Uljana Semjonova
Latvian basketball player (1952-2026)
Uļjana Semjonova (Russian: Ульяна Ларионовна Семёнова, romanized: Ulyana Larionovna Semyonova; 9 March 1952 – 8 January 2026) was a Latvian basketball player of Old Believer descent who competed for the Soviet Union.
Career
Semjonova was the leading women's basketball player in the world in the 1970s and 1980s. Wearing a men's size 21 (US) / 58 (EU) shoe, she was known for having the largest feet ever in women's basketball. For almost all of her playing career, she played for TTT Riga, which was part of Daugava Voluntary Sports Society. With TTT, she won 15 championships in the Soviet Union and the European Champion's Cup 15 times. Semjonova was also very dominant in international play, winning two Olympic Gold medals while playing for the USSR in 1976 and 1980 and never lost a game in official international competition.
Between 1968 and 1985, she played 100 games for the Soviet Union, scoring 1614 points, committing 174 personal fouls and making 162 of 249 free throws.
Later life and death
Between 1991 and 2023, Semjonova was the head of the Latvian Olympic Social Fund, whose aim is to help retired athletes financially.
Later in life, she suffered from numerous medical complications. In 2017, she had cardiac surgery and was hospitalized for a fall.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Uljana Semjonova” is latvian basketball player (1952-2026). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Uljana, Semjonova and Latvian, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “latvian basketball player (1952-2026)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q433045. The first chronological checks are 1952, 2026, 1976 and 1980.
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This entry incorporates text from “Uljana Semjonova” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.