From Stillness Comes Swiftness

"You're too late."

"What should we do?"

"Go back where you came from."

Not being recognized doesn't ruffle Salnikov, and not recognizing Salnikov doesn't embarrass the functionary. Soviets regard their heroes differently than Americans. They are more proud than awed and far less likely to build up and chop down. Most know of Salnikov, but they don't know or care that he reads science-fiction, stuffs his car tape deck with American rock-'n'-roll and chain-eats chocolates.

"We don't have this idol-worshipping here," says Viktor Kuznetsov, a teammate and best man at Salnikov's wedding. "People want to be like him but they don't worship him. Vladimir gets very confused when he gets put in the hero situation. He'll try to stand back and push his friends forward."

"We don't have stars here," snaps Anatoly Pimenov, head coach of the Soviet national team. "In all sports, the trainer is the central figure. Salnikov behaves like a normal human being. We try to keep the attention from the extraordinary to prevent the star sickness. We regulate interviews." Salnikov still pays a symbolic 30 kopecks (45¢) a year to belong to Trud II, the sports club at which he works out when he's in Leningrad. Some days when he's in the midst of competition and not in heavy training, he works out at a public pool in Moscow where old ladies in swimsuits and bathing caps scrub themselves in the outdoor showers, where an old man with a peg leg climbs out of the pool and Spanish music blares over the loudspeaker.

The perspective that carried Salnikov into the world flows from his father, Valeri, a 53-year-old sailor who once captained timber freighters around the world and now teaches other men how to do it. In a modest flat in a five-story brick apartment building in North Leningrad, Valeri Salnikov sits on a sofa covered with thick white material to make it last an extra five or six years. He inspects you from under two intimidating black caterpillar eyebrows.

"I don't think my son's a unique man," he says firmly. "He's an ordinary son. He's not unique in sports in general. There are other champions."

Valeri's eyes take in a room where swimming trophies share space with sea-shells he has brought home from Cuba, a gondola knickknack from Venice and a black alligator from the Congo. Neither Valeri nor his wife, Valentina, attended the '76 or '80 Olympics to see their son compete. "I was busy working," Valeri says. And when they watched on TV as Vladimir won three gold medals in Moscow, only an hour's flight away? "I said, 'Good boy,' " Valeri says. "Why make gods of them? Glory isn't a motivation here; it is to see what a human being can achieve. We don't know our cosmonauts by face, but they'll continue flying farther into space. Vladimir doesn't need to use sports to make more money. He is quite satisfied with what he has."

What Vladimir has is a small Moscow apartment that Marina and he moved into last September. He didn't have to stagnate on a waiting list for months or years like so many Soviet newlyweds. He also has his small car, which he admits the government helps him finance "a little." He's in a postgraduate university program in physical culture; rather than attending classes in '83 or '84, he must only keep notes from which to write a thesis—on the training of Vladimir Salnikov. He has a salary of—Salnikov hesitates—a "little more" than the average monthly 120-ruble stipend ($175) that the government allots to postgrad students. He has a ready-made job as a swimming official or coach when he stops swimming. What Salnikov does not have is the fear of failure that most Americans must deal with, nor does he have their aspirations to luxury and convenience.