Aleksandr Kostoglod

Aleksandr Viktorovich Kostoglod ( _ru. Александр Викторович Костоглод, born May 31, 1974 in Rostov-on-Don) is a Russian flatwater canoeist. He is a six-time world championship gold medallist in the Canadian canoe (C) events.

Kostoglod did not take up canoeing until the age of fourteen, at the suggestion of family friend and double world champion Vladimir Ladosha. Within a year he was champion of the USSR in his age group. By 18 he was senior national champion and competing at the Barcelona Olympics, He was disappointed to finish tenth in the C-1 1000m but has since admitted that as a youngster he was relying on his natural strength to make up for his lack of technique. It did not help that his coach Alexander Abramiants was excluded from the Unified Team delegation to Barcelona.

He won the first of his seven World Championship gold medals in 1994 at the age of 20 in Mexico City. In 1998, with Maxim Opalev now representing Russia in the C-1 events, Kostoglod teamed up with Alexander Kovalev for the C-2. The pairing was an immediate success, winning two consecutive world 1000m titles in 1998 and 1999. His other four medals have all come in the four-man C4 team.

However, with no C-4 event on the schedule, Olympic medals were to prove more elusive. At the 2000 Sydney games, he and Kovalev finished only fourth in the C-2 1000m final, missing out on a medal by just 0.14 sec. At the 2004 Athens Olympics they were finally rewarded with two medals, silver in the C-2 1000m and bronze in the C-2 500m.

In 2006, Kostoglod and Kovalev came fifth at the European Championships and sixth at the World Championships in the C2 1000m. For the C2 500m events however Kostoglod was partnered instead by Sergey Ulegin. Together they became both European and world champions, finishing over a second ahead of their nearest challengers, the German pairing of Nuck and Holtz, in both finals.

Kostoglod is 185 cm (6'1") tall and weighs 93 kg (204 lbs).

World Championship Golds

*
* C4 200m 2005 Zagreb, Croatia, 33.867
* C4 200m 2002 Seville, Spain 33.650
* C2 1000m 1999 Milan, Italy 3:38.999
* C2 1000m 1998 Szeged, Hungary 3:56.028
* C4 200m 1994 Mexico City, Mexico 35.412