Just before Christmas
Former track and field star dies
Updated 12/25/2025 – 3:53 p.mReading time: 1 min.
He made history for the first time in 1969. Just a year later, Anatoliy Bondarchuk surpassed himself. Now he has died.
Former Ukrainian hammer thrower Anatoliy Bondarchuk has died at the age of 85. The European Athletics Federation announced this with great dismay. The 1972 Olympic champion, then still for the Soviet Union, died on December 23rd.
As an athlete, Bondarchuk achieved his historic breakthrough in 1969: at the European Championships in Athens, he achieved a world record distance of 74.68 meters. And it got even better: with a throw of 75.48 meters, around a month later he became the first hammer thrower to break the 75-meter mark. It wasn’t until 1971 that the German Walter Schmidt (76.40 meters) overthrew him. Three years later, Bondarchuk crowned his career with an Olympic victory in Munich.
After the end of his playing career following the Montreal Games in 1976, Bondarchuk devoted himself to coaching. His influence reached far beyond the Soviet Union; he trained athletes in Portugal and Kuwait. He worked particularly closely with Yuriy Sedykh, who won two Olympic gold medals (1976 and 1980) and has held the world record in the hammer throw with 86.74 meters since 1986.
In the mid-2000s, Bondarchuk lived in Canada. There he looked after, among others, the multiple medalist Dylan Armstrong in the shot put and Sultana Frizell, who won the Commonwealth title in the hammer throw twice. Ethan Katzberg, the current world champion and Olympic champion, was also one of his protégés.