Veterans of Rhythmic Gymnastics. Two-time world champion Tatyana Kravchenko

Soviet gymnast, Honored Master of Sports of the USSR, two-time world champion (1965 and 1967). Senior coach of the USSR national team.

Soviet gymnast, USSR Honored Master of Sports, two-time world champion (1965 and 1967).  Senior coach of the USSR national team.

The life of Tatyana Kravchenko (maiden name: Molchanova) was not easy, but very eventful. She was a child of the Great Patriotic War - in June 1941 the girl turned one years old, she was born on June 13, 1940. Her father enlisted in the first days of the war, and her mother decided to send her daughters (Tatyana had an older sister, Elizaveta) from Moscow to the village of Dobrino, not far from Borovsk, to live with their grandmother. The Nazis occupied Borovsk three months later. Little Tanya was rescued out of there on a sled, one of the gymnast's first memories.

Tatyana is one of the pioneers of the USSR's rhythmic gymnastics. She, like the first world champion Lyudmila Savinkova, trained with Maria Lisitsian. And at the first world championship in history, the European Cup 1963 in Budapest, she won silver! Tatyana came second after Savinkova. She was part of the national team from 1958 to 1968.

Tatyana Kravchenko had her first victory at a major international tournament at the World Championships in Prague in 1965 in an exercise without an object. In 1967, she joined the USSR national team in group exercises. Savinkova was there again, as well as Elvira Averkovich, Lyudmila Kachkalda, Tatyana Mashkova, Maria Kuchinskaya. Tatyana won the second World Cup gold medal in her career. In total, Tatyana Kravchenko took part in three world championships and collectively won seven medals of various denominations.

After finishing her athletic career, Tatyana worked as the senior coach of the USSR rhythmic gymnastics team, and later began training the Moscow team. After retiring, she organized the children's sports and musical ensemble "Plarifm" and became the initiator of the children's festival by the same name.

What is interesting, is that Tatyana Viktorovna’s husband is Valentin Kravchenko, a USSR master of sports and one of the main figures in Soviet sambo. He was a senior teacher at the KGB Higher Education School and head of physical training at the Kremlin. Valentin Kravchenko also worked as the chief judge of the first Open European Sambo Championship in 1972. Their son Andrei is also an athlete, a master of sports in rowing and well as a coach.

Tatyana Kravchenko died on May 25, 2016 in Moscow.