Galina Kulakova

Galina Kulakova is a Soviet-Russian former cross-country skier, born Galina Alexeyevna Kulakova on 29 April 1942, who was arguably the best skier on distances shorter than 10 km in the early 1970s. She won four Olympic golds, two individual in 1972 and relay golds in 1972 and 1976, and with Ard Schenk of the Netherlands was the most successful athlete of the 1972 Winter Olympics. At the World Championships she won three individual golds and two relay golds, and she was thirty-nine times champion of the USSR between 1969 and 1981. At Innsbruck in 1976 she was disqualified from the 5 km after a positive test for ephedrine, which she blamed on a nasal spray, yet she was allowed to race the 10 km and the relay. She ended her career in 1982.