# Athletics at the 1957 World Festival of Youth and Students

The 6th World Festival of Youth and Students featured an athletics competition among its programme of events. The events were contested in Moscow, Soviet Union in August 1957. Mainly contested among Eastern European athletes, it served as an alternative to the more Western European-oriented 1957 World University Games held in Paris the same year in September.
Many top Soviet athletes were present and the event and the nation won the most titles. Pyotr Bolotnikov won the 10,000 metres – a feat which preceded a 1960 Olympic win at the distance. Semyon Rzhishchin, the steeplechase world record holder, won his specialist event, but Olympic walking champion Leonid Spirin settled for runner-up spot. In the triple jump, Leonid Shcherbakov failed an attempt to win a fifth straight title at the festival, being beaten by two-time and reigning Olympic champion Adhemar da Silva, who claimed Brazil's first gold in festival history. Javelin thrower Janusz Sidło won a fourth straight world student title and his throw of 80.12 m (262 ft 10+1⁄4 in) marked the only time an athlete surpassed eighty metres at the competition. Yugoslavia was prominently represented by Franjo Mihalić, the Olympic runner-up and marathon winner here.
In women's events, former Olympic champion Galina Zybina won the shot put for a second time running, while in the discus her compatriot and fellow Olympic champion Nina Ponomaryova won her fourth straight gold at the festival. Also among the strong Soviet throwers were javelin specialist Inese Jaunzeme and Tamara Tyshkevich (both reigning Olympic champions). Iolanda Balaș had her third straight world student win in the high jump. She went on to win at the 1958 European Athletics Championships a year later, as did pentathlon winner Galina Bystrova and 800 m runner-up Yelizaveta Yermolayeva.

## Medal summary
### Men

| Event | Gold | Gold | Silver | Silver | Bronze | Bronze |
| 100 metres | Marian Foik (POL) | 10.5 | Leonid Bartenyev (URS) | 10.6 | Mikhail Bachvarov (BUL) | 10.7 |
| 200 metres | Sándor Jakabfy (HUN) | 21.3 | Leonid Bartenyev (URS) | 21.3 | Yuriy Konovalov (URS) | 21.4 |
| 400 metres | Jaroslav Jirásek (TCH) | 47.6 | Ion Wiesenmayer (ROM) | 47.7 | Josef Trousil (TCH) | 47.9 |
| 800 metres | Tadeusz Kaźmierski (POL) | 1:48.2 | Helfried Reinnagel (GDR) | 1:48.5 | Zoltan Vamoș (ROM) | 1:49.4 |
| 1500 metres | Jonas Pipyné (URS) | 3:41.1 | Yevgeniy Sokolov (URS) | 3:41.7 | Stanislav Jungwirth (TCH) | 3:41.7 |
| 5000 metres | Miklós Szabó (HUN) | 13:51.8 | Friedrich Janke (GDR) | 13:52.0 | Al Lawrence (AUS) | 13:54.2 |
| 10,000 metres | Pyotr Bolotnikov (URS) | 29:14.6 | Al Lawrence (AUS) | 29:16.4 | Ivan Cherniavskyi (URS) | 29:36.0 |
| 110 m hurdles | Stanko Lorger (YUG) | 14.5 | Boris Stolyarov (URS) | 14.6 | Yuriy Petrov (URS) | 14.6 |
| 400 m hurdles | Yuriy Lituyev (URS) | 51.2 | Igor Ilyin (URS) | 51.3 | Pavel Syedov (URS) | 53.9 |
| 3000 metres steeplechase | Semyon Rzhishchin (URS) | 8:50.2 | Ludvík Veselý (TCH) | 8:51.8 | Gyula Varga (HUN) | 8:53.8 |
| 4 × 100 m relay | Soviet Union (URS) Boris Tokaryev Yuriy Konovalov Albert Plaskeyev Leonid Bartenyev | 40.2 | Poland (POL) Zenon Baranowski Marian Foik Jan Jarzembowski Henryk Grabowski | 40.8 | Iceland (ISL) Vilhjálmur Einarsson Hilmar Þorbjörnsson Daníel Halldórsson Adólf Óskarsson | 42.9 |
| 4 × 400 m relay | Soviet Union (URS) Leopold Shupilov Vladimir Yefishin Valentin Rakhmanov Mikhail Nikolskiy | 3:11.1 | Czechoslovakia (TCH) Stanislav Jungwirth Jozef Kočiš Josef Trousil Jaroslav Jirásek | 3:12.6 | East Germany (GDR) Helmut Hengst Karl-Heinz Kruse Helfried Reinnagel Walter Meier | 3:13.7 |
| Marathon | Franjo Mihalić (YUG) | 2:21:24 | Albert Ivanov (URS) | 2:22:30 | Sergey Popov (URS) | 2:24:05 |
| 20 km walk | Antanas Mikénas (URS) | 1:33:02 | Leonid Spirin (URS) | 1:33:02 | Grigoriy Panichkin (URS) | 1:33:20 |
| 50 km walk | Mikhail Lavrov (URS) | 4:23:29 | Anatoly Vedyakov (URS) | 4:25:00 | Grigory Klimov (URS) | 4:26:05 |
| High jump | Yuriy Stepanov (URS) | 2.13 m | Igor Kashkarov (URS) | 2.13 m | Volodymyr Sitkin (URS) | 2.01 m |
| Pole vault | Vitaliy Chernobay (URS) | 4.50 m | Vladimir Bulatov (URS) Manfred Preussger (GDR) | 4.40 m | Not awarded | Not awarded |
| Long jump | Henryk Grabowski (POL) | 7.46 m | Yevgeniy Chen (URS) | 7.43 m | Branko Miler (YUG) | 7.25 m |
| Triple jump | Adhemar da Silva (BRA) | 15.92 m | Vilhjálmur Einarsson (ISL) | 15.90 m | Leonid Shcherbakov (URS) | 15.76 m |
| Shot put | Jiří Skobla (TCH) | 17.20 m | Jaroslav Plíhal (TCH) | 16.98 m | Vartan Ovsepyan (URS) | 16.94 m |
| Discus throw | Karel Merta (TCH) | 53.55 m | Boris Matveyev (URS) | 52.43 m | Edmund Piątkowski (POL) | 52.19 m |
| Hammer throw | Mikhail Krivonosov (URS) | 62.91 m | Zvonko Bezjak (YUG) | 62.35 m | Anatoliy Samotsvetov (URS) | 62.13 m |
| Javelin throw | Janusz Sidło (POL) | 80.12 m | Jan Kopyto (POL) | 76.70 m | Vladimir Kuznetsov (URS) | 76.44 m |
| Decathlon | Yuriy Kutenko (URS) | 7294 pts | Walter Meier (GDR) | 7193 pts | Helmut Hengst (GDR) | 6574 pts |

