Olga Nikolayevna Knjasewa

Olga Nikolajewna Knjasewa ( Russian Ольга Николаевна Князева ; born August 9, 1954 in Kazan , Tatar ASSR , Soviet Union ; † January 3, 2015 there ) was a Soviet foil fencer . She won the gold medal in the team classification at the fencing tournament of the Summer Olympics in 1976 , was four-time world champion and two-time runner-up, as well as four-time European Cup winner (the forerunner of the later European fencing championships ).

life and career

Born in the city of Kazan, the capital of the autonomous Republic of Tatarstan, Knyazeva visited the financial and economic institute of her hometown. At the 1973 World Fencing Championships in Gothenburg , she won the silver medal with the women's team of the Soviet Union. The following year she won the gold medal with the women at the World Fencing Championships in Grenoble . Another year later she was able to repeat this success at the World Championships in Budapest and also achieved the silver medal in the individual behind the Romanian Ecaterina Stahl and ahead of the Hungarian Ildikó Bóbis . At the European Cup in 1975, the forerunner of the later European Fencing Championships , she was also able to achieve gold in the individual and was recognized as the best foil fencer of the year due to this success.

After the fencing world championships were canceled in 1976 due to the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal - Knjasewa was able to win the gold medal repeatedly at the European Cup - the 21-year-old Soviet citizen took part in the aforementioned major event. In Canada she took part in the individual field of 48 women from 20 nations and was ninth overall after a total of 17 duels. With the women, the gold medal was almost safe, with the team still winning 9 after two big wins over Canada (total score: 14 to 2) and Romania (total score: 9 to 1), as well as a narrower 9 to 6 over Germany in the final against France 2 and secured the gold medal as an Olympic champion.

At the Fencing World Championships in 1977 in Buenos Aires and at the European Cup of the same year, the Soviet women around the 1.64 m tall student from Kazan again prevailed and won gold each time. In the following year he also won the team championship at the 1978 World Fencing Championships in Hamburg and the European Cup. In the next major competitions, in which the women from the Soviet Union could still achieve great success, Knjasewa was no longer in the line-up after she had largely withdrawn from fencing. After that, little is known about the Tatar's further career.

On January 3, 2015, the death of the now 60-year-old Olga Nikolajewna Knjasewa, who had died in her hometown of Kazan, was announced. Her association Dynamo Kazan , to which she remained loyal throughout her entire career, then planned a separate memorial service.

Web links

• Olga Knyazeva in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• History of the fencing world championships (women’s foil) until 2003 on sport-komplett.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ушла из жизни лучшая рапиристка мира-1975 Ольга Князева. January 3, 2015, accessed January 3, 2015 (Russian).