fire. Perhaps the matter was not without competitors, but it was not possible to find out. The damage from the fire was catastrophic - most of the animals were burned and property was lost. There was nothing to pay the artists, and the troupe disbanded. Horse riders left for the Caucasus, Durov went to St. Petersburg, and Alexander Zass, along with six wrestlers, went to Central Asia. Along the way, the athletes earned their living by performing, and the arena for them was best case scenario the central square of the village, or more often a street or roadway. Thus, the emaciated and weakened strongmen reached Ashgabat, where they got a job in the circus tent of a certain Khoytsev.
With the advent of Yupatov’s artists, Khoytsev’s circus became mainly a wrestling circus, since against their background all other genres were losing. Performing in various cities and villages as an ordinary wrestler, Alexander continued to train intensively. His day began with a three-kilometer run, then there were exercises with breaking chains and with iron rods - he bent them on his knee, curled them in a spiral, and tied them in a knot. He devoted a lot of time to developing his back and pectoral muscles. Having finished morning workout, Zass rested and trained for the second time in the evening. During these classes, the athlete practiced horseback riding with vaulting, practiced balance, developed jaw and neck strength by lifting 170-kilogram steel beams from the ground.
Such activities helped him gain more muscle mass, which was necessary not so much for performing various tricks, but for obtaining a “marketable” appearance, since Zass was not taken seriously in the arena for a long time. Indeed, in an era when in world athletics 150- and 170-kilogram heroes were considered the embodiment of physical power, the short and thin Zass with his 168 centimeters of height and 75 kilograms of weight had a hard time compared to them. Later Alexander Ivanovich will write that “large biceps cannot be considered a criterion of strength, just as a large belly is not a sign of good digestion.” He argued that “a large man does not have to be strong, and a modestly built man does not have to be weak, and all the strength lies in the sinews, which is what needs to be trained.”
During a tour of the Khoytsev circus, Zassa finally found a summons ordering him to appear at military service. Recruits were called up according to their place of birth, and Alexander had to go to Vilna, where he was from. There his forehead was shaved and he was assigned to serve in the 12th Turkestan Infantry Regiment, located on the Persian border. During his three-year service, he worked as a gymnastics instructor and also continued to practice wrestling and horse riding. After its completion, Zass went to Simbirsk (Ulyanovsk), where he was offered a position as a coach of women athletes, and after some time he moved closer to his family in the city of Krasnoslobodsk, where he and his father purchased a cinema. However, things didn’t work out for him, and he was forced to turn to weightlifting again. Zass began performing solo numbers, and at the same time developed new unique power tricks. The first job offers came from a number of circuses, but then the First World War began.
Mobilization took place hastily, and Zass ended up in the 180th Vindavsky Infantry Regiment, which was transferred from Saransk to Lublin at the beginning of the war. Alexander Ivanovich was enlisted in regimental reconnaissance and, as part of a small group, carried out horse raids on enemy rear lines. A pedant and an ardent “regime manager” in peaceful life, at the front he turned into a stern and dashing warrior. It is known that he was promoted to rank for his bravery in combat. There is also a legend about how, during another sortie, the stallion Zass was wounded in the front leg. The athlete did not abandon the animal in trouble; after waiting for night, he put the horse on his shoulders and went out with him to our trenches.
Alexander Ivanovich did not fight at the front for long - during the next battle, a shell exploded next to him, hitting both legs of the Russian hero with shrapnel. He woke up in an Austrian hospital. There he was operated on, but the first operation was unsuccessful, and soon Alexander Ivanovich underwent a second and third. The wounds did not want to heal properly, and doctors warned the athlete that he might have to lose his legs. Left to his own devices, Zass used some of the principles of his passive exercises. He continued to work hard every day until all fears of losing his legs completely disappeared. Full recovery did not come immediately. At first, Alexander Ivanovich learned to move on crutches and helped care for other prisoners. And when he was able to move without crutches, he was transferred to a prisoner of war camp.
In this “institution” everything was different. They were fed poorly, forced to work a lot - from morning to evening, prisoners were busy building roads and temporary hospitals for the wounded on both sides, who continued to arrive in countless numbers. Zass spent about a year in this camp. The place was well guarded, the barracks were surrounded by barbed wire. Together with another prisoner named Ashaev, Alexander Ivanovich began to prepare to escape. With great difficulty, the friends managed to get a map of railway tracks without roads and a small, almost toy compass. They also managed to save some provisions. The last barrier to escape was barbed wire, completely hung with hundreds of bells and tins. Straining their brains in search of a way out, the prisoners very soon came to the conclusion that they had only one way beyond the wire - to make a tunnel. On moonless nights, Zass and Ashaev dug a hole, and when it was finished, they escaped.
By dawn, tired and exhausted, they ran to the forest and took refuge under the shade of trees. There was no chase. The goal of the fugitives was to reach the Carpathians, where, in their opinion, the forward posts of the Russian army were located. However, these plans were not destined to come true; on the sixth day they came to the attention of a field gendarmerie patrol. They tried to escape, but they were caught up and, after being brutally beaten, they were taken to the nearest commandant’s office. After interrogation, Zass and Ashaev, to their surprise, were not shot, but were sent back to the camp. There the fugitives were brought before a military court, which gave them a relatively “mild” decision - they were sentenced to thirty days of solitary confinement on bread and water. At the end of the punishment, the prisoners were returned to their old duties, but were transferred to another, more guarded part of the camp. Alexander Ivanovich stayed here for several more months, and then, due to a shortage male power was sent to Central Hungary to an estate that was breeding horses. Life here turned out to be much easier, and after a couple of months, taking advantage of the inattention of the guards, Zass and a Cossack named Yamesh left this place. This time the Russian athlete was much better prepared, had a reliable map and compass, and enough money. They remained free for two and a half months, until a patrol caught them near the Romanian city of Oradea. The friends were placed in the city prison, and when it was revealed that this was Alexander’s second escape, he was put in a dark underground casemate for six weeks. After this, he was transferred to a regular cell and was engaged in minor prison work. And then he was transferred to street work, which pushed Alexander Ivanovich to another attempt escape. This time, having already learned from bitter experience, he did not try to break through to the Russian units. Zass reached the Romanian town of Kolozhvar, where he was located famous circus Herr Schmidt and asked to meet with the owner.
