Ihor Turchyn

Ihor Turchyn
Personal information
Born(1936-11-16)16 November 1936
Sofiental, Cetatea Albă, Kingdom of Romania (now Sofiivka, Ukraine)
Died7 November 1993(1993-11-07) (aged 56)
Bucharest, Romania
Medal record
Coach for women's handball
 Soviet Union
Olympic Games
1976 Montreal Team
1980 Moscow Team
1988 Seoul Team
World Championship
1973 Yugoslavia Team
1975 Soviet Union Team
1978 Czechoslovakia Team
1982 Hungary Team
1986 Netherlands Team

Ihor Yevdokymovych Turchyn (Ukrainian: Ігор Євдокимович Турчин; 16 November 1936 – 7 November 1993) was a Ukrainian handball coach, who headed the Soviet and then Ukrainian national team from 1973 to 1993,[1] bringing them to three Olympic and five world championship medals.[2][3]

Biography

In 1959, Turchyn assembled a handball team of teenage girls, which in 1962 became HC Spartak Kyiv.[4] The club became 20-time Soviet champion (1969–1988) and 13-time winner of the EHF Champions League (1970–1973, 1975, 1977, 1979, 1981, 1983, 1985–1988).[1][5]

In 1965, he married Zinaida Stolitenko, a trainee 10 years his junior. They had a daughter, Natalia (born 1971), and a son, Mikhail (born 1983). Natalia played handball alongside her mother for Spartak Kyiv, while Mikhail went into basketball.[6] In his last years, Turchyn suffered several heart attacks. He underwent a complex bypass surgery in Norway, and after that coached the Norwegian women's handball team for eight months.[6] He died of a heart attack during an EHF Cup match in Romania in 1993. After his death, his wife took over his coaching positions with Spartak Kyiv and the Ukrainian national team.[1][7]

Awards

References