Birthday greetings to Olga Utkina in her 90th jubilee
Celebrations venue took place in Latvia Sports Museum on the 3rd of November 2014. Olga and her guests discussed the life in its diversity: childhood and first steps in the world of sports, work in editorial boards of different kinds of newspapers and many years spent in Television of Latvia, fateful encounters and the passion for writing. As Olga herself admits – she always had a strong will to step higher.
Olga is an extraordinary woman with a wide soul, spirit of an adventurist, intensely competitive with a tendency to rally people who loved sports.
Now living in Mārupe, her school years elapsed in Aizpute. In her adolescence, she tried running and throwing disciplines, she was playing volleyball; she even participated in a moto sports competition and parachute jumping. After the war, she was in charge of sports association Daugava.
Later on, she moved to journalism – started to work as a literary contributor in Aizpute’s newspaper, then in Tukuma ziņotājs. With the telecasts Kurš no 26? and TV vimpelis meklē īpašnieku in 1980’s, Olga started making broadcasts about agriculture in the editorial board of Television of Latvia. Olga Utkina has acquired the prize of the Association of Latvia Journalists, and she is an acknowledged radio and television worker who continued her career in television with telecasts Dzīvīte and Atvasara, that where dedicated mainly to cover issues liaised with people in culture, art and sports.
Time was passing, Olga gained more experience and as a result a feeling that it is necessary to write a book on Oto Grikalk (1925-1993) – a participant of four Olympic Games a long term member of the team of Soviet Union and a trainer of throwing disciplines. Her correspondence with O. Grikalk started when she was young – right after Second World War and lasted until his death in 7th of February 1993. The information was gathered 10 years. In the summer 2005 the book Likteņdzirnās maltais olimpietis was published, it is a wonderful story about a Latvian country boy who wanted to do sports and who changed into a young man who has experienced war in the armies of German and Russian occupation. Through different kinds of political and personal complications, eventually his path leads to atop of Olympic Games.
Another piece of her writing is Bērns rāda kāds būs vīra raksturs – Olga’s memoirs of her childhood, O. Utkina’s kin, her beloved Aizpute and its people during the years of independent Latvia.
Her work earns a veritable esteem and admiration. She is always welcome in the Museum of Aizpute, Tukums and our Sports Museum, as Olga herself emphasizes – Sports museum is my big family!
We wish her good health and energy to fulfil another exciting project that known by no one but her!
A story Journalist Olga Utkina – 90 by Maija Migla (journalist) in the telecast of Television of Latvia Panorama can be viewed here www.lsm.lv.
The most beautiful moments of the venue (photos taken by Rita Apine, Latvia Sports Museum):
