{"id":7391,"date":"2015-02-04T06:00:24","date_gmt":"2015-02-04T06:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/?p=7391"},"modified":"2018-08-15T19:15:26","modified_gmt":"2018-08-15T19:15:26","slug":"famous-russian-athletes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/famous-russian-athletes\/","title":{"rendered":"Famous Athletes from the Former Soviet Union"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So many athletes from around the world are famous. Believe it or not, some of the world&#8217;s top athletes hail from Russia. In researching this topic, I had a very large number of people to choose from; many of them were tennis and hockey players. Selecting only a few from a list of hundreds was difficult and obviously this list doesn\u2019t do all the athletes the justice they deserve. Hope you enjoy:-)<\/p>\n<p>Gary Kasparov<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s not forget that chess is considered a sport. Few have dominated their respective sport like Kasparov. From 1986 until 2005, when he officially retired, he was ranked number one in the world 225 out of 228 months &#8211; not too shabby! He was a world champion, Grandmaster, and considered to be the best of all time. At the age of 22, he became the youngest ever World Chess Champion. Since retirement he has dedicated time to politics among other things.<\/p>\n<p>Here is a short documentary about his life and times:<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Garry Kasparov : The Chess Player\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/CN4lxFjahtA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Anna Kournikova<\/p>\n<p>Once upon a time she was a tennis player that became one of the world&#8217;s highest ranking players reaching as high as number 8 in the world for singles play. She was ranked the number one player in doubles along with her partner, Martina Hinges. Together they won the Australian Grand Slam Title in 1999 and 2002. Back problems forced her to retire at the ripe old age of 21. To some people she received more attention for her beauty and less for her skills on the court. To those people I\u2019d say: what can you do better than all but 7 people in the world?<\/p>\n<p>You might enjoy this documentary about her:<br \/>\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=KWlRelqs0O0<\/p>\n<p>Sergei Federov<\/p>\n<p>Sergei Federov was one of the most dominant hockey players during the 1990&#8217;s. He played in the United States for the Detroit Red Wings; he also played for Team Russia three times in the Olympics. During his time in Detroit, he won 3 Stanley Cups and was recipient of the Hart Memorial Trophy. Sergei was the first Russian player to reach 1000 points in the NHL, he held the record for the most points in overtime, and he tied for the fastest skater in the NHL in 1996. Interestingly enough, he also dated Anna Kournikova for quite a while.<\/p>\n<p>Here are some of his highlights:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Sergei Fedorov Highlights (1991-2003)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Li69TUQbXFM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\nVitali Klitschko<\/p>\n<p>Vitali is the first world boxing champion to hold a PhD. Both he and his younger brother, Vladimir, were world champions. Vitali was world champion in boxing and was very successful in kickboxing too. He won the gold medal in kickboxing at the Military World Championships in 1995. As if these impressive accomplishments weren&#8217;t enough, he has also succeeded in politics. He also was elected mayor in Kiev, Ukraine. It seems like anything he sets his mind to, he accomplishes. He even has a movie about him Klitschko which came out in 2011.<\/p>\n<p>Hope you enjoyed some of the information and that it may have aroused your curiosity to learn more about these great athletes. Please remember that I do not necessarily consider these choices to be the best representations of our athletes, they simply were chosen because I happen to like them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So many athletes from around the world are famous. Believe it or not, some of the world&#8217;s top athletes hail from Russia. In researching this topic, I had a very large number of people to choose from; many of them were tennis and hockey players. Selecting only a few from a list of hundreds was&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"post-item__readmore\"><a class=\"btn btn--md\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/famous-russian-athletes\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":114,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[3,178,179,7827],"tags":[349768,349765,349767,349764,349770,349769,349766],"class_list":["post-7391","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-culture","category-history","category-news","category-russian-life","tag-anna-kournikova","tag-famous-russian-athletes","tag-gary-kasparov","tag-russian-athletes","tag-sergei-federov","tag-vitali-klitschko","tag-worlds-top-athletes"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/114"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7391"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11080,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7391\/revisions\/11080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/russian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}