Alexander Ivanovich openly told the director of the troupe about his troubles, as well as about his activities in Russian circuses. Fortunately, Schmidt's program did not include any strength athletes or wrestlers. Zass's stories about the tricks he could show convinced the owner. Schmidt was pleased with the first performances of the Russian hero, who, by the way, was far from in his in better shape, helped him buy new clothes and paid him a huge advance. However, Alexander Ivanovich’s luck was not destined to last long. Circus posters, announcing the arrival of "The Strongest Man on the Planet" attracted the attention of the local military commandant. Curious why such a fine fellow did not serve in the Austrian army, he arrived at the circus, and by the evening of the same day he found out that Zass was a Russian prisoner of war. Taking into account that Alexander Ivanovich did not kill or maim anyone during his escapes, the military tribunal limited himself to imprisoning him in the fortress until the end of the war. Zass was placed in a damp and cold basement, into which air and light penetrated through a tiny window located at a height of six meters and overlooking a moat with water. The legs and arms were shackled, which were removed only twice a day during feeding.
Escape seemed impossible, but the Russian hero did not lose heart. Pulling himself together, he began to train. Shackled in his arms and legs, he worked hard - he did goose steps, backbends, squats, tensed his muscles, kept them “on,” and relaxed. And so many times a day. The ostentatious humility and obedience somewhat changed the conditions of his detention. Three months later, Zass was allowed a daily half-hour walk around the territory of the fortress, and after a while, knowing about his circus past, he was offered to train local dogs. Alexander Ivanovich agreed, thereby freeing himself from the leg shackles and gaining some freedom for his hands. This turned out to be quite enough for him. After some time, the Russian strongman successfully made his next, final escape.
He successfully reached Budapest, where he got a job as a port loader. Zass stayed at this job for quite a long time, gradually regaining his strength. And when the Beketov Circus came to the city, he turned there, thinking of getting a place as an athlete or wrestler. But the circus director, who was experiencing financial difficulties, refused him, nevertheless giving him a letter of recommendation for the famous wrestler Chai Janos, who had his own troupe. This good-natured Hungarian treated Alexander Ivanovich with attention. After listening to the story of the Russian hero and testing him in a duel, he took him into his team. For three years after this, Zass performed in the wrestling troupe of Chai Janos, alternating fights on the carpet with acts with dogs. He visited Italy, Switzerland, Serbia. Zass did not return to Soviet Russia, believing that he, as a soldier, tsarist army, the path there is closed forever. In the early twenties, tired of wrestling, the athlete moved to the circus of his old friend Schmidt, where he began performing athletic tricks that later brought him world fame. At the director’s suggestion, he took the stage name Samson, under which the European public knew him for many decades.
In 1923, Zass received an unexpected offer to work in Paris. He signed a contract, but did not stay long in the French capital. A year later, at the invitation of the head of British variety shows Oswald Stoll, he went to England, where he lived until the end of his life. It is curious that Stoll’s representatives, who met the famous strongman at London’s Victoria Station, at first did not pay any attention to the inconspicuous, stocky man who did not know a word of English. However, soon photographs of the Russian athlete took over the front pages of local newspapers. He visited Bristol, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh... His fame grew, and his performances aroused fantastic interest.
Zass was truly unique; common sense refused to believe in the numbers he performed. To demonstrate the gigantic load on his shoulders, he built a special tower. Being at the top, he held suspended platforms with people on his shoulders. In one of the photographs, Zass holds thirteen people on his shoulders, including Winston Churchill. Zass developed another unique number, “Projectile Man,” from a trick shown by other strongmen. They were catching a nine-kilogram cannonball fired from a cannon, but the Russian hero chose a ninety-kilogram projectile for himself. Then, together with foundries and blacksmiths, he developed a particularly powerful cannon capable of throwing this cannonball so that it would slide along a given trajectory over the arena. By the way, Alexander Zass’s technical studies brought him considerable benefit in the future. Many years later, he developed the wrist dynamometer, first as a competition device and then as a training device. Successful performances with cannonball catching were not enough for him; Zass knew well how to conquer the audience. After much thought and calculation, a miracle gun was created that fired not cold metal, but girls. Flying eight meters across the stage, they invariably fell into the hands of the athlete.
Working with a jack, Alexander Ivanovich easily lifted trucks off the ground on one side. He generally had a passion for cars - in one city or another in England he loved to organize “road shows”. The strong man lay down on the ground, and cars filled with passengers passed over him - along his lower back and legs. In public, Zass also practiced stretching with horses. At the same time, he held back two horses rushing in different directions.
Putting future karatekas to shame, Zass broke through concrete slabs with his fists, and bent iron beams into a pattern more intricate than on the gates of Westminster Abbey. Alexander Ivanovich’s traditional performances were: hammering huge nails into a thick board with the palm of his hand, flying under the circus dome with a 220-kilogram beam in his teeth, carrying across the stage with a 300-kilogram horse on his shoulders. Many famous British athletes tried unsuccessfully to repeat Zass's tricks. And the Russian hero challenged anyone who was ready to knock him down with a punch in the stomach. Professionals have also participated in this more than once. There is a photo of the world heavyweight boxing champion, Canadian Tomi Burns, trying to knock down the Russian hero.
