A RARE OFFICIAL LONGINES SPLIT SECONDS STOP WATCH CHRONOGRAPH FOR THE OLYMPICS USED BY THE WORLD RECORD OWNER IN HIGH JUMP STEFKA KOSTADINOVA AND HIS COACH DURING HER TRAINING.A RARE LONGINES SPLIT SECONDS STOP WATCH CHRONOGRAPH USED FOR THE OLYMPICS IN 1987. Model: Official split seconds stop watch chronograph Date: Circa 1960'sMovement: Signed, 26-Jewels, Cal.262, secured co-axial chronograph button, No.14461XXX twice (just for movements that were sent to the Observaotry contest)Dial: Signed, silvered, black Arabic numerals, subsidiary for seconds at the 6 o'clock position, subsidiary for minutes at the 12 o'clock position, black and orange centre for seconds for a yellow subdivisionCase: Signed, stainless steel, engraved in the back "P", "14461170" and "8350"Size: 66mm.Accompaniments: A black Longines black leather protection case with a blued leather strap to be used hanging for the neck. Footnote:At the time of the 1980 Moscow Olympics, the world was mainly divided into two antagonistic forces, the Communist and the Western. Bulgaria, a representative of the Communist block, was gifted three Longines and three Omega chronometers by the organiser, the Communist USSR. The watch brand Longines was elected as the official timer of those Games, putting forward their Cal.262 model, like our lot, to the Swiss Observatory for Timing at Neufchâtel so that it could be used at the Olympics. These special watches would have been kept in the factory and only lent to memorable events like the Olympic Games, or the timing of the Donald Campbell's "Bluebird" water and land speed record attempts. Due to specific possession rules in socialist Bulgaria, no athlete had the right to own chronometers donated by Western manufactures for the Olympics. Therefore, all official Olympics chronometers were stored in the warehouse of the Bulgarian Athletics Federation. Following the fall of the USSR, rules in Bulgaria changed and a private company took over the administration of the Federation's warehouse and the safe storing of these time pieces and measuring instruments. In 2003, the present owner came into possession of a box containing four chronometers accompanied by notes written by Nikolay Petrov (b. 6 June 1959), one of the most successful sports coaches in Bulgaria. With burning curiosity, the present vendor contacted the coach and received confirmation from him that the Longines Cal. 262 in our sale was the very one he used to train his athlete wife, Stefka Kostadinova, Olympic Champion in the high jump, seven-time world champion and five-time European. Her world record of 2.09m, set in Rome in 1987, remains unbeaten to this day. A picture of the famous coach Nikolay Petrov holding the four watches is available upon request. Dimensions 66mm.