Tamara Lazakovich

Who was Tamara Lazakovich?

Tamara Vasilyevna Lazakovich was an Soviet gymnast whose competed at the European, World, and Olympic level during the early 1970s.

Described as a "perky sparrow" with a "purity of line", Lazakovich was spotted by her compatriate, Olympic Champion before her, Larisa Petrik, in 1961, and brought to prominent coaches in the Belarussian system. She made a name for herself early on, winning many gold and silver medals at the 1968 and 1969 USSR Junior Championships. Lazakovich debuted as a senior rather inauspiciously, however, at the 1970 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships as a part of that year's World Champion Soviet Team – a low score of 8.00 on the balance beam during the compulsory segment of the team competition dropped her down to 21st place in the all-around, the lowest ranked of the Soviet team. Just a brief glance at her scores and results from that year's Worlds, however, reveals no indication of the tremendous haul of medals she would receive at major competitions over the next two years.

Her crowning achievement came the 1971 Europeans, where she tied her teammate, European, World, and Olympic All-Around Champion Ludmilla Tourischeva for the European All-Around title. She also took two of the four individual event titles, and won silver on the other two. Interesting to note is that in addition to being co-champions in the all-around, she or Tourischeva occupied the gold and silver positions on the podium on all 5 individual events, keeping German Erika Zuchold in 3rd place on 4 out of 5 of them.