In 1925, Zass met the dancer Betty - she became a participant in one of his numbers. The athlete hung upside down under the circus dome and held in his teeth a rope on which a platform with a girl playing the piano was suspended. Later short time they began to live together. In 1975, 68-year-old Betty would say: “He was the only man I truly loved.” But Alexander Ivanovich was always popular with women and reciprocated. Betty forgave him a lot, and only ten years later life together in 1935 they decided to end their relationship and remain friends. She later married best friend Zass - clown and circus rider Sid Tilbury.
With the outbreak of World War II, Alexander Zass, who never renounced his Russian citizenship, had problems. To avoid being interned, he stopped performing public power shows and began training lions, elephants and chimpanzees at Chessington and Paignton zoos, and gave numerous interviews about working with animals. As soon as the war ended, Alexander and Betty resumed performing together. More for many years she, hovering over the arena, played music until, during a performance in 1952 at the Liverpool stadium, the noose to which Zass was suspended by his leg broke. The entire structure, along with the athlete, the fragile woman and the piano, collapsed. Alexander Ivanovich escaped with only a broken collarbone, but Betty injured her spine. After spending two years in a hospital bed, she was able not only to get back on her feet, but also to return to the circus as a rider. However, a second misfortune soon happened - she was thrown by a horse. Since then, Betty has been confined to a wheelchair forever.
Shortly before the war, Alexander participated in filming in the small town of Hockley, located a forty-minute drive from London. Here he saw a site on Plumberow Avenue that he really liked. In 1951, Zass, Sid and Betty purchased this house for three. Alexander Ivanovich lived there on short visits, during breaks between tours. In 1954, Zass worked as the chief administrator of the New California Circus in Wokingham, and also performed with his famous Scottish ponies and dogs. On August 23 of the same year, the BBC television company organized the athlete's last public performance with power tricks. And although he was already 66 years old, the numbers shown were impressive. After this, Zass continued to work tirelessly, but as a trainer. However, he liked to include power routines in his programs as entertainment for the public. For example, at the age of seventy he carried two lions around the arena in a special yoke.
In the summer of 1960, Alexander Ivanovich received a letter from Moscow from his sister Nadezhda. A correspondence began between them. In his messages, Zass asked if he could come and visit his relatives, stay in Russia, get a job there as a coach or physical education teacher. And in 1961, when the Soviet circus came on tour to London, the athlete met with Vladimir Durov, the grandson of the legendary Anatoly Leonidovich, for whom he worked as an assistant in his youth.
Monument to Zass in Orenburg
In the summer of 1962, there was a fire in Zass's caravan. 74-year-old Alexander Ivanovich bravely rushed into the fire to save his animals. In doing so, he received serious burns to his head and damaged his eyes. These injuries greatly damaged him. He felt that he did not have long left in this world, and gave Betty detailed instructions about his own funeral. One of the main wishes was the time of burial - “in the morning, when the sun begins to shine.” It was at this time that circus performers used to leave their seats and hit the road. Alexander Ivanovich died on September 26, 1962 in a hospital in Rochford, where he was taken the night before with a heart attack. He was buried in Hockley in accordance with his wishes.
Based on materials from the book by A.S. Drabkin “The Secret of Iron Samson” and the athlete’s memoirs “The Amazing Samson. Told by him... and more"
Alexander Zass was born on February 23, 1888 on an unnamed farm in the Vilna province, part of the Northwestern region of the Russian Empire. Shura was the third child in the family. In total, Ivan Petrovich and Ekaterina Emelyanovna Zassov had five children: three boys and two girls.
Soon after the birth of Alexander, the Zass left the Vilnius region and moved to the outskirts of Tula, and when the boy was four years old, the family moved to Saransk. The reason for the change of place was that my father received the position of clerk. Despite the fact that the landowners' estates, which were managed by Ivan Petrovich, were located between Saransk and Penza, the Zasses lived mainly in the city itself. It is curious that both the town house itself and the bank accounts were registered not in the name of the head of the family, but in the name of the mother, who was a very purposeful and strong-willed woman. It is known that she even ran and was elected to the Saransk City Duma. Ivan Petrovich, skillfully managing the household, involved all his children in work. Later, Alexander Ivanovich recalled: “My childhood was spent in the fields, because our family was essentially a peasant family. There was plenty of food and drink, and yet we had to work hard for everything we had.”
By his own admission, Alexander's childhood years were not particularly interesting and consisted mainly of hard work. As he grew older, his father began sending him on long trips on horseback with large sums of money, which he had to deposit in the bank into the account of the owner of the estates. In the future, his father wanted to give Alexander a technical education and dreamed of seeing his son as a locomotive driver.
Zass himself did not have the slightest desire to drive locomotives. Traveling around different cities and villages, he had the opportunity to see quite a lot of traveling troupes and tent circuses, for which Russia was famous in those days. The life of a circus performer seemed to him the most beautiful in the world. However, Alexander could not allow himself even a hint of such thoughts - his father was very strict and could mercilessly flog him for disobedience.
One day, Ivan Petrovich took his son with him to the fair to sell horses. In the evening, after a successful transaction, they went to a performance of a traveling circus located nearby. The sight he saw struck the boy to the core: To the music, screams and laughter, people soared in the air, horses danced, jugglers balanced various objects. But he especially liked the strongman who could easily lift heavy weights, break chains and twist iron bars around his neck. Many spectators, including Father Alexander, following the invitation of the presenter, got up from their seats and tried to repeat these tricks without much success. Returning to the inn, father and son had dinner and went to bed. But sleep did not come to Alexander, slipping out of the room, he rushed to the circus tent and, having paid the required amount from his pocket money, went in to watch the performance again.
He returned home only the next morning. The father, having learned about his son’s absence, took a shepherd’s whip in his hands and flogged him. Alexander spent the rest of the day and all night in a separate room without food or sleep, tormented by a fever. Early in the morning he was given some bread and told to go to work immediately. Already in the evening, the father informed his son that he was sending him to a distant southern village for a year as a shepherd. There, a twelve-year-old teenager had to help shepherds graze a huge herd - almost 400 cows, 200 camels and over 300 horses. From morning to night, he was in the saddle under the scorching sun and made sure that the animals did not fight, did not wander off and did not climb into other people's possessions.
