Olga Korbut posted on her Facebook that during a recent trip to Moscow she found her own gold Olympics medal from 1972 at the Sports Museum there. Korbut claims the medal was stolen from her a few days after the victory. It is not clear how the museum came to acquire the medal (which has Korbut’s name inscribed on it) but, according to Korbut, they refused to return it claiming that it’s now a property of Russian Federation.
UPDATE: In an interview to 5th channel, Olga Korbut clarified that the medal in question was not actually stolen. It was apparently taken by the Soviet sports officials to be displayed in a museum, however, Korbut claims that it wasn’t placed in the museum until later:
“It didn’t disappear, it was taken from me because I had more [medals] than everyone else. I was told that it would allegedly be placed in a museum but it was never in a museum. Now they said that it belongs to the Russian Federation. I have only one comment – deliver it home to me”.
The practice of putting some of the athletic awards won by Soviet athletes in museums existed during the USSR era and Korbut’s medal is not the only Olympic medal in the Sports Museum exhibition. However, it might be the case that Korbut did not have a say on whether to “donate” her medal and was not informed of what was happening to the medal afterward.
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