Semyon Viktorovich Belits-Geiman (Russian: Семён Викторович Белиц-Гейман; born 16 February 1945) is a former Soviet freestyle swimmer.[1] He set a world record in the 800 m freestyle, and won two Olympic medals.
 Semyon Belits-Geiman in 1966 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Full name | Semyon Viktorovich Belits-Geiman | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Nationality | Soviet | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Born | 16 February 1945 Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Height | 6 ft 1 in (1.85 m) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Weight | 161 lb (73 kg) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sport | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sport | Swimming | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Strokes | Freestyle | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Club | Dynamo Moscow | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Medal record
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Early life edit
Belits-Geiman is Jewish and was born in Moscow,[2][3][4] where he attended the Transport Engineering Institute,[5] studied journalism, and worked as a journalist for the magazines Sports Life in Russia and Soviet Sport.[6]
Swimming career edit
Belits-Geiman began swimming when he was eight.[3] He was affiliated with the Moscow club Dynamo, and became a member of the Soviet swimming team in 1962.[3][7] He competed at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo, and finished in seventh place in the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay and eighth in the 400 meter freestyle.[7]
At the 1965 Summer Universiade, he won the gold medal in the 400 m freestyle and three silver medals in the 1,500 m and relay races.[3] In 1965, his time in the 1,500 m was the second-fastest in the world (17:01.90).[3][8]
In 1966, he won the gold medal against three of the best American freestyle swimmers in a US vs USSR competition in Moscow.[3] That year at the European championships, he won gold medals in the 1,500 m freestyle (16:58.5) and 4 × 200 m freestyle relay (8:00.2) and a silver medal in the 400 m freestyle (4:13.2; behind German Frank Wiegand, and ahead of Frenchman Alain Mosconi).[3][9] In 1966, he was ranked number three in the world in the 1,500-meter freestyle.[3]
On 8 March 1966, he set a world record in the 800 m freestyle, at 8:47.4, in Budapest.[1][10][11][12] That was 4.1 seconds faster than the former record set by Australian Murray Rose in 1962.[5][13]
At the 1967 Universiade in Tokyo, he won a silver medal in the 1,500 m freestyle, behind American Mike Burton.[8]
He won a silver medal at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City in the 4×100 freestyle relay (3:34.2), swimming the lead leg, and a bronze medal in the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay (8:01.6), swimming the second leg.[1][2][3] In the 4 × 200 m relay, one of his teammates was Vladimir Bure.[3] He also swam two individual freestyle events, finishing seventh in the 200 m freestyle, and ninth in the 400 m race.[3] He broke 67 Soviet national freestyle records.[3] In 1974, he was named president of the Moscow Swim Federation and vice president of the Soviet Union Federation.[3]
Post-swimming career edit
Later in his life he competed in cross-country skiing and speed skating, and became a Soviet Master of Sport and coach in both disciplines.[1][3]
Beginning in the early 1980s, he developed training programs for figure skaters.[3][14] He created a program to increase coordination and flexibility which was used by Australian ice dancing champions Natalie Buck and Trent Nelson-Bond in the early 2000s.[15]
Accolades edit
In 2017, he was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.[16]
Personal edit
He met his wife, Russian ice dancing coach and former competitive ice dancer Natalia Dubova, when he covered one of her competitions as a sportswriter.[14][15] In 1999, they moved to Stamford, Connecticut.[17]