All the time spent away from home, Alexander did not stop thinking about the circus and its wonderful life. He learned to shoot well - more than once or twice the shepherds had to fight off wolves. Communication with animals also gave a lot to the future circus actor. He tried to teach horses the same tricks that he noticed from riders in the circus, and improved in horse riding and vaulting. Soon the boy began to feel as confident on the horse’s back as on the ground. However, what especially surprised the shepherds and what Alexander himself considered his main victory was his friendship with the guard dogs. He managed to find a common language with six huge, ferocious and ruthless wolfhounds, who then accompanied him everywhere.
After returning to Saransk, Zass began collecting magazines and various instructions “on improving the figure and developing strength.” Reading them, he tried to understand the intricacies of sports and circus terminology, learned athletic exercises, learned about famous wrestlers, gymnasts and strongmen. Alexander's favorite hero was the outstanding athlete of the nineteenth century, Evgeniy Sandov.
Zass's early day now began with gymnastics and jogging. He spent his free minutes in the backyard of the house, devoting them to performing various exercises. He didn’t have any dumbbells or weights, so the guy tied stones of varying weights to wooden sticks. In addition, he carried cobblestones, trying to hold them only with his fingers, and jogged with a calf or foal on his shoulders. Zass also trained with thick tree branches - he tried to bend them without support with just his hands. Later, he made two horizontal bars for flying from one bar to another.
The first successes came as a reward for hard work - Alexander felt his body getting stronger and filled with strength. He learned to “spin the sun” on a bar, do one-arm pull-ups, and catch 8-kilogram stones thrown from a throwing board. There were also injuries. One day he failed to hold a stone projectile and fell with a broken collarbone. After spending a month with his arm in a sling, he started all over again.
Many years later, having already become famous, the circus athlete, based on his childhood experiences, will create an entire training system, the basic principles of which will be recognized throughout the world. These are so-called isometric exercises. Their characteristic feature is muscle tension without contractions, without movements in the joints. Alexander Zass argued that it is not enough to make do with only traditional methods of muscle development, namely muscle contraction under load. Seemingly futile attempts to strain tendons and muscles, such as when bending a steel bar, are very useful for developing strength. Time has completely confirmed his point of view.
Having become older, Zass turned for help to famous athletes of that era - Pyotr Krylov, Dmitriev, Anokhin. They all reviewed the young man’s letters and sent him their methodological recommendations. By training according to their exercise systems, Alexander Ivanovich further developed his abilities. None of his peers could do what he did. Weighing 66 kilograms, the young man confidently twisted 80 kilograms with his right hand and juggled 30-kilogram weights. Rumors about his extraordinary strength quickly spread throughout the surrounding villages and villages. They began to invite him to various parties and celebrations, where people were not averse to measuring their strength with him. However, for all his outstanding abilities, Alexander Ivanovich grew up as a surprisingly calm and not pugnacious person; in the summer he took care of his father’s affairs, and in the winter he attended school.
The turning point in his fate came in the summer of 1908. Despite Alexander's timid protests, Zass Sr. sent the twenty-year-old guy to Orenburg to the local locomotive depot to study as a fireman, or, if he was lucky, as an assistant driver. And at the beginning of October, Orenburg newspapers announced the arrival in the city of “the first-class Andrzhievsky circus with its huge troupe.” Alexander, of course, came to watch the performance. A couple of days later, Zass, having mustered up his courage, appeared before the director, to whom he told about how he was attracted to such a life. Dmitry Andriyuk, and this is how Andrzhievsky was actually called, was himself an excellent trainer and wrestler, and performed athletic performances. To Alexander’s great surprise, he said: “Do you want to work in the circus? Well, okay, you can join us as a laborer. You will help where needed. But life here is difficult, no doubt about it. You will work long hours, and it may happen that you will have to go hungry. Think carefully." However, Alexander did not hesitate.
At first, the young circus performer really had a hard time. In addition to various “menial” labor such as cleaning animals or cleaning the arena, he helped the athlete Kuratkin during his performances. Over time, Kuratkin became attached to the young man - he taught him the various intricacies of circus strongmen, and trained him in balancing with heavy objects. And a few months later, Alexander received his own, small act - demonstrating strength, he threw a huge stone over his head from hand to hand. He wrote to his family that he was diligently studying to become a locomotive driver. This was only partly a lie - Zass really put his whole soul into the hard work of a circus performer.
Andrzhievsky's circus tent operated for six months in Orenburg and nearby settlements, and as soon as the fees began to fall, the troupe got ready to go. Zass had to make a difficult decision - to go to his father in Saransk and inform him of his choice of life path or to openly continue his circus career. Andrzhievsky, having learned about this, ordered Zass to return home, repent and trust in his father’s mercy. He refused all the young man’s requests to take him with him.
However, Zass did not go home at all. He took the train to Tashkent, and upon arriving in the city he immediately went to the circus of the famous entrepreneur Yupatov. He had heard a lot about Philip Afanasyevich. Yupatov kept his circuses in Tashkent, Samarkand and Bukhara; his troupes included the most famous “stars”, each of them an unsurpassed specialist in his genre.
The performance of the Tashkent troupe made a huge impression on Zass. After the Andrzhievsky Circus, the performances performed amazed us with their unique technique, brilliant invention and purity of execution. When the performance ended, the young man went to the ringmaster to talk. Introducing himself as an artist from the Andzhievsky Circus, he explained his desire to get a job with Yupatov very simply: “I want to earn more.” Half an hour later he was already invited for negotiations with the director of the circus, who, barely looking at Zass, announced that he was ready to hire him as a laborer on the condition that he pay a “deposit of integrity” of 200 rubles. Alexander did not have that kind of money, and he was given a week to get it.
