Valentina Tikhomirova

Valentina Nikolayevna Tikhomirova (; born 28 June 1941) is a Russian former track and field athlete who competed in the women's pentathlon for the Soviet Union. She was the gold medallist at the 1966 European Athletics Championships and a five-time national pentathlon champion.

She represented the Soviet Union at the Olympic Games twice (1968, 1972) and competed two further times at the European Athletics Championships (1969, 1971), placing in the top five at all four events but failing to win any medals. She had a best of 5234 points, based on the points table at the time.

Career

Early life and European champion Born Valentina Lomakina in Makhachkala, Dagestan (then the Dagestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in the Soviet Union), she began to establish herself in the women's pentathlon in the early 1960s.

Fellow Soviet Irina Press was among the world's leading athletes at that time, meaning Tikhomirova had strong competition at national level. In 1963 she placed fourth at the Soviet Spartakiade, which was won by Tatyana Shchelkanova. She reached the national podium for the first time at the Soviet Athletics Championships in 1966, behind both Press and Shchelkanova. Despite failing to break into the top two at national level, her season's best performances ranked her highly at global level: she was seventh in the world in 1964 with a personal best of 4775 points, then reached the top five in the 1965 season with a score of 4763 points. This left Tikhomirova as the Soviet Union's sole representative in the pentathlon and she duly won the gold medal with a score of 4787 points, extending Soviet dominance in the event since 1954 (Aleksandra Chudina and Galina Bystrova being her predecessors). She defeated West Germany's Heide Rosendahl by a margin of 22 points.

Olympic competition The retirement of Irina Press in 1967 saw Tikhomirova enter a period of success. At the national Spartakiade in 1967 she won with a score of 4946 points –a new personal high. She surpassed five thousand points for the pentathlon for the first time in the 1968 season, with her score of 5008 points in Nalchik.

Later career A lifetime best of 5234 points came for Tikhomirova in Nalchik in the 1971 season.

After her retirement from active athletics she focused on coaching. She was given the Honoured Master of Sports for her efforts and trained high jumper Tatyana Denisova, among others.

National titles Soviet Spartakiade Pentathlon: 1967, 1971 Soviet Athletics Championships Pentathlon: 1969, 1970, 1972

International competitions