Sergey Kucherov

Sergey Vyacheslavovich Kucherov was born on 18 July 1980 in Tula, a city south of Moscow. He began cycling in early childhood and later moved to Moscow, where he made his home and his career. He trained at the Olympic Reserve School No. 2 and at the School of Higher Sports Mastery, working with coaches including V. Sobolev and P. Rybin, and he competed for the Dynamo sports society.

Kucherov specialised in the sprint events of track cycling, the individual sprint and the three-rider team sprint, and was first selected for the Russian national team in 2001.

His breakthrough came at the 2008 Russian championships at the Krylatskoye velodrome in Moscow, where he won gold in the team sprint and bronze in the individual sprint. That form earned him a place at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, where Russia finished 12th in the men's team sprint.

At the 2010 World Championships in Copenhagen he placed 28th in the individual sprint and sixth in the team sprint. He was Russian team sprint champion every year from 2010 to 2012 and won the national individual sprint title in 2012. During the 2011 World Cup season he won bronze in Moscow, silver in China and gold in Germany.

As one of the leaders of the national sprint squad he qualified for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, where Russia finished seventh in the team sprint. In the same season he and his teammates won a World Cup round in Beijing. He remained in the national team after London and was fifth in the team sprint at the 2013 World Championships in Minsk. He held the honorary title Master of Sport of Russia, International Class.

Kucherov was born in Tula and lived in Moscow. Little about his private life was made public. In its statement on his death, the Cycling Federation of Russia sent condolences to his relatives, friends and pupils, and described him as a reliable comrade to teammates, mentors and young athletes alike.

The Cycling Federation of Russia announced Kucherov's death on 20 October 2026. He was 46. The federation did not give a cause of death, and Russian sports outlets including Sportbox, Sovetsky Sport and RIA Novosti reported the news that night and the following day.

On 21 October 2026 RIA Novosti, citing a source familiar with the situation, reported that Kucherov had been killed in the zone of what Russia calls its special military operation in Ukraine. The exact date and circumstances of his death were not disclosed, and the federation's own statement did not mention them.

The federation described him as one of the brightest representatives of the Russian school of sprinting, with an iron will and impeccable sporting skill, and said his death was an irreparable loss for the whole sporting family.

Kucherov was part of the Russian sprint squad for more than a decade, a period in which Russia competed at the Olympic Games and World Championships against the leading track nations. His two Olympic appearances, his national titles and his World Cup victories in Germany and Beijing made him one of the country's leading sprinters of his generation, and the federation said his memory would remain in the history of Russian cycling.