She died at the age of 73, in Riga. 213 meters tall, with delicate hands and a generous soul, Uljana dominated world basketball in the 70s and 80s, winning 11 European Cups with her Daugawa Riga, and 2 Olympics, 10 European Championships, 3 World Cups with the Soviet Union shirt. She was the first non-American player inducted into the Hall of Fame, in 1993
Unbeatable. Literally. Uljana Semionova, who passed away yesterday in her Riga at the age of 73, was one of the most successful athletes in basketball, and beyond. In her twenty-year career, between the ’70s and ’80s she lost a handful of matches, making her Daugawa Riga (11 European Cups, 8 of which in a row) and the Soviet national team (10 Europeans, three World Cups, two Olympics, never a defeat in 18 years) of which she, a Latvian, was part of at the time, unbeatable. At the first participation of women’s basketball in the Olympics, in 1976 in Montreal, her Soviet Union defeated the United States (silver medal) 112-77, Semionova scored 32 points. The first reason was her off-scale dimensions: she was 2.13 meters tall. A mountain who took rebounds and scored baskets without needing to jump, but a real player, with soft hands, intelligent, altruistic, even careful not to hurt her opponents who came from behind her or even much further down. His basketball wasn’t just about size, but also about work and humility. It was so dominant that it was excluded from the Gazzetta dello Sport basketball Euroscars, due to its obvious superiority.
humanity
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Despite her size, and the difficulty in facing her on the pitch, everyone remembered her, even her opponents, as a sweet, generous woman. The last years of her life were difficult for this sports legend: she lived on a modest pension, despite her sensational past, and in 2022 her leg had to be amputated due to a degenerative disease, with the need to use an expensive prosthesis. There was immediately a relay of solidarity on the initiative of Jacky Chazalon, French women’s basketball star and her teammate in Clermont-Ferrand, in the last part of her career, when she managed to leave the country after turning 35. Uljana was a friend and great rival of our great Mabel Bocchi, who passed away by melancholy coincidence a few weeks ago. Mabèl appreciated her humanity, saying: “When she came to Sesto to play against my Geas, I took her shopping, I taught her how to apply make-up. It was nice to be next to her. At the 1975 World Cup in Cali, I was in the running for top scorer and with Italy we had to challenge her USSR, unreachable for us. I begged her, speaking in … Latin because neither of us were familiar with foreign languages, to score little, to give me that title. And she did it, pretending to make incredible mistakes throughout the match.”
national symbol
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Having retired in 1985, she has been a pride of her Latvia since, after the fall of the Wall, the Baltic state regained its independence. At 13 she was recommended by her physical education teacher to the Riga Sports Academy, where she moved at a very young age. And she always loved that city that had adopted her, as she loved her country of which I was a symbol of courage and achievement. She was the first non-American woman to be inducted into the Springfield Hall of Fame, in 1993. Her speech was in Latvian, not Russian: “I am proud to honor my nation, Latvia. It is compensation for the many years in which I was unable to represent it. Basketball taught me to live and love.” Even her post-career career was important: Uljana was not just a basketball player, but an authoritative, esteemed and capable person, reaching important sporting positions.
