Liudmyla Radchenko

Liudmyla Mykolaivna Radchenko was born on 24 January 1932 in Kyiv. Her mother, Olha Mykhailivna Solovei, was a ballerina who later worked as an economist, and her father, Mykola Radchenko, sang baritone at the Kyiv Opera before becoming an architect who helped rebuild the city after the war. He died in 1946.

In 1941 the family was evacuated to Chelyabinsk. After returning to Kyiv in 1944 she tried to enter ballet school, as her mother had, but was turned away, and her mother took her to gymnastics classes instead. When she jumped 1.45 metres for her school team at a city high jump competition, the coach Serhii Levenshtein invited her to train with him, and athletics became her sport.

Radchenko studied at the Kyiv State Institute of Physical Culture from 1950 to 1955. She set Ukrainian records in the high jump with 1.54 metres in 1951 and 1.60 metres in 1953, and was in the national team from 1953 to 1961. After being switched to the long jump under coach Volodymyr Popov, she won Ukrainian titles in 1957 and 1958 and the Soviet title in July 1960 with 6.15 metres. At the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome she finished fifth in the long jump with 6.16 metres.

From 1962 to 1966 she studied journalism in the evenings at Kyiv State University. In April 1966 she joined Sportyvna Gazeta, where she worked for 42 years until the paper closed in 2008, as correspondent, head of the school youth department, senior correspondent and columnist. She published the collection Z fizkulturoiu druzhymo in 1984. She stood at the origins of the magazine Lehka Atletyka, served on the presidium of the Ukrainian Athletics Federation and was a member of the National Olympic Committee of Ukraine for its first two terms.

Radchenko had a sister and a younger brother, Serhii. In 1962 she gave birth to twins; her daughter died and her son, Yurii, survived. She spoke in later interviews about living for sport, and continued to share her experience with young journalists into her nineties.

Liudmyla Radchenko died on 29 October 2026, in her 95th year. The National Olympic Committee of Ukraine announced her death, describing her as an Olympic finalist, a champion of the Soviet Union and Ukraine, and a well known sports journalist, and offered condolences to her family, friends and colleagues. No cause of death was made public.

Radchenko belonged to a generation of Ukrainian athletes who went on to become respected sports journalists. She was honoured as an Honoured Worker of Culture of the Ukrainian SSR in 1984 and an Honoured Worker of Physical Culture and Sport of Ukraine, entered the Hall of Fame of the Association of Sports Journalists of Ukraine in 2001, received its Ihor Zaseda prize in 2005, and was awarded the Order of Princess Olga, third class, in 2021.