The very next morning he wrote a letter to his father, saying that he had found a promising job with a good salary. He wrote that a large enterprise offered him training, but required him to pay 200 rubles as proof of integrity. Four days later, the required amount of money came from his father along with congratulations, and Zass became a full participant in Yupatov’s performances.
Initially, he became an assistant to the legendary trainer Anatoly Durov. After six months of working on his team, Alexander was unexpectedly transferred to the cashier position. The salary in this place was higher, and Zass even managed to repay the debt to his father, who now did not particularly delve into the essence of his son’s “profitable” work. And soon he was returned to the arena, but not to Durov, but to the troupe of horse riders. As soon as Alexander got comfortable in this friendly and cheerful company, he was transferred to the aerialists. This is how Philip Afanasyevich raised young circus performers. In order to identify their true inclinations, and also to have replacements if necessary, he “passed” them through many specialties. Zass, despite the fact that he liked the work, did not stay with the trapeze gymnasts for long and was sent to a group of wrestlers led by the 140-kilogram giant Sergei Nikolaevsky.
Some time later, after numerous discussions, a plan was born for Alexander to perform independently, not related to wrestling matches. The basis was strength exercises, in which Zass was especially good - breaking chains with the force of the chest and arms, bending iron rods. These tricks were complemented by less difficult numbers, but also very effective. For example, demonstrating the strength of the pectoral muscles, Alexander lay on his back, and on his chest there was a platform that could accommodate up to ten people. And Alexander could successfully hold the platform in his teeth on which the two heaviest wrestlers were sitting.
People flocked to Yupatov's performances, and the box office was excellent. However, the happiness of circus performers is short-lived. One dark August night, the circus menagerie caught fire. Perhaps the matter was not without competitors, but it was not possible to find out. The damage from the fire was catastrophic - most of the animals were burned and property was lost. There was nothing to pay the artists, and the troupe disbanded. Horse riders left for the Caucasus, Durov went to St. Petersburg, and Alexander Zass, along with six wrestlers, went to Central Asia. Along the way, athletes earned their living by performing, and the arena for them was, at best, the central square of the village, and more often a street or road. Thus, the emaciated and weakened strongmen reached Ashgabat, where they got a job in the circus tent of a certain Khoytsev.
With the advent of Yupatov’s artists, Khoytsev’s circus became mainly a wrestling circus, since against their background all other genres were losing. Performing in various cities and villages as an ordinary wrestler, Alexander continued to train intensively. His day began with a three-kilometer run, then there were exercises with breaking chains and with iron rods - he bent them on his knee, curled them in a spiral, and tied them in a knot. He devoted a lot of time to developing his back and pectoral muscles. Having finished the morning training, Zass rested and trained for the second time in the evening. During these classes, the athlete practiced horseback riding with vaulting, practiced balance, developed jaw and neck strength by lifting 170-kilogram steel beams from the ground.
Such activities helped him gain more muscle mass, which was necessary not so much for performing various tricks, but for obtaining a “marketable” appearance, since Zass was not taken seriously in the arena for a long time. Indeed, in an era when in world athletics 150- and 170-kilogram heroes were considered the embodiment of physical power, the short and thin Zass with his 168 centimeters of height and 75 kilograms of weight had a hard time compared to them. Later, Alexander Ivanovich will write that “large biceps cannot be considered a criterion of strength, just as a large belly is not a sign of good digestion.” He argued that “a large man does not have to be strong, and a modestly built man does not have to be weak, and all the strength lies in the sinews, which is what needs to be trained.”
During a tour of the Khoytsev circus, Zassa finally found a summons ordering him to report for military service. Recruits were called up according to their place of birth, and Alexander had to go to Vilna, where he was from. There his forehead was shaved and he was assigned to serve in the 12th Turkestan Infantry Regiment, located on the Persian border. During his three-year service, he worked as a gymnastics instructor and also continued to practice wrestling and horse riding. After its completion, Zass went to Simbirsk (Ulyanovsk), where he was offered a position as a coach of women athletes, and after some time he moved closer to his family in the city of Krasnoslobodsk, where he and his father purchased a cinema. However, things didn’t work out for him, and he was forced to turn to weightlifting again. Zass began performing solo numbers, and at the same time developed new unique power tricks. The first job offers came from a number of circuses, but then the First World War began.
Mobilization took place hastily, and Zass ended up in the 180th Vindavsky Infantry Regiment, which was transferred from Saransk to Lublin at the beginning of the war. Alexander Ivanovich was enlisted in regimental reconnaissance and, as part of a small group, carried out horse raids on enemy rear lines. A pedant and an ardent “regime official” in peaceful life, at the front he turned into a stern and dashing warrior. It is known that he was promoted to rank for his bravery in combat. There is also a legend about how, during another sortie, the stallion Zass was wounded in the front leg. The athlete did not abandon the animal in trouble; after waiting for night, he put the horse on his shoulders and went out with him to our trenches.
Alexander Ivanovich did not fight at the front for long - during the next battle, a shell exploded next to him, hitting both legs of the Russian hero with shrapnel. He woke up in an Austrian hospital. There he was operated on, but the first operation was unsuccessful, and soon Alexander Ivanovich underwent a second and third. The wounds did not want to heal properly, and doctors warned the athlete that he might have to lose his legs. Left to his own devices, Zass used some of the principles of his passive exercises. He continued to work hard every day until all fears of losing his legs completely disappeared. Full recovery did not come immediately. At first, Alexander Ivanovich learned to move on crutches and helped care for other prisoners. And when he was able to move without crutches, he was transferred to a prisoner of war camp.
