When the Soviet Union began competing at the Olympic Games in 1952, its biggest successes came in sports with a premium on long hours of disciplined training, such as weightlifting, wrestling and particularly gymnastics, where there was a tradition of excellence. After Viktor Chukarin had won the men’s combined exercises title in the 1952 and 1956 Games, his training partner, Boris Shakhlin, maintained the dominance, collecting 13 Olympic medals, seven of them gold, including that for the combined exercises in Rome in 1960.

Although unusually large for a gymnast at 5ft 7½in tall and weighing 11 st, Shakhlin always looked finely-honed, something that was accentuated by his prominent cheekbones. This gave him a haunted, slightly sinister air. He excelled at the apparatus requiring power, muscular control and a strong grip, such as the pommels, high bar and rings, rather than the floor exercises, with their greater demands on fluency of movement, where he never finished in the top three of a global event during his career. These physical talents and his notable consistency brought him the nickname of “the Man of Iron”.

Boris Anfiyanovich Shakhlin was born in Ishim, Siberia. When his father, a railway worker, died in 1944, Shakhlin, who began gymnastics that year, and his elder brother were brought up by their grandmother. He was coached initially by Vasili Porfirev, who instilled in him an unyielding desire to win. With the Soviet Union preparing to enter the Olympics, sports schools were becoming more commonplace and youngsters were being assiduously trained to demonstrate the superiority of the communist way of life. In Das Kapital, Karl Marx had advocated “bodily education such as is given in schools of gymnastics and by military”, and Radio Moscow had started broadcasting morning exercises for workers as early as 1928.

Shakhlin went to Sverdlovsk in 1949 and then two years later to Kiev, where he finally settled, and was coached by Alexander Mishakov. Chukarin was one of his training partners and his example in winning the 1952 Olympic title was an inspiration to the younger Shakhlin, who made his debut at the world championships in 1954. He finished fourth overall, with Soviet gymnasts filling the top seven places.

At his first Olympics in 1956, Shakhlin collected gold medals in the pommel horse and team competition but reached his peak two years later at the 1958 world championships in Moscow when he collected a record five of the eight titles available. He maintained his dominance in the 1960 Olympics with a further four gold medals, although in the combined exercises he defeated Takashi Ono, of Japan, by only 0.05 of a point. One title which eluded him was for the team event in which the Japanese dethroned the Soviet Union for the first time, an ascendancy that they were to maintain until 1979. Shakhlin was to say that his most cherished medal in Rome was not the gold in the combined exercises — usually the most prized because it demonstrates all-round prowess — but his bronze in the high bar. All the gymnastics events were held in the spectacular setting of the Baths of Caracalla and the final of the high bar was one of the most memorable. Shakhlin was challenging two Japanese and he hurt a hand. However, the Siberian remained on the apparatus, despite blood seeping from a wound, and completed his routine, much to the admiration of the crowd.

Four years later, in his final Games, he took his last Olympic title in this event and also finished joint second in the combined exercises in a three-way tie. He was still good enough to get a silver medal in the team event at the 1966 world championships, bringing his total in this quadrennial event to 13.

The following year, he suffered a heart attack, brought on, he said, by smoking, a habit he had acquired as a teenager, and which forced him to retire from the sport. The combination of smoking and competitive inactivity disturbed him psychologically. He divorced his wife, Larissa, another gymnast whom he had met in 1956, although later they were remarried. He found new purpose in local politics in Kiev and also as a coach and official in Ukraine and as a member of the technical committee of the International Gymnastics Federation. Despite living for 56 years of his life in Ukraine, he always insisted: “I was born a Siberian. I will die a Siberian.”

He is survived by his wife and daughter.

Boris Shakhlin, gymnast and official, was born on January 27, 1932. He died on May 30, 2008, aged 76