Nikolay Alekhin

Nikolay Aleksandrovich Alyokhin (; ; 26 October 1954 – 8 July 2023) was a Belarusian sabre fencer. He competed at the 1980 Summer Olympics for the Soviet Union, winning the gold medal in the team sabre event.

Born in Minsk, Belarus, Alyokhin took up fencing as a youth and won local competitions. Wanting to become an Olympic and world champion, he trained on a near-daily basis and eventually was accepted into the Minsk Sports Palace, where he trained under the national coach. He became a bronze medalist at the Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR by 1975 and was selected for the Soviet Union national team in 1978. He subsequently was a member of the Soviet team that won gold at the 1979 World Fencing Championships.

Alyokhin was a member of the Soviet gold medal-winning team at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow and helped the Soviet team to a silver at the 1981 World Fencing Championships. He was ranked second in the world among sabre fencers in 1982 by the Fencing World Cup before later retiring. After his career, he worked as a coach for the national team.

Early life Alyokhin was born on 26 October 1954 in Minsk, Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. He grew up in the military town of and was friends with future Olympic champion Alexandr Romankov. Sovetsky Sport described his Masyukovshchina as a "small town where the only entertainment was a morning market and one amateur performance club for the whole town". Despite Alyokhin's local success, Fel did not consider him talented enough; according to Sovetsky Sport, Fel "slapped Alyokhin in the forehead" and told him: "You're not talented". He was selected for the national team for the first time in 1978, and in 1979 was a silver medalist in the team event at the 1979 Summer Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR. Viktor Lukashenko, the president of the Belarus Olympic Committee, described Alyokhin's death as a "bitter loss for domestic fencing".