Yury Vlasov

Yury Petrovich Vlasov ( _ru. Юрий Петрович Власов; born December 5, 1935) is a former Olympic heavyweight weightlifter for the Soviet Union, a writer and a politician.

Biography

Yury was born in Makiivka, Ukrainian SSR to the family of a military journalist and Komintern agent in China Pyotr Vlasov. Later his father worked as the General Consul in Shanghai, then the Ambassador to Burma.

Yury studied at the Saratov Suvorov military school (1946-1953), then at the Zhukovsky Air Force Academy in Moscow, from which he graduated with a Gold Medal in 1959. In Academy he became interested in weightlifting, joined Armed Forces sports society and soon became Master of Sport of the USSR (1957). Between 1959 and 1963 he won all the competitions he participated in, with a huge success at the Rome 1960 Summer Olympics where he beat the world records three times, becoming the first man to clean and jerk more than 200 kg (202.5). He was proclaimed the best sportsmen of the 1960 Olympics and the "Strongest Man on the Planet" [http://www.biograph.comstar.ru/bank/vlasov_yp.htm] , [http://www.peoples.ru/sport/heavy_atlete/yuriy_vlasov/] . He was considered a nerdish intellectual in rim glasses [http://www.bumer.ru/10-2005/03.html] , going against the stereotypes attached to weightlifting.

At the 1964 Summer Olympics he finished second, after another Soviet weightlifter, Leonid Zhabotinsky, and retired from the Olympic Team.

Weightlifting achievements

*Olympic Champion (1960)
*Silver Medalist in Olympic Games (1964)
*Four-time Senior World Champion (1959, 1961-1963)
*Silver Medalist in Senior World Championships (1964)
*Six-time Consecutive Senior European Champion (1959 - 1964)
*Set thirty four world records during career

Career after retiring from weightlifting

After retiring from weightlifting he became a writer and a politician. Due to his damaged spine he for a few years could not walk and moved in a wheelchair.

He is the author of several books "Overcoming yourself", "Salty Joys", "The Special Region of China" (about his father), "Flaming Cross", "Rus' without a leader", etc.

Between 1968 and 1976, he published his works in the Soviet Union. But after his work ("Flaming Cross") was published in the West, he was consider a mild dissident and was not published in the Soviet Union.

In 1987, after Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union, Vlasov became chairman of the Federation of Athletic Gymnastics of the USSR.

He was elected to the Congress of Soviets for the Lyublyansky district of Moscow in 1989 and broke from the Communist Party. In parliament he started as a member of the liberal Inter-regional Deputies Group, along with Andrei Sakharov, Anatoly Sobchak and Boris Yeltsin, but later became close to nationalists and Christian Democrats.His views were described by some journalistsFact|date=February 2007 as chauvinistic and anti-Semitic.

In 1993, he was elected to the State Duma of the Russian Federation. He was a candidate in the 1996 Russian presidential election but only received 0.02% of the vote (the second-to-last result amongst the ten participants). Following this he apparently retired from politics.

In 2004, at age 69, he took part in veteran's competitions and was able to lift 185 kg [http://www.rezeptsport.ru/metod/vlasov.php] .

References

* [http://www.weightliftingexchange.com/index.php?option=com_smf&Itemid=39&topic=2044.0 Yury Vlasov - Hall of Fame at Weightlifting Exchange]
* [http://www.biograph.comstar.ru/bank/vlasov_yp.htm Biography] ru icon
* [http://fatalenergy.com.ru/Book/vlasov_spravedlivost_sili/index.php Yury Vlasov "The Fairness of the Strength"] - the book of memoirs ru icon
* [http://loi.sscc.ru/zdc/sht/vlasov.htm Vlasov's biography and photos] ru icon
*" [http://www.kolokolmagazine.com/Gershunskij/Neuzheli_eto_vozmozhno/ Is this possible?] " Dead link|date=July 2008 – article on post-Soviet antisemitism, including quotes by Vlasov ru icon

Persondata
NAME=Vlasov, Yury
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=Vlasov, Yury Perovitch; Vlasov, Yuri; Власов, Юрий Петрович (Russian)
SHORT DESCRIPTION=Soviet Olympic weightlifter, writer and politician
DATE OF BIRTH=December 5 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH=Makiivka, Ukraine
DATE OF DEATH=
PLACE OF DEATH=