Lidia Skoblikova

Lidia Skoblikova grew up in Zlatoust, an industrial town in the Ural Mountains, in a large working family. As a child she suffered from poor health, including a bout of tuberculosis, and doctors recommended outdoor exercise to build her strength. She took to the frozen rivers and lakes of the region on skates, a common pastime for children there, and found she had a natural gift for speed.

She rose through Soviet regional competitions in a sport where the country's training system was already producing world-class skaters, and made her Olympic debut at the 1960 Squaw Valley Games, where she won two golds. Four years later at the 1964 Innsbruck Games she achieved something no skater has repeated before or since, winning all four women's speed skating events on the programme, at 500, 1000, 1500 and 3000 metres, a complete sweep that required speed, endurance and technical range in near equal measure.

Her six Olympic gold medals across two Games remain the most ever won by a woman at the Winter Olympics in any sport, a record that has stood since 1964 despite the sport's growth and increased competition in the decades that followed.

After retiring from competition she moved into coaching and sports administration in the Soviet Union and later Russia, and remained a revered figure in speed skating circles, one of the sport's few genuinely undisputed legends.