Yury Sjedych

Yury Sjedych
nation	Soviet Union
date of birth	June 11, 1955
place of birth	Novocherkassk
size	185 cm
weight	106 kg
date of death	September 14, 2021
Career
discipline	Hammer throw
Best performance	86.74 m
society	CSKA Moscow
Medal table
Olympic games 2 × 1 × 0 × World championships 1 × 1 × 0 × European championships 3 × 0 × 0 × Junior European Championship 1 × 0 × 0 × Universiade 0 × 1 × 2 ×
Olympic games gold Montreal 1976 Hammer throw gold Moscow 1980 Hammer throw silver Seoul 1988 Hammer throw  World championships silver Helsinki 1983 Hammer throw gold Tokyo 1991 Hammer throw  European championships gold Prague 1978 Hammer throw gold Athens 1982 Hammer throw gold Stuttgart 1986 Hammer throw  U20 European Championships gold Duisburg 1973 Hammer throw  Universiade bronze Rome 1975 Hammer throw silver Sofia 1977 Hammer throw bronze Mexico City 1979 Hammer throw

Jurij Heorhijowytsch Sjedych ( Ukrainian Юрій Георгійович Сєдих , Russian Юрий Георгиевич Седых Yuri Georgievich Sedych , English Yuriy Sedykh * 11. June 1955 in Novocherkassk , Rostov Oblast , Russian SFSR , Soviet Union ; † 14. September 2021 ) was a Soviet and Ukrainian athlete who was one of the world's best hammer throwers from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s .

He won a total of eight medals, including six gold, at the Olympic Games, World and European Championships. He won the 1976 and 1980 Olympics and was runner-up in the 1988 Olympics . Sjedych improved the world record six times . His ultimate high of 86.74 m, set on August 30, 1986 at the European Athletics Championships in Stuttgart , also represents the current world record (as of September 15, 2021) .

Athletic career

Jurij Sjedych was born in southern Russia, where his relatives live in Rostov Oblast and his mother studied. Later his mother moved to the south of Ukraine for work , first to Zaporizhia and later to Nikopol , where he grew up. Here he also started athletics. He had his first encounter with hammer throwers when he was twelve when he wanted to get his lost football back from the athletes' training field. He had one of the 4 kg heavy school hammers given to him - and flew with the hammer out of the throwing ring into a high-voltage line. Numerous other failures could not curb his youthful zeal, and so he finally managed to win the Soviet junior championship under the guidance of coach Vladimir Ivanovich Wolovik.

He then enrolled at the Institute for Physical Culture in Kiev to be trained as a trainer. Head of the athletics teaching department was the then still active Olympic hammer throw champion Anatolij Bondarchuk, whom Sjedych had met before - while preparing for the 1972 student Spartakiade , which he won with a width of 62.96 m. The skeptical Bondarchuk only took on the narrow-shouldered young man at the insistence of his colleagues - not knowing that he would be defeated by him in the Olympic competition four years later.

Just one year later - 1973 - Sjedych was able to increase his previous best performance by six meters and won his first gold medal at the European Junior Championships. In 1975 he threw 73.30 m and had achieved another intermediate goal - meeting the standard for the title of Master of Sports in the international class. In the 1976 Olympic year, Sjedych threw the Soviet record at the international competitions for the Pravda with 78.86 m. Shortly afterwards he succeeded in the Soviet championships in Kiev for the first time a victory over the now 36-year-old Bondarchuk, who was second in front of Alexei Spiridonov. At the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal , for example, the old master and two of his students competed against each other - and shared the medals among themselves.

A long dry spell followed, which Sjedych was able to end at exactly the right time: he won the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow with a world record. He came close to the achieved width of 81.70 m eleven years later in his last big victory at the 1991 World Championships in Tokyo - a proof of his extraordinary performance consistency.

As a senior, Sjedych took part in competitions. On May 20, 2001 in Clermont he threw 67.74 m and was the holder of the world record in the M45 age group.

Private

Sjedych was married to the sprinter Lyudmila Kondratjewa for a few years . Their daughter Oksana Kondratjewa (* 1985) is also a hammer thrower. She took part in the Universiade four times and won the silver medal there in 2013. At the 2013 World Athletics Championships , she finished seventh.

He later married the shot put Olympic champion in 1988 Natalia Lisovskaya , with whom he had lived in France since the early 1990s . Their daughter Alexia Sedykh (* 1993) also competes in hammer throw for France and has already been internationally successful in the youth and junior sector , where she won the gold medal in hammer throw at the 2010 Summer Youth Olympic Games .

successes

World records

• 80.38 m on May 16, 1980 in Leselidse
• 80.64 m on May 16, 1980 in Leselidse
• 81.80 m on July 31, 1980 in Moscow
• 86.34 m on July 3, 1984 in Cork
• 86.66 m on June 22, 1986 in Tallinn
• 86.74 m on August 30, 1986 in Stuttgart

See also: List of world records from 1971

Olympic games

• 1976 in Montreal : Gold with 77.52 m ahead of Alexei Spiridonow with 76.08 m and Anatolij Bondarchuk with 75.48 m
• 1980 in Moscow : Gold with 81.80 m ahead of Sergei Litvinow with 80.64 m and Jüri Tamm with 78.96 m
• 1988 in Seoul : Silver with 83.76 m behind Sergei Litwinow with 84.80 m and in front of Jüri Tamm with 81.16 m

World championships

• 1983 in Helsinki : Silver with 80.94 m behind Sergei Litwinow with 82.68 m and in front of Zdzisław Kwaśny (POL) with 79.42 m
• 1991 in Tokyo : Gold with 81.70 m ahead of Ihar Astapkowitsch with 80.94 m and Heinz Weis (FRG) with 80.44 m

European championships

• 1978 in Prague : Gold with 77.28 m ahead of Roland Steuk (GDR) with 77.24 m and Karl-Hans Riehm (FRG) with 77.02 m
• 1982 in Athens : Gold with 81.66 m ahead of Igor Nikulin with 79.44 m and Sergei Litvinow with 78.66 m
• 1986 in Stuttgart : Gold with 86.74 m ahead of Sergei Litvinow with 85.74 m and Igor Nikulin with 82.00 m

Awards

• 1980: Order of Lenin
• 1985: Order of the October Revolution
• 2013: Admission to the IAAF Hall of Fame (together with his wife Natalja Lissowskaja)

Web links

• Jurij Sjedych in the database of World Athletics (English)
• Jurij Sjedych in the database of Olympedia.org (English)
• Sportsman portrait ( memento from September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) of the NDR

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hammer throw world record holder Sjedych dead . At: ORF.at, accessed on September 15, 2021
2. ^ Hammer Throw Men, All Time Top List - Eternal world best list of the IAAF, Hammer Throw Men; accessed August 30, 2020.
3. ↑ Oleg Wostryakov: Юрий Седых: Золото из-под молота [Yuri Sedych: gold from metal] . In: Site of the Athletics Federation of Ukraine (russ.). Retrieved March 16, 2017.
4. ↑ ^{a b} Jurij Sjedych on infosport.ru ; accessed on November 12, 2020 (Russian)