Yevgeny Lopatin

Olympic medal record
Competitor for  Soviet Union
Men's weightlifting
Olympic Games
Silver	1952 Helsinki	Lightweight
European Weightlifting Championships
Gold	1950 Paris	Featherweight
Silver	1947 Helsinki	Featherweight
World Weightlifting Championships
Silver	1950 Paris	Featherweight

Yevgeny Ivanovich Lopatin (December 26, 1917 – July 21, 2011) was a Soviet weightlifter who competed at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, where he won a silver medal in the lightweight division.^[1]

Biography

Born in Balashov, Lopatin took up weightlifting in 1937 as a way to regain his health many years after suffering malnourishment during the Russian Civil War. His success in local and regional tournaments was interrupted by World War II, where he fought in the Battle of Stalingrad. He was injured during the course of the conflict and temporarily lost the use of his left hand. He spent the rest of the war recovering as a coach and teacher at a military school.^[2]

After the conflict Lopatin resumed his weightlifting career and reigned as the Soviet featherweight champion in 1947, 1948, and 1950, finishing as runner-up in 1945, 1946, and 1949, and in third place in 1951. He took silver in the division at the 1947 European Weightlifting Championships in Helsinki and gold in the same event at the 1950 edition in Paris. That same year he took silver in the featherweight division at the World Weightlifting Championships. As competition in the featherweight field grew, Lopatin switched to the lightweight division and once again became the Soviet champion prior to his attendance at the 1952 Summer Olympics, after which he announced his retirement from active competition.^[1] He worked as a coach at Dynamo Stadium in Moscow from 1949 through 1998.^[2] He died on July 21, 2011.^[3]

References