Ivan Edeshko, a legendary Soviet basketball player originally from Belarus, has died in Moscow. He was 81 years old.
Ivan Edeshko was born on March 25, 1945, in the village of Stsyatski, Hrodna district. He started playing sports with boxing in Hrodna, but his tall stature attracted the attention of children's basketball coach Anatol Martinkevich, who invited him to his section. Later, Yakov Fruman continued to coach the teenager.
Later, Edeshko moved to Minsk, playing in the 1960s for the "Spartak" team, and later for the basketball team of the Minsk Radio Engineering Institute.
In 1970, he was conscripted into the army and began playing for the Moscow club CSKA under the guidance of the famous coach Alexander Gomelsky. As part of CSKA, the athlete became an eight-time USSR champion and began playing for the national team.
Ivan Edeshko entered the history of world basketball thanks to a famous episode in the final of the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. In the last seconds of the match against the US national team, he made a long pass to Alexander Belov, who scored the winning basket. Thanks to this, the USSR national team won Olympic gold in men's basketball for the first time.
In addition to the Olympic title, Ivan Edeshko was a world champion and a two-time European champion. After finishing his basketball career, he worked as a coach. Under his leadership, the CSKA team became the Russian champion in 1992. In 1993, he worked as the head coach of the Lebanese club "Sporting", which became the country's champion. From 1998 to 2000, he headed the Russian junior national team. He was also the head coach of the Russian youth national team.
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