In this “institution” everything was different. They fed poorly, forced to work a lot - from morning to evening, prisoners were busy building roads and temporary hospitals for the wounded on both sides, who continued to arrive in countless numbers. Zass spent about a year in this camp. The place was well guarded, the barracks were surrounded by barbed wire. Together with another prisoner named Ashaev, Alexander Ivanovich began to prepare to escape. With great difficulty, the friends managed to get a map of railway tracks without roads and a small, almost toy compass. They also managed to save some provisions. The last barrier to escape was barbed wire, completely hung with hundreds of bells and tins. Straining their brains in search of a way out, the prisoners very soon came to the conclusion that they had only one way beyond the wire - to make a tunnel. On moonless nights, Zass and Ashaev dug a hole, and when it was finished, they escaped.
By dawn, tired and exhausted, they ran to the forest and took refuge under the shade of trees. There was no chase. The goal of the fugitives was to reach the Carpathians, where, in their opinion, the forward posts of the Russian army were located. However, these plans were not destined to come true; on the sixth day they came to the attention of a field gendarmerie patrol. They tried to escape, but they were caught up and, after being brutally beaten, they were taken to the nearest commandant’s office. After interrogation, Zass and Ashaev, to their surprise, were not shot, but were sent back to the camp. There the fugitives were brought before a military court, which gave them a relatively “mild” decision - they were sentenced to thirty days of solitary confinement on bread and water. At the end of the punishment, the prisoners were returned to their old duties, but were transferred to another, more guarded part of the camp. Here Alexander Ivanovich stayed for several more months, and then, due to a lack of male strength, he was sent to Central Hungary to an estate that was breeding horses. Life here turned out to be much easier, and after a couple of months, taking advantage of the inattention of the guards, Zass and a Cossack named Yamesh left this place. This time the Russian athlete was much better prepared, had a reliable map and compass, and enough money. They remained free for two and a half months, until a patrol caught them near the Romanian city of Oradea. The friends were placed in the city prison, and when it was revealed that this was Alexander’s second escape, he was put in a dark underground casemate for six weeks. After this, he was transferred to a regular cell and was engaged in minor prison work. And then he was transferred to street work, which prompted Alexander Ivanovich to make another attempt to escape. This time, having already learned from bitter experience, he did not try to break through to the Russian units. Zass reached the Romanian town of Kolozsvar, where the famous Herr Schmidt circus was located and asked to meet with the owner.
Alexander Ivanovich openly told the director of the troupe about his troubles, as well as about his activities in Russian circuses. Fortunately, Schmidt's program did not include any strength athletes or wrestlers. Zass's stories about the tricks he could show convinced the owner. Schmidt was pleased with the first performances of the Russian hero, who, by the way, was not in his best shape, helped him buy new clothes and paid him a huge advance. However, Alexander Ivanovich’s luck was not destined to last long. Circus posters announcing the appearance of "The Strongest Man on the Planet" attracted the attention of the local military commandant. Curious why such a fine fellow did not serve in the Austrian army, he arrived at the circus, and by the evening of the same day he found out that Zass was a Russian prisoner of war. Taking into account that Alexander Ivanovich did not kill or maim anyone during his escapes, the military tribunal limited himself to imprisoning him in the fortress until the end of the war. Zass was placed in a damp and cold basement, into which air and light penetrated through a tiny window located at a height of six meters and overlooking a moat with water. The legs and arms were shackled, which were removed only twice a day during feeding.
Escape seemed impossible, but the Russian hero did not lose heart. Pulling himself together, he began to train. Shackled in arms and legs, he worked hard - he did goose steps, backbends, squats, tensed his muscles, kept them “on,” and relaxed. And so many times a day. The ostentatious humility and obedience somewhat changed the conditions of his detention. Three months later, Zass was allowed a daily half-hour walk around the territory of the fortress, and after a while, knowing about his circus past, he was offered to train local dogs. Alexander Ivanovich agreed, thereby freeing himself from the leg shackles and gaining some freedom for his hands. This turned out to be quite enough for him. After some time, the Russian strongman successfully made his next, final escape.
He successfully reached Budapest, where he got a job as a port loader. Zass stayed at this job for quite a long time, gradually regaining his strength. And when the Beketov Circus came to the city, he turned there, thinking of getting a place as an athlete or wrestler. But the circus director, who was experiencing financial difficulties, refused him, nevertheless giving him a letter of recommendation for the famous wrestler Chai Janos, who had his own troupe. This good-natured Hungarian treated Alexander Ivanovich with attention. After listening to the story of the Russian hero and testing him in a duel, he took him into his team. For three years after this, Zass performed in the wrestling troupe of Chai Janos, alternating fights on the carpet with acts with dogs. He visited Italy, Switzerland, Serbia. Zass did not return to Soviet Russia, believing that, as a soldier of the tsarist army, the path there was closed forever. In the early twenties, tired of wrestling, the athlete moved to the circus of his old friend Schmidt, where he began performing athletic tricks that later brought him world fame. At the director’s suggestion, he took the stage name Samson, under which the European public knew him for many decades.
In 1923, Zass received an unexpected offer to work in Paris. He signed a contract, but did not stay long in the French capital. A year later, at the invitation of the head of British variety shows Oswald Stoll, he went to England, where he lived until the end of his life. It is curious that Stoll’s representatives, who met the famous strongman at London’s Victoria Station, at first did not pay any attention to the inconspicuous, stocky man who did not know a word of English. However, soon photographs of the Russian athlete took over the front pages of local newspapers. He visited Bristol, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh... His fame grew, and his performances aroused fantastic interest.
