Olympic hammer champion Yuriy Sedykh, 66

Atwo-time Olympic hammer throwing champion whose record from 1986 still stands has died at the age of 66.

The Russian track and field federation said Yuriy Sedykh died following a heart attack.

World Athletics senior vice-president and pole vaulter Sergei Bubka tweeted: “Deeply mourn the loss of Yuriy Sedykh. For me, Yuriy was a friend, a wise mentor.”

Sedykh won the gold medal at the 1976 and 1980 Olympics, but missed the 1984 Los Angeles Games because of a Soviet boycott.

He returned to action at the 1988 Seoul Olympics where he won a silver medal and secured a world title in 1991.

At the European Championships in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1986, Sedykh threw a world record 86.74 metres – a mark which still stands.

At this year’s Tokyo Olympics, all 12 finalists in the men’s hammer were born after Sedykh set the record.

Sedykh made his huge throw at a time when track and field was beginning to realise that athletes were using performanceenhancing drugs.

Former Moscow antidoping laboratory director Grigory Rodchenkov wrote in a book last year that Sedykh was “a huge steroid abuser” who benefited from a Soviet cover-up.

He claimed one of Sedykh’s samples contained such large traces of the steroid stanozolol that it contaminated laboratory equipment. Sedykh always denied doping.

After retiring from the sport, Sedykh worked in France as a physical education teacher.

He was married to shot putter Natalya Lisovskaya.

Yuriy Sedykh.