Lopatin Evgeny Ivanovich - Soviet weightlifting athlete. Winner of the silver medal of the 1952 Olympic Games. Champion of the European tournament in 1950, which took place in Paris.
Biography
The future athlete was born at the very end of the winter of 1917. Eugene’s childhood was very difficult, in the midst of turmoil and revolution in Russia, poverty and deprivation, in addition, his father died from cholera in 1921. Six years after the tragedy, the Lopatin family moved to Saratov. There, Zhenya entered the Polytechnic of the Russian Railways, which he successfully completed. In the spring of 1937 he left for Leningrad, where he continued his studies at a textile institute. But after only two weeks, he left his studies in the northern capital and returned to his homeland, where he continued his education at the local agricultural institute named after Kalinin.
The beginning of a sports career
In the same hectic thirty-seventh, the famous author of weightlifting books Luchkin came to the city of Saratov. It so happened that Eugene had a chance to meet with him in person, and this acquaintance turned his whole life upside down. Lopatin decided to seriously do weightlifting. Only three months of intensive training - and in March 1938, Lopatin took the first trophy in his career. He became the featherweight champion in the regional tournament. Another athlete needed a year to pass the standard of the master of sports in the weight category up to sixty kilograms.
In March 1939, a son was born to Eugene, who was named Sergei. In the spring of 1940, he took part in the team competition of the Soviet Union. In the individual competition, he took only ninth place. In June, together with his wife and one-year-old son, the weightlifter went to live in Leningrad, where he again decided to take up studies. He entered the Electromechanical Institute named after Lenin, where he was immediately admitted to the sports team.
War years
In 1941, Lopatin, Evgeny Ivanovich, was enrolled in the second rifle-machine gun school in Leningrad, by that time his second son was already born. In September 1941, the blockade began, and the military leadership decided to evacuate the school in the town of Glazov. A wife and two children could not get out of the besieged city. A few months later, the youngest son of Eugene died. Lopatin himself, having completed his training, went to the Stalingrad front, where he immediately headed the anti-tank unit with the rank of lieutenant.
In the fall of 1942, Lopatin was seriously wounded and was sent to the Saratov hospital. There he met his family, son and wife, who had been taken out of the besieged Leningrad the day before. Having recovered from his wounds, he again rushed to the front, but he was not allowed to continue fighting. Instead, Eugene was appointed physical teacher of the Kuibyshev Communications School. In 1944, after a long break, he returned to the sport.
