Alexander Belostenny

Alexander Belostenny
Player information
Full name	Alexander Mikhailovich Belostenny
birthday	24th February 1959 (age 61)
place of birth	Odessa , Ukrainian SSR , Soviet Union
date of death	May 24, 2010
Place of death	Trier , Germany
size	214 cm
position	center
Clubs as active
1976-1980	Stroitel Kiev
1980	CSKA Moscow
1981-1990	Stroitel Kiev
1990-1991	CB Saragossa
1991-1994	TVG Trier

Alexander Belostenny medal table
Basketball (men)
Soviet Union
Olympic games
bronze	1980 Moscow	USSR
gold	1988 Seoul	USSR
World championships
silver	1978 Philippines	USSR
gold	1982 Colombia	USSR
silver	1986 Spain	USSR
silver	1990 Argentina	USSR
European Championship
silver	1977 Belgium	USSR
gold	1979 Italy	USSR
gold	1981 ČSSR	USSR
bronze	1983 France	USSR
gold	1985 Germany	USSR
bronze	1989 Yugoslavia	USSR

Alexander Mikhailovich Belostenny ( Russian Александр Михайлович Белостенный * 24. February 1959 in Odessa ; † 24. May 2010 in Trier ) was a Soviet basketball player , who after the collapse of the Soviet Union first in Spain and then in the German Basketball League played in Trier . With the Soviet national team, Belostenny was Olympic champion in 1988 , world champion in 1982 and three times European champion . After the end of his career, Belostenny worked as a restaurateur in his adopted home Trier.

career

Belostenny first played in the capital Kiev of his homeland, the Soviet republic of Ukraine . In 1980 he was assigned to the army sports club CSKA and model club of the USSR in Moscow . After he was only runner-up with Kiev, he was champion of the Soviet Union four times with CSKA. Belostenny won the last championship in 1984 with his 2.20 m tall center colleague Wladimir Tkachenko , with whom he had already played in Kiev and who formed a duo similar to the twin towers Hakeem Olajuwon and Ralph Sampson at the same time at the Houston Rockets in the NBA . After 1984, CSKA could no longer exist against the Lithuanian- based club Žalgiris Kaunas , in which the selection players Arvydas Sabonis , Rimas Kurtinaitis and Valdemaras Chomičius played. 1986 Belostenny returned to Kiev and was again with this club in 1989 champions of the Soviet Union, when Žalgiris could controversially defeat in the finals. This was the only victory of a Ukrainian men's team in the national championship of the Soviet Union.

After 1990, Belostenny, like many other former Soviet Union players , continued his career in Western Europe . In Saragossa he was fourth in the championship with the local club and reached the final of the European Cup Winners' Cup . In 1991 Belostenny switched to TV Germania in Trier. In 1994 he ended his career there and preferred to become a restaurateur in his new adopted home over a career in the coaching bench. In May 2010 he died of complications from lung cancer .

National team

Belostenny celebrated his greatest successes with the national basketball team of the Soviet Union. He took part in three Olympic Games between 1980 and 1992, interrupted by the boycott at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles . In 1988 he won the gold medal in Seoul together with his Lithuanian rivals Sabonis, Kurtinaitis, Chomičius and Šarūnas Marčiulionis as well as his compatriot Alexander Wolkow , after winning bronze in 1980 in Moscow. At the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona , the Commonwealth of Independent States lost to their former teammates from Lithuania in the bronze medal game.

He won three silver medals at four basketball world championships between 1978 and 1990 and the gold medal in Colombia in 1982 , when the college boys of the United States, who were still victorious in the final round, were defeated with one point in the gold medal game. 1986 in Spain , the US college selection for the future NBA star David Robinson retaliated with a final victory over the Soviet selection, which was previously the only team without a loss in the tournament. At the World Cup in Argentina in 1990 , they competed without the Lithuanian players, but with the Baltic players Tiit Sokk and Gundars Vētra and were only twice inferior to the superior world champion from Yugoslavia . Belostenny was one of only six players in World Cup history with four medal wins , of which only Wlamir Marques and Krešimir Ćosić had always reached the final and thus won at least the silver medal. As a participant in six European basketball championships, he won three titles as well as one silver and two bronze medals.

Web links

• Players - Aleksandar Belostenny (CIS). archive.fiba.com - Overview of participation in FIBA tournaments (English)
• Alexander Belostenny in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Basketball legend dies in Trier at the age of 51. Trierischer Volksfreund , May 25, 2010, accessed on May 29, 2010 . 
2. ↑ 2006 FIBA ​​World Championship: Presentation: History: All time records - ALL TIME TOP MEDALISTS. (No longer available online.) FIBA , archived from the original on September 29, 2013 ; accessed on August 11, 2012 (English, World Cup records statistics).