Rudolf Plyukfelder

Rudolf Vladimirovich Plyukfelder (; 6 September 1928 – 24 April 2026) was a Soviet weightlifter and weightlifting coach. As a competitor he won world titles in 1959 and 1961 and an Olympic gold medal in 1964. As a coach he prepared a series of Olympic champions including Aleksey Vakhonin, Vasily Alekseyev, David Rigert, Nikolay Kolesnikov, Aleksandr Voronin and Viktor Tregubov.

Biography Plyukfelder was born to a Russia Germans family in Ukraine. His father and older brother were put to death in 1941 when Germany invaded the Soviet Union. The rest of the family was sent to a labor camp in Siberia, where Plyukfelder started to work at a coal mine at the age of 14. As a hobby he tried track and field athletics and wrestling, in which he won the regional championships in 1948–49. He changed to weightlifting only in 1950 when he was already 22. Until 1962, when he moved to Rostov Oblast, he trained on his own, as there was no weightlifting coach in his area, yet he became the world's best light-heavyweight competitor, winning world titles in 1959 and 1961, European titles in 1959–61, and an Olympic gold in 1964. He also set eight official world records in 1969–1961: one in the press, five in the snatch, and two in the total.

While competing, Plyukfelder coached some of his teammates, such as Aleksey Vakhonin whom he made an Olympic champion from scratch. He retired shortly after the 1964 Olympics and had a long and successful career as a coach in Shakhty, which he turned into a major Soviet weightlifting school.

Plyukfelder died in Zierenberg, Hesse, Germany on 24 April 2026, at the age of 97.

Books