Yelena Khloptseva

Sport: Rowing

Born: 21 May 1960

Birthplace: Minsk, Byelorussian SSR

Honors:

Honored Master of Sport of the USSR

Order of the Badge of Honor

Order of Friendship of Peoples

Career highlights:

Gold (double sculls), Olympic Games in Moscow, 1980

Bronze (quad sculls), Olympic Games in Barcelona, 1992

Three-time world champion (quad sculls) - 1981, 1982, 1983

Fifteen-time USSR champion

Biography:

Yelena Khloptseva was born in Minsk on 21 May 1960. The young Yelena was seen by sports specialists as having a big potential. At the age of 12, she was already awarded the title of a master of sport of the USSR in swimming. However, at some point she started struggling due to some psychological and physical barrier. Yelena would switch from breaststroke to front crawl, would change coaches  but to no avail.

She was eventually introduced to Yadviga Rutkovskaya, a rowing coach. At first, she did not have much heart for the new sport but being a diligent student she worked very hard. It was not immediately clear which discipline she would be best off. Yet one thing became apparent quickly: she and single scull were not a match. At the age of 16, Yelena was sent to Azerbaijan for her first ever training camp with the USSR national team thanks to the efforts of head coach of the BSSR women's rowing team Oleg Mikhailov.

Ahead of the 1980 Olympic Games, the coach of the Soviet Union women's team, Viktor Aleshin, was looking to put together a double sculls team with the Olympic potential. At first, he paired Yelena Khloptseva from Minsk up with Reet Palm from Estonia. The considerations were purely technical: the same height equaled approximately the same stroke length, hence good synchronization of movements, which is a must in double sculls. The Khloptseva-Palm team proved the coach's considerations right. In 1977, the girls won the gold in the national championships, and thus earned a spot on the team for the world championships. But they did poorly on the Bosbaan canal in the suburbs of Amsterdam finishing tenth and were dis-paired. The coaches continued to look for the best options and put Yelena Khloptseva and Reet Palm in a four together with Natalia Kozochkina from Leningrad and Olga Vasilchenko from Moscow. Their debut at the 1978 World Rowing Championships on Lake Karapiro in New Zealand was encouraging – they won a bronze medal. But at the World Rowing Championships on Lake Bled in Yugoslavia in 1979, they finished fourth and the coaches began to reshuffle the team again.

Yelena Khloptseva and Larisa Popova were put together in double sculls. Shortly before the Olympics Popova and Khloptseva stunned everyone at the Amber Oars Regatta on Lake Trakai in Lithuania by clocking 3:10 in the 1000m. No one even came close to such a result in double sculls.

Popova and Khloptseva did not have any tactical plan for the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow in the preliminary heat. The race was one of the toughest. They did not see but rather felt that they finished first. The Romanian crew was 2 seconds back. Then things got easier. They trained calmly, even despite the fact that the result of the GDR crew in the consolation heat exceeded their time by 5 seconds.

The final might have looked surprisingly simple: the Soviet double sculls left the start line faster than anyone else and was in the lead the entire race. Competition was close and all the boats were in their eyesight, pulling up and then falling behind. Yet, no one got close to the position to make an attack on them. The USSR and the GDR crossed the finish line only one second apart. Nevertheless, the victory of Larisa Popova and Yelena Khloptseva was more than convincing. The charming double sculls crew became the only one from the USSR rowing team to win the Olympic gold in Moscow.

After the Olympics in Moscow, Yelena won the world champion title three more times with different teams. In 1984, she claimed gold at the Friendship Games.

In 1986, she decided to quit rowing. However, two years later she returned to the sport. Prior to the Summer Olympic Games in Barcelona in 1992, the famous Belarusian coach Anatoly Kvyatkovsky was looking for female athletes for quad sculls. Yelena Khloptseva and Ekaterina Khodotovich from Minsk teamed up with Antonina Zelikovich from Moscow and Tatyana Ustyuzhanina from Kiev. The team was strong and well-coordinated and won a bronze medal. It was the only crew on the CIS rowing team to medal in Barcelona.

Upon retiring from sport, Yelena went into coaching. Now she lives in Minsk and works as a swimming coach.