[4] He took up athletics in 1956, training in the high jump at the Gantiadi boarding school; his first coach was Akop Kerselyan.

[11] All IAAF inspectors were pulled out of the field on the day of the triple jump final and replaced by Soviet staff.

[4] In retirement, he headed the USSR jumping team for four years, and later worked at his formative club, Dynamo Tbilisi.

[16] In the early 1990s, after the Soviet Union broke up and a civil war started in Georgia, Saneyev lost his job and moved to Australia with his wife and 15-year-old son.

His brief coaching contract soon expired, and Saneyev was about to sell his Olympic medals to feed his family.

He found a regular job as a physical education teacher at St Joseph's College, Hunters Hill, and later as the jumping coach at the New South Wales Institute of Sport.