1. Yuri Norayrovich Vardanyan was a Soviet Armenian weightlifter.
39 Facts About Yurik Vardanyan
1. 2.
Yurik Vardanyan earned the title Honoured Master of Sports of the USSR in 1977 and was awarded the Order of Lenin in 1985.
3.
In 2009 Yurik Vardanyan became an advisor to President Serzh Sargsyan's and was appointed Minister of Sports in May 2013.
4.
Yurik Vardanyan was born on 13 June 1956 in Leninakan, Armenian SSR, a city well known for its weightlifters.
5.
Yurik Vardanyan began weight training in 1970 under the guidance of his uncle Sergey Vardanyan.
6.
Yuri Yurik Vardanyan first came onto the international weightlifting scene in 1977.
7.
Yurik Vardanyan competed against Peter Wenzel of East Germany, one of the top middleweights in the world, twice that year and defeated him both times.
8.
Also that same year Yurik Vardanyan won the Championship of the USSR for the first time.
9.
Yurik Vardanyan had set all the world records in the division by the time of the Weightlifting European Championships at the age of 20 and became a Weightlifting World Champion for the first time at the age of 21.
10.
In 1978, Yurik Vardanyan moved up to the light heavyweight division.
11.
Yurik Vardanyan soon became the European Champion again and set all the division records by the time of the Championships.
12.
Four months later, at the World Championships, Yurik Vardanyan came into the competition relatively overshadowed by more well-known weightlifters, such as David Rigert.
13.
At the 1980 Summer Olympics Yurik Vardanyan became the first weightlifter from Armenia ever to win a gold medal in weightlifting.
14.
Yurik Vardanyan set all the division records again at the USSR Weightlifting Championships in Dnipropetrovsk.
15.
At the 1983 World Weightlifting Championships, Vardanyan's friends and teammates Oksen Mirzoyan and Yurik Sarkisyan had won the gold medal in their respective divisions, meaning that Armenians had come in first in the world in three of the ten divisions.
16.
Yurik Vardanyan faced defeat for the only time in the light heavyweight weight class at the 1984 European Weightlifting Championships, coming in second to Zlatev.
17.
Yurik Vardanyan was the first weightlifter from the Soviet team to win a gold medal.
18.
Yurik Vardanyan set all the world records for a final time in the light heavyweight division.
19.
Yurik Vardanyan won seven gold medals and one silver medal in total in the years he competed at the World Weightlifting Championships, putting him just in second on the all time medal count, behind the great Vasily Alekseyev.
20.
Yurik Vardanyan received the Order of Lenin award in 1985 for his many accomplishments in the field of sport.
21.
Yurik Vardanyan achieved great popularity in the political world for his accomplishments in sports.
22.
Shortly before that, Yurik Vardanyan received an offer to move for the time being to the USA to sign a contract with the Federation of Weightlifting.
23.
Yurik Vardanyan was forced to end his weightlifting career prematurely by the Soviet government.
24.
Yurik Vardanyan was already training for the 1988 Summer Olympics and had no intention to stop competing.
25.
Yurik Vardanyan moved to Moorpark, California with his family in 1992.
26.
Yurik Vardanyan had not forgotten about his homeland and still continued his political pursuit in Moorpark in order to help Armenia.
27.
Yurik Vardanyan returned to his political duties and became and became an advisor to the President.
28.
Yurik Vardanyan lived with his family in Yerevan, coaching his son, who has followed in his footsteps and taken up weightlifting.
29.
Yurik Vardanyan met his wife Eleonora, a Russian athlete in the sport of luge, while training together in the USSR national sports selections.
30.
Yurik Vardanyan moved to the United States in 1992 and settled in Los Angeles.
31.
Yurik Vardanyan claimed that he had some political disagreements with then-President Levon Ter-Petrosyan and that served as a reason for him to move to the United States.
32.
On 8 October 2010, Yurik Vardanyan was in a car accident when his vehicle hit a tractor on the Yerevan-Gyumri highway.
33.
Yurik Vardanyan was taken to a hospital in Ashtarak and was later transferred to Nairi Medical Center.
34.
Yurik Vardanyan received emergency surgery on a thigh bone and he sustained shin injuries, but recovered.
35.
Yurik Vardanyan was hospitalized in the Erebuni medical center for an unknown reason on 22 April 2011.
36.
Yurik Vardanyan's condition was reported stable a few days later and he was released from the hospital on 13 May 2011.
37.
Yuri Yurik Vardanyan died on 1 November 2018 at the age of 62.
38.
On 8 May 2013 Yurik Vardanyan was appointed Minister of Sport and Youth Affairs.
39.
On 24 June 2014 Yurik Vardanyan was appointed Armenia's ambassador to Georgia.