Valentina Lituyeva

Valentina Mikhaylovna Lituyeva (; 11 February 1930 – 4 April 2008) was a Soviet track and field athlete who competed in the long jump. Her personal best was and she was the European champion in the event in 1950.

Born Valentina Bogdanova in Leningrad, she joined local club Burevestnik Leningrad and ranked within the top ten in the world for the first time in 1949, having jumped a best of that year. She improved to in the 1950 season. Fellow Soviet athlete Aleksandra Chudina topped the world rankings that year, but in her absence at the 1950 European Athletics Championships Lituyeva won the long jump easily, nearly twenty centimetres ahead of the runner-up Wilhelmina Lust of the Netherlands.

Lituyeva missed the 1951 season but returned for the 1952 Summer Olympics and managed to place eleventh in the final. Lituyeva cleared six metres for the first time with a jump of that November. She remained at a high standard until her last season in 1959, jumping beyond six metres each year and setting a career best of in Moscow in 1958.

Lituyeva returned to try to regain her long jump title at the 1958 European Athletics Championships, but came up short behind West German athlete Liesel Jakobi and ended up with the silver medal. That was the last major competition that she competed in.

International competitions