### Women

| Event | Gold | Gold | Silver | Silver | Bronze | Bronze |
| 100 metres | Vera Krepkina (URS) | 11.9 | Gisela Köhler (GDR) | 12.0 | Galina Popova (URS) | 12.0 |
| 200 metres | Gisela Köhler (GDR) | 23.9 | Mariya Itkina (URS) | 24.0 | Albina Kobranova (URS) | 24.4 |
| 400 metres | Antonina Khomutova (URS) | 54.4 | Ursula Donath (GDR) | 54.7 | Mariya Itkina (URS) | 54.7 |
| 800 metres | Ursula Donath (GDR) | 2:07.8 | Yelizaveta Yermolayeva (URS) | 2:08.1 | Gizella Sasvári (HUN) | 2:08.7 |
| 80 m hurdles | Nelli Yeliseyeva (URS) | 10.8 | Gisela Köhler (GDR) | 10.8 | Galina Bystrova (URS) | 11.0 |
| 4 × 100 m relay | Soviet Union (URS) Mariya Itkina Vera Krepkina Galina Popova Nina Dyekonskaya | 46.0 | East Germany (GDR) Gisela Köhler-Birkemeyer Bärbel Mayer Brigitte Weinmeister Margot Eichler | 46.3 | Czechoslovakia (TCH) Miroslava Trkalová Bedriska Müllerová Anna Pišková ? | 51.2 |
| High jump | Iolanda Balas (ROM) | 1.66 m | Mariya Pisareva (URS) | 1.66 m | Valentina Ballod (URS) | 1.66 m |
| Long jump | Vilve Maremäe (URS) | 5.87 m | Nadezhda Dvalishvili (URS) | 5.82 m | Nelli Yeliseyeva (URS) | 5.81 m |
| Shot put | Galina Zybina (URS) | 16.26 m | Tamara Tyshkevich (URS) | 16.14 m | Zinaida Doinikova (URS) | 15.64 m |
| Discus throw | Nina Ponomaryova (URS) | 53.13 m | Irina Beglyakova (URS) | 52.04 m | Štepánka Mertová (TCH) | 50.42 m |
| Javelin throw | Inese Jaunzeme (URS) | 51.60 m | Maria Diţi (ROM) | 50.06 m | Eleonora Bogun (URS) | 49.92 m |
| Pentathlon | Galina Bystrova (URS) | 4560 pts | Vilve Maremäe (URS) | 4413 pts | Lidiya Shmakova (URS) | 4283 pts |

## Medal table

| Rank | Nation | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total |
| 1 | Soviet Union (URS) | 21 | 19 | 21 | 61 |
| 2 | Poland (POL) | 4 | 2 | 1 | 7 |
| 3 | Czechoslovakia (TCH) | 3 | 3 | 4 | 10 |
| 4 | East Germany (GDR) | 2 | 8 | 2 | 12 |
| 5 | Yugoslavia (YUG) | 2 | 1 | 0 | 3 |
| 6 | Hungary (HUN) | 2 | 0 | 2 | 4 |
| 7 | Romania (ROM) | 1 | 2 | 1 | 4 |
| 8 | Brazil (BRA) | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 9 | Australia (AUS) | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| 9 | Iceland (ISL) | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| 11 | Bulgaria (BUL) | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Totals (11 entries) | Totals (11 entries) | 36 | 37 | 34 | 107 |