Passages: Robertas Zulpa, 1980 Olympic Gold Medalist, 64
Robertas Zulpa, the 1980 Olympic gold medalist within the males’s 200 breaststroke, died on Aug. 30. He was 64 years outdated.
Zulpa was born in Vilnius is what’s now Lithuania however represented the Soviet Union. He gained gold within the males’s 200 breast on the boycotted Moscow Olympics. His time was 2:15.85, slower than the successful time of Nice Britain’s David Wilkie (2:15.11) from the 1976 Montreal Olympics.
Two years later, Zulpa gained silver on the 1982 FINA World Championships in Guayaquil, Ecuador, behind eventual 1984 Olympic champ Victor Davis of Canada.
The USSR was absent from the 1984 Video games in Los Angeles. As an alternative, Zulpa went 2:15.70 to win gold on the 1984 Friendship Video games in Moscow, over a area that included Los Angeles silver medalist Alban Vermes of Hungary, who took bronze. In LA, Davis lowered his world file to 2:13.34.
Zulpa additionally gained three medals on the European Championships, together with the 200 title in 1981 and bronze within the 200 in 1983. He gained the 200 breast on the World College Video games in 1983.
Zulpa retired within the Nineteen Eighties and relocated to Italy in 1988, the place he obtained work as a translator for companies and coached swimming. He was residing in Vilnius on the time of his demise.
A sporting hero in Lithuania, Zulpa’s demise was memorialized by condolences from the nation’s president and head of its legislature. He was elected the nation’s Sportsperson of the Yr in 1981 and honored with the Honored Grasp of Sports activities of the USSR designation. Simply this 12 months, he was named the to the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas by the president’s workplace. He was an icon for a lot of swimmers who would comply with in his skilled footsteps from the nation.
