Vladimir Gogoladze

Vladimir Omarovich Gogoladze, known to teammates and fans as Lado, was a Georgian artistic gymnast who competed for the Soviet Union and later coached in the United States. Born in Tbilisi on 18 August 1966, he rose quickly through the Soviet system, won Olympic team gold in Seoul in 1988, and entered gymnastics history as the first athlete to land a triple back somersault on floor at the Olympic Games. The Georgian National Olympic Committee announced his death on 4 October 2026. He was 60. Memorial gatherings were held in Tbilisi on 4 and 5 October, with burial planned for 6 October. A public cause of death was not given.

Gogoladze began elite competition in 1985 at age 18, taking silver medals in the all-around and on high bar at the USSR Championships and bronze medals in the all-around and on parallel bars at the European Championships in Oslo. He trained with the Armed Forces club in Tbilisi and earned a place on the powerful Soviet men's squad of the late 1980s, often recalled as a Dream Team era lineup.

At the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul he helped the Soviet Union win the men's team gold. Individually he reached the vault final (eighth) and placed sixth in the all-around qualification ranking without advancing to the final eight. On floor he became the first gymnast to perform a triple back in Olympic competition, a landmark that still defines his sporting reputation. The same year he was named Honored Master of Sports of the USSR. Across USSR Championships he collected medals on floor, high bar, pommel horse and rings, including titles and podium finishes between 1985 and 1989.

Two skills in the Code of Points carry his name: a straddled Healy-type twirl on parallel bars, and a floor element moving from flair or circle to handstand and continuing in flair or circle, a form that remained in later codes because athletes kept performing it. After leaving elite competition he settled in the United States and coached at Gymnastics World in Ohio, passing on Soviet-era technique to a new generation of gymnasts.

Colleagues and Georgian sporting bodies remembered him as both an Olympic champion and a pioneer of floor difficulty. He also received Georgia's Vakhtang Gorgasali Order, second class, recognising his contribution to national sporting pride after independence-era remembrance of Soviet Georgian athletes. Russian and Georgian outlets that covered his death stressed the Seoul team gold and the Olympic triple back above all other results.

Exact details of his final illness were not published. What was public was the Georgian Olympic committee's sorrow, the Tbilisi memorial timetable, and a career that stretched from Tbilisi's gymnasiums to an Olympic podium and an American coaching hall. His story remains part of the lineage of Soviet men's gymnastics at its peak and of Georgian athletes who carried that legacy abroad.