The Flying Elephant: Memoirs of an Olympic Champion (Kindle

The Flying Elephant: Memoirs of an Olympic Champion (Kindle Edition) — What to Know Before You Read It

I’ll admit, the title caught me off guard first. The Flying Elephant. Sounds like a kids’ book, doesn’t it? It’s not. It’s a sports memoir, and once you know the backstory, the name actually makes a weird kind of sense.

Let’s talk about it.

Who Wrote This, Anyway?

The memoir is credited to Alexander Savin, a Soviet volleyball player who competed at the very top of the sport during the 1970s and ’80s. This part checks out against the historical record, which matters, honestly, because sports memoirs live and die on credibility.

Savin played for the USSR national team during a genuinely dominant era for Soviet volleyball. He picked up a silver medal at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, then came back four years later and won gold on home turf at the 1980 Moscow Games. That’s not a small résumé. Two Olympic cycles, two podiums, one at the very top.

He also spent years with CSKA Moscow, one of the powerhouse clubs of that era — the kind of team that basically ran the domestic league for a decade straight.

So yeah. The guy earned the right to write a memoir. No argument there.

Where Does “The Flying Elephant” Come From?

Here’s the fun bit. Savin was, by most accounts, a big man for his position — a middle blocker, which usually means height, weight, presence at the net. But apparently he moved with a kind of lightness that didn’t match his frame. Quick feet. Surprising agility for someone his size.

Teammates supposedly nicknamed him “the flying elephant” because of that contrast — heavy build, feather-light movement. It’s a good nickname, honestly. Memorable. The kind of thing that sticks with a guy for forty years and eventually ends up on a book cover.

I think it works as a title, too. There’s something almost poetic about it — the idea that something big and imposing can still move with grace. Feels like it’s not just about volleyball. Feels like it’s about the whole career, maybe the whole life.

What’s the Book Actually About?

This is where I want to be careful, because a lot of what’s floating around online about this specific memoir reads suspiciously templated — like it was written to hit search engines rather than to actually review the book. Loads of near-identical pages, all published recently, all repeating the exact same phrases. That’s usually a red flag, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

What seems consistent, though, and lines up with what memoirs like this typically cover: it’s less about highlight reels and more about the grind behind them. Training camps. Team dynamics. The pressure of representing a country during a period when Soviet sport carried enormous weight, politically and culturally.

Memoirs from athletes of that era tend to circle a few recurring themes — discipline, sacrifice, the strange isolation of being at the top, and what happens to your identity once the competing stops. If this book follows that pattern, and it sounds like it does, then it’s probably less “here’s how I won gold” and more “here’s what winning gold actually cost.”

That’s usually the more interesting version of a sports memoir anyway, in my experience. Trophies are the easy part to write about. The years before them are harder, and honestly, more human.

Is It Worth Reading?

Depends what you’re after, really.

If you want a fast-paced highlight-reel sports book, this might feel slower than expected. Memoirs like this tend to sit in the details — training routines, team culture, the mental side of competing — rather than racing between big matches.

If you’re interested in Cold War-era Soviet sport specifically, though, this looks like a solid pick. There aren’t a huge number of English-language memoirs from Soviet Olympic athletes of that generation. Firsthand accounts from inside that system are genuinely rare, which gives a book like this some real historical value, beyond just being a sports story.

Volleyball fans, obviously, are the core audience. But I don’t think you need to know the sport well to get something out of it. The best sports memoirs usually aren’t really about the sport — they’re about discipline, pressure, and what it costs to be exceptional at something. Volleyball’s just the lens.

A Word on the Kindle Edition Specifically

A few practical things worth checking before you buy any Kindle memoir like this, honestly, not just this one:

Look at the sample chapter before committing — Amazon lets you preview for free, and it’s the fastest way to judge writing style.
Check whether it’s a translated work. Memoirs originally written in another language sometimes lose a bit of voice in translation, and that’s worth knowing going in.
Skim a handful of reviews, but weigh them against how generic or specific they sound. Reviews that could apply to literally any sports memoir aren’t telling you much.
If photos matter to you, some Kindle editions handle image-heavy books poorly on smaller devices. Worth checking format notes before buying, particularly if there are supposedly a lot of archival photographs included.

Final Thoughts

Alexander Savin’s story checks out where it matters — real Olympic medals, real career, genuinely significant era of volleyball history. The memoir itself, from what’s out there, sounds like it leans into the harder, quieter parts of an athletic career rather than just the medal count.

Would I read it? Honestly, probably yes — I’ve got a soft spot for sports memoirs that admit the difficult stuff instead of just polishing the highlight reel. If that’s your thing too, this one seems worth a shot. Just go in with reasonable expectations, and maybe read the sample first before you spend the credit