Yury Vlasov

Yury Petrovich Vlasov, born on 5 December 1935 and died on 13 February 2021, was a Soviet and Russian heavyweight weightlifter, writer and politician. He competed at the 1960 and 1964 Olympics, winning a gold medal in 1960 and a silver in 1964, and at both Games he was the Olympic flag bearer for the Soviet Union. During his career he won four world titles and set 31 ratified world records. He retired in 1968 and became a prominent writer and later a politician, serving in the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union in 1989 and the Russian State Duma from 1993, and standing in the 1996 Russian presidential election.