Ludmila Engquist

Ludmila Engquist
Medal record
Women’s Athletics
Competitor for  Sweden
Olympic Games
1996 Atlanta 100 m hurdles
World Championships
Competitor for the  Soviet Union
1991 Tokyo 100 m hurdles
Competitor for  Sweden
1997 Athens 100 m hurdles
1999 Seville 100 m hurdles
World Indoor Championships
Competitor for the  Soviet Union
1991 Seville 60 m hurdles
1989 Budapest 60 m hurdles

Ludmila Engquist (Lyudmila Viktorovna Narozhilenko) also known as Ludmila Narozhilenko, born Leonowa, (Russian: Людмила Викторовна Нарожиленко-Леонова, April 21, 1964 in Tambov Oblast, Russia) is a former Soviet/Russian/Swedish athlete who competed in the 1988 Summer Olympics (for the Soviet Union), in the 1992 Summer Olympics (for the Unified Team), and in the 1996 Summer Olympics (for Sweden).

Biography

She won gold medals in 100m hurdles at the 1991 World Championships (for the Soviet Union) and 1997 World Championships as well as the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. For her 1997 victory in Athens, Engquist received the Svenska Dagbladet Gold Medal, the first non-native Swede to win this award. During these years she became one of the most popular woman athletes of Sweden and was sometimes dubbed a role model for younger native Swedish talents.

In 1999 Engquist was diagnosed with breast cancer. After surgery she stopped chemotherapy after 4 treatments because she did not want the drugs to interfere with her athletic career, and successfully returned to the track.

After a distinguished athletic career she retired from running but wanted to become the first woman ever to win gold medals at both the summer and winter Olympics, by competing in and winning the inaugural two-woman bobsleigh event at the 2002 Winter Olympics. In late 2001, however, she was found guilty of having recently used banned drugs and barred from competition for two years. Her admission of drug use, though only during the recent part of her bobsleigh effort, made her a very controversial person in Sweden and considering that she had tested positive for banned drugs once before, during her days as a Soviet runner, and had sustained a ban (which was appealed and lifted after a while) some alleged that she had been using performance-enhancing substances regularly all the time, a claim for which there is no evidence. The penalty term ended in December 2003, but Engquist has not returned to competition since then.

She currently lives in Spain with her husband Johan Engquist.

External links

Awards
Preceded by
Agneta Andersson & Susanne Gunnarsson
Svenska Dagbladet Gold Medal
1997
Succeeded by
Sweden national handball team
Sporting positions
Preceded by
Soviet Union Nataliya Grygoryeva
Women's 100m Hurdles Best Year Performance
1991 1992
Succeeded by
United States Gail Devers
Preceded by
Kazakhstan Olga Shishigina
Women's 100m Hurdles Best Year Performance
1996 1997
Succeeded by
Nigeria Glory Alozie
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