Farewell to one of the greatest basketball players of all time. At the age of 73 she passed away Uliana Semyonovalegendary Latvian and Soviet Union pivot who won everything between the Seventies and Eighties. This was reported by the Riga Federation, adding in the post the infinite palmarès of the “legendary basketball player, two-time Olympic champion, three-time world champion and ten-time European champion, eleven-time winner of the European Champions Cup, as well as a member of the FIBA Hall of Fame, the World Basketball Hall of Fame and the World Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame”.
The “gigantessa”
In 1993 Uliana Semjonova, whose official height was indicated as 210 centimeters (according to some, however, she also reached 215 cm for 130 kg, she wore size 58 shoes), was the first European basketball player to be included in the World Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield. In 1999 she was inducted into the Knoxville Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame, and in 2007 she was included in the founding group of the FIBA Hall of Fame. After the end of her sports career, Semjonova founded and for many years headed the Social Fund of Olympians of Latvia, organizing various types of assistance for sports veterans. In her homeland she was known as the “giantess” of basketball.
Career
Having already reached almost 190 cm at just 12 years old, due to a glandular dysfunction, she was reported to the Riga Sports Academy by her physical education teacher. He moved to Riga in the mid-1960s: he played for Daugawa Riga albeit with an exemption, as he was not yet 14, the minimum age to play in the senior category. He became a starter in 1968, in a team that had won 7 continental titles in the last 8 years: another 11 successes came in 15 years, and the first (and only) lost final came only in 1985 against Aldo Corno’s Fiorella Vicenza in the Champions Cup, in Viterbo (63-55). He said then. “Well done to the Italians, we play an outdated type of basketball”. With the national team he won everything: 2 Olympics (Montreal ’76 and Moscow ’80), three World Cups, countless European Championships, four of which he won in Italy.
The last few years
In recent years Semjonova had suffered from diabetes. In 2023 he had a leg amputated. He will go down in history, among other things, for never having lost a match against the USSR: 18 years of unbeaten.
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