Vladas Česiūnas

Vladislovas Česiūnas (15 March 1940 – 16 January 2023) was a Lithuanian sprint canoeist who competed in the early 1970s, representing the Soviet Union. He won one Olympic medal and six ICF Canoe Sprint World Championships medals during his career. He later became known for his role in "The Česiūnas Affair" when he defected from the 1979 ICF Canoe Sprint World Championships in Duisburg, West Germany only to return to the Soviet Union afterward for his "misconduct".

Sporting career

At the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Česiūnas won gold in the C-2 1000 m with Yuri Lobanov. He also won six canoe sprint world championship medals with four golds (C-2 1000 m: 1974, C-2 10000 m: 1973, 1974, 1975), one silver (C-2 1000 m: 1973), and one bronze (C-1 1000 m: 1971).

The Česiūnas Affair

At the 1979 canoe sprint World Championships in Duisburg, West Germany, Česiūnas attended the event as a spectator. During the event he vanished, the first in a series of defections that would later include principal ballet dancers Alexander Godunov, Leonid Kozlov and Valentina Kozlov, and figure skaters Oleg Protopopov and Ludmila Belousova.

However, while he was studying German in Dortmund, KGB agents allegedly swooped in and took Česiūnas back to the Soviet Union.

The Soviets claimed that Česiūnas had met a woman named Ursula Vorkhert who invited to spend the night with him and then drugged him up. Česiūnas later appeared with anti-Communist Lithuanians and was asked to speak out in favor of