Tatyana Ovechkina

Who is Tatyana Ovechkina?

Tatyana Nikolaevna Ovechkina; is a former Soviet Russian basketball player who played for a national team that won two Olympic gold medals, the 1975 World Championships and six European Championships. Today, she runs the Russia women's national basketball program.

Ovechkina was born in Moscow. At age 7, she was walking home from school when an automobile struck her and mangled her right leg. She spent a year in the hospital recovering. At 16, Tatyana joined Dynamo Moscow's women's basketball team and soon became its star. At age 19, she was named captain of the national team.

Ovechkina won two Olympic gold medals with the USSR team, in 1976 and 1980, and never lost a game in an official international competition. She also won the 1975 World Championship, six European Championships, and the 1977 Summer Universiade.

She was awarded the Order of the Badge of Honor in 1976 and the Order of Friendship of Peoples in 1980. In recent years, she was overwhelmingly chosen the century's best female point guard by the readers of the Sport-Express, an Eastern European daily newspaper. Currently, she is a candidate for inducation into the FIBA Hall of Fame.