He’d just finished running 12 miles when a bus full of people sank into a lake—so he dove in 20 times and traded his championship career for 20 lives.
September 16, 1976. Yerevan, Armenia.
Shavarsh Karapetyan had just completed his morning training—a grueling 12-mile run along the Yerevan Reservoir. At 23 years old, he was a finswimming champion who’d shattered 11 world records and claimed 17 world championship titles. He was catching his breath when he heard the screech of metal, the crash, the screams.
A trolleybus—packed with 92 morning commuters—had lost control and plunged into the reservoir. Within seconds, it sank to 33 feet below the surface, 80 feet from shore. The cold water swallowed it whole.
Most people would have frozen. Would have called for help. Would have waited for professionals.
Shavarsh didn’t hesitate.
Still exhausted from his run, he dove into the freezing water. The visibility was zero—thick with sediment stirred up by the crash. He couldn’t see his own hands. But somewhere in that darkness, people were dying.
He found the bus by touch. The doors were jammed. The windows too small. So he kicked in the rear window with his legs—shattering the glass, slicing through his own skin—until he’d opened a way inside.
Then he pulled them out. One by one.
Each dive took about 25 seconds. Dive down 33 feet in complete darkness. Swim into the submerged bus. Find a person by feel. Pull them out. Surface. Hand them to his brother Kamo, who swam them to shore. Then dive again.
For 20 minutes, Shavarsh made this impossible journey. Twenty dives. Twenty times descending into that black water. His muscles screaming. His lungs burning. The cold stealing his strength with every breath.
He pulled 46 people from that bus. Twenty of them survived.
By the time rescuers arrived with kayaks and medical teams, Shavarsh was near collapse. The combination of extreme exhaustion, hypothermia, and deep lacerations from the shattered glass had pushed him to the edge of death.
He spent 45 days in the hospital, fighting for his life. Pneumonia. Sepsis from the sewage-contaminated water. Permanent lung damage that would end his athletic career at age 23.
The doctors told him what he already knew: the body that had carried him to 11 world records would never perform at that level again.
And here’s what makes it harder: for six years, almost nobody knew.
Soviet authorities suppressed the story. They didn’t want attention on the accident. Shavarsh went back to his life, his championship career finished, his lungs permanently damaged, while the 20 people whose lives he’d saved went on living—most of them never knowing their rescuer’s name.
It wasn’t until 1982 that a newspaper article finally identified him, and suddenly the man who’d given up everything became a national hero.
But Shavarsh wasn’t finished.
February 1985. Nine years after the bus crash. Shavarsh was walking past the Sports and Concert Complex in Yerevan when he saw smoke. Then flames. Then heard screaming.
People were trapped inside.
His lungs were still damaged from 1976. He wasn’t a champion athlete anymore. He was a 32-year-old man with permanent respiratory damage who’d already sacrificed his body once.
He ran inside anyway.
Through the smoke and flames, he pulled people out. Just like he’d done in that freezing water nine years earlier. He kept going until his body collapsed from severe burns and smoke inhalation.
Back to the hospital. Back to fighting for his life.
But more people were alive because of his choice.
Today, Shavarsh Karapetyan is 71 years old. He lives in Moscow, runs a shoe company called “Second Breath,” and his lungs still carry the scars of those two days when he chose strangers’ lives over his own future.
He’s received the UNESCO Fair Play Award, the Order of the Badge of Honour, and an asteroid (3027 Shavarsh) was named after him. In 2014, he carried the Olympic torch through the Kremlin.
But here’s what matters most: he did it twice.
The first time, you could call it instinct—the reflex of a world-class athlete in peak condition.
The second time? That was a choice made by a man whose body had already been broken by heroism. Who knew exactly what it would cost. Who did it anyway.
Twenty people from that bus lived entire lives because a 23-year-old champion chose them over his dreams. They celebrated birthdays, held grandchildren, lived decades because in that moment, Shavarsh didn’t look away.
The people from that burning building are alive today because a man with damaged lungs ran toward danger instead of away from it.
Shavarsh Karapetyan never competed in the Olympics. But he got something more valuable: the knowledge that dozens of human beings are walking this earth because he existed.
Because when the moment came—not once, but twice—he dove in.