Zass was truly unique; common sense refused to believe in the numbers he performed. To demonstrate the gigantic load on his shoulders, he built a special tower. Being at the top, he held suspended platforms with people on his shoulders. In one of the photographs, Zass holds thirteen people on his shoulders, including Winston Churchill. Zass developed another unique number, “Projectile Man,” from a trick shown by other strongmen. They were catching a nine-kilogram cannonball fired from a cannon, but the Russian hero chose a ninety-kilogram projectile for himself. Then, together with foundries and blacksmiths, he developed a particularly powerful cannon capable of throwing this cannonball so that it would slide along a given trajectory over the arena. By the way, Alexander Zass’s technical studies brought him considerable benefit in the future. Many years later, he developed the wrist dynamometer, first as a competition device and then as a training device. Successful performances with cannonball catching were not enough for him; Zass knew well how to conquer the audience. After much thought and calculation, a miracle gun was created that fired not cold metal, but girls. Flying eight meters across the stage, they invariably fell into the hands of the athlete.
Working with a jack, Alexander Ivanovich easily lifted trucks off the ground on one side. He generally had a craving for cars - in one city or another in England he loved to organize “road shows”. The strong man lay down on the ground, and cars full of passengers passed over him - along his lower back and legs. In public, Zass also practiced stretching with horses. At the same time, he held back two horses rushing in different directions.
Putting future karatekas to shame, Zass broke through concrete slabs with his fists, and bent iron beams into a pattern more intricate than on the gates of Westminster Abbey. Alexander Ivanovich’s traditional performances were: hammering huge nails into a thick board with the palm of his hand, flying under the circus dome with a 220-kilogram beam in his teeth, carrying across the stage with a 300-kilogram horse on his shoulders. Many famous British athletes tried unsuccessfully to repeat Zass's tricks. And the Russian hero challenged anyone who was ready to knock him down with a punch in the stomach. Professionals have also participated in this more than once. There is a photo of the world heavyweight boxing champion, Canadian Tomi Burns, trying to knock down the Russian hero.
In 1925, Zass met the dancer Betty - she became a participant in one of his numbers. The athlete hung upside down under the circus dome and held in his teeth a rope on which a platform with a girl playing the piano was suspended. After a short time they began to live together. In 1975, 68-year-old Betty would say: “He was the only man I truly loved.” But Alexander Ivanovich was always popular with women and reciprocated. Betty forgave him a lot, and only after ten years of marriage in 1935 they decided to break off the relationship and remain friends. Later she married Zass's best friend - clown and circus rider Sid Tilbury.
With the outbreak of World War II, Alexander Zass, who never renounced his Russian citizenship, had problems. To avoid being interned, he stopped performing public power shows and began training lions, elephants and chimpanzees at Chessington and Paignton zoos, and gave numerous interviews about working with animals. As soon as the war ended, Alexander and Betty resumed performing together. For many years, she hovered over the arena and played music, until during a performance in 1952 at the Liverpool Stadium, the noose to which Zass was suspended by his leg broke. The entire structure, along with the athlete, the fragile woman and the piano, collapsed. Alexander Ivanovich escaped with only a broken collarbone, but Betty injured her spine. After spending two years in a hospital bed, she was able not only to get back on her feet, but also to return to the circus as a rider. However, a second misfortune soon happened - she was thrown by a horse. Since then, Betty has been confined to a wheelchair forever.
Shortly before the war, Alexander participated in filming in the small town of Hockley, located a forty-minute drive from London. Here he saw a site on Plumberow Avenue that he really liked. In 1951, Zass, Sid and Betty purchased this house for three. Alexander Ivanovich lived there on short visits, during breaks between tours. In 1954, Zass worked as the chief administrator of the New California Circus in Wokingham, and also performed with his famous Scottish ponies and dogs. On August 23 of the same year, the BBC television company organized the athlete's last public performance with power tricks. And although he was already 66 years old, the numbers shown were impressive. After this, Zass continued to work tirelessly, but as a trainer. However, he liked to include power routines in his programs as entertainment for the public. For example, at the age of seventy he carried two lions around the arena in a special yoke.
In the summer of 1960, Alexander Ivanovich received a letter from Moscow from his sister Nadezhda. A correspondence began between them. In his messages, Zass asked if he could come and visit his relatives, stay in Russia, get a job there as a coach or physical education teacher. And in 1961, when the Soviet circus came on tour to London, the athlete met with Vladimir Durov, the grandson of the legendary Anatoly Leonidovich, for whom he worked as an assistant in his youth.
Monument to Zass in Orenburg
In the summer of 1962, there was a fire in Zass's caravan. 74-year-old Alexander Ivanovich bravely rushed into the fire to save his animals. In doing so, he received serious burns to his head and damaged his eyes. These injuries greatly damaged him. He felt that he did not have much time left in this world, and gave Betty detailed instructions regarding his own funeral. One of the main wishes was the time of burial - “in the morning, when the sun begins to shine.” It was at this time that circus performers used to leave their seats and hit the road. Alexander Ivanovich died on September 26, 1962 in a hospital in Rochford, where he was taken the night before with a heart attack. He was buried in Hockley in accordance with his wishes.
Based on materials from the book by A.S. Drabkin “The Secret of Iron Samson” and the athlete’s memoirs “The Amazing Samson. Told by him... and more"
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AiF found the relatives of the most powerful man in the world.
Inherited suitcase
In one of his signature numbers Zass broke a powerful iron chain with one effort of the chest muscles: the athlete simply took a deep breath, filling his lungs. At the same time, any of the spectators could check that the chain was not fake. With his palm, Alexander hammered 15-centimeter nails into a board 10 cm thick. During another performance, Zass, rising under the circus dome, held a rope with his teeth (!), on which a piano was swinging in the air - meanwhile an acrobat was playing the instrument. In the arena, up to 15 people could climb onto a special platform that the athlete held on his shoulders. So, during one of the performances, the future Prime Minister of England found himself on Alexander’s shoulders. Winston Churchill.
