Lopatin, Evgeny Ivanovich

In 1921, his father died of cholera , in 1927 the family moved to Saratov , where Eugene graduated from the Saratov Polytechnic of the Ryazan-Ural Railway and received the title of “first-class electrician”. In 1937 he entered the Leningrad Textile Institute , but two weeks later he quit classes and returned to Saratov, where he was admitted to the Institute of Agricultural Mechanization named after M.I. Kalinina.

At the end of 1937, he met with the author of the first USSR weightlifting textbook Nikolai Ivanovich Luchkin, who arrived in Saratov and decided to go in for this sport. Already in March 1938 he became the champion in the featherweight field, and a year later he met the norm of a master of sports in weight up to 60 kg. In May 1940, as part of the national team of the Saratov region, he participated in the USSR personal-team championship in Minsk , where he took only 9th place. In the summer of 1940, Eugene Lopatin with his wife and son Sergei moved to Leningrad , where he entered the Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute. V.I. Ulyanov-Lenin and almost immediately entered the city team in weightlifting.

With the beginning of World War II, he was called up to the 2nd Leningrad Rifle and Machine Gun Infantry School. After the blockade of Leningrad was established , the school was taken to the city of Glazov in Udmurtia (the wife and both sons of Eugene remained in Leningrad, the youngest son soon died). In the spring of 1942, immediately after graduation, they took companies to the courses of commanders. At the end of the courses, he was sent to the Stalingrad Front , as commander of a company of anti-tank rifles, with the rank of lieutenant. He fought in the 120th Infantry Division of the 66th Army . At the end of September 1942, in a battle near Erzovka, he was wounded by a machine gun burst in his left hand. Being sent for treatment, he ended up in his native Saratov, where he met his wife and son evacuated from Leningrad. After the hospital, he was sent as a teacher of physical education to the Kuibyshev Military School of Communications. In 1944, he tried to participate in local competitions, at the request of local authorities he was transferred to the post of head coach of the Saratov Dynamo on the bar.

Despite a bad hand, in 1945 and 1946 he took 2nd place at the USSR championships, and in 1947 he became the champion of the USSR and the silver medalist of the European Championship . In 1948, he again became the champion of the USSR, in 1950 - the champion of Europe and the silver medalist of the world championship . In 1952, he again became the champion of the USSR, and at the Olympic Games in Helsinki he won a silver medal; the famous Soviet weightlifter Yakov Kutsenko called the Lopatin Prize “a triumph of will.”

After the Olympics, Eugene received a hand injury and stopped speaking, switching to coaching in the sports society Dynamo. Among the athletes he trained was his son Sergei Lopatin . Over the years, he also worked with world champion Bakir Farkhutdinov , world championship medalist Hakob Farajyan and three-time USSR champion Nikolai Nogaitsev.

He died on July 21, 2011 in Moscow. He was buried at the Nikolo-Arkhangelsk cemetery .

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