He hammered the nails in with his bare hands, and then used his fingers, like pliers, to pull them back out. Photo: from the personal archive of Yuri Shaposhnikov
The amazing Samson managed to catch with his hands a 90-kilogram cannonball fired from a cannon. He easily took the horse on his shoulders and calmly walked around the arena with it. This number had a special history. In 1914, during the First World War, when Zass served in the tsarist army, his horse was wounded, and in order not to abandon the animal to its fate, he put the horse on his shoulders and carried it to his own.
The title "most strong man in the world" Samson was assigned by British and American journalists. During Zass’s lifetime, no one was able to challenge this title. There are two notes on the athlete’s grave in the English town of Hockley. In English, if translated, it will be: “Alexander Zass (Samson) - the strongest man in the world, died on September 26, 1962 at the age of 74.” And the second in Russian: “Dear Shura, you are always with us. Sister Nadya Zass, nephew Yura.”
Relatives of the strongman - that same nephew Yuri Vladimirovich Shaposhnikov, who will turn 95 in August, and his wife Liliya Fedorovna- Found AiF in Moscow. The couple's apartment is like a mini-museum of Zass: unique photographs of Samson, posters for performances, personal letters and things. " After the death of Alexander Zass, an English gentleman appeared on the threshold of our Moscow apartment He said that we could get our uncle's inheritance - a mansion in the city of Hockley, 40 minutes by train from London, some property and money in the bank. But to complete the documents, you had to go to England».
Yuri Shaposhnikov with his wife. Photo: AiF/ Maria Pozdnyakova
« Can you imagine what it was like to go from the USSR to England in 1962 to register an inheritance if you were an ordinary citizen? Unreal story, - Liliya Fedorovna throws up her hands. - We apologized. They said we couldn't accept the inheritance." After a while, they received a suitcase by mail with Zass’s personal belongings, which they carefully preserve.
The famous athlete got in touch with relatives from the USSR shortly before his death.
« Alexander Zass was born in 1888. In addition to him, the family had two more brothers and two daughters. One of them is Nadezhda - my mother, - says Yuri Vladimirovich. - Uncle was a genius nugget. The family lived in the provinces, and the future strongman subscribed to many magazines on physical culture. I wrote to a famous professor Evgeniy Sandov, who agreed to take him on as a correspondence student. He sent young Alexander a list of exercises. We needed dumbbells, but there was no money for them, so my uncle used stones, which he tied with ropes to sticks. He worked a lot on the development of tendons, believing that strength lies precisely in them.
My uncle was very sorry for his older brother who died in the war - he said that he was even stronger. During the First World War, Alexander Zass himself suffered - his legs were broken by shrapnel. Wounded and unconscious, he was captured. Thanks to his endurance, he not only got back on his feet, but also escaped. However, in Soviet Russia for him, a Cossack who fought in the tsarist army, the path was closed. In Europe, he began performing in the circus - first in Hungary, then in France, and spent the last few decades in England. And then one day an acquaintance of ours, who knew English and read local magazines, said: “Your mother’s brother is very famous in the West. Maybe we can write to him?” It was the time of Khrushchev's thaw. At Stalin We, of course, would not dare to write abroad. And then everything worked out. The editors of an English sports magazine gave us both an address and a telephone number. My uncle answered immediately, we started texting and calling back. He said that he really wanted to come to his homeland. Sudden death disrupted these plans. My wife and I first visited his grave in the late 80s. Then perestroika began, many foreigners appeared in Moscow. One married couple, whom we met, turned out to be... from Hockley - the city where Zass lived! Some kind of miracle. They organized an invitation for us. And we went to Hockley without a penny of money (we couldn’t buy foreign currency). We saw my uncle's house and were even allowed inside. And one woman said that as a girl she was once amazed when, before her eyes, a Russian hero, while doing household chores, drove a huge nail into a window frame with his palm.”
The strongman is lifted under the circus dome, while he holds with his teeth a rope on which hangs a piano with an acrobat playing on it. Photo: from the personal archive of Yuri Shaposhnikov
The dream burned down in a fire
In our time, he conducted his own investigation into the fate of Zass Igor Khramov, President of the Eurasia Charitable Foundation. " The fact is that Zass first entered the circus arena in my native Orenburg, he says. - During a business trip to England, I had to piece together the details of Alexander Ivanovich’s biography. Zass had no children. He married only once. He was 38 years old at the time, and his bride, an aerialist Blanche, - 16 years old. The young wife died during childbirth. Her portrait always hung at the head of Amazing Samson. Later, the widower Zass had a relationship with an aerialist Betty. It was she who played the piano, which Alexander held on a rope in his teeth. After Zass’s death, in one interview, Betty admitted that she was jealous of other women, so she decided to break up with him. She married a clown Sida. True, she continued to perform jointly with the Russian strongman. One day the rope broke, the girl fell into the arena and suffered a broken spine. Neither her husband nor Zass left Betty. Thanks to their care, she returned from the hospital to the playpen. However, the next injury left Betty permanently confined to a wheelchair.
The last time Zass performed strength training was at the age of 66, after which he concentrated on training. I mastered the basics of this art back in Russia under the guidance of Anatoly Durova- founder of the famous dynasty. When the grandson of Anatoly Durov Vladimir Durov came on tour to England, Zass met with him. He asked Durov to help organize his visit to Moscow».
In April 2011, the Hockley City Council improved the burial site of Alexander Zass for the arrival of the Orenburg delegation. Photo:
« Frankly, we were already looking forward to meeting my uncle in Moscow. And suddenly the news of his death comes"- recalls Yuri Vladimirovich.
The monument (sculptor Alexander Rukavishnikov) was erected in 2008 in front of the Orenburg circus building. Photo: Courtesy of Orenburg charitable foundation"Eurasia"
P.S. They tried to solve the riddle of Zass - where such phenomenal strength comes from in a person with such a modest height (1 m 68 cm) both during the life and after the death of Amazing Samson. Yuri Vladimirovich also did this - he managed to ask his famous relative many questions and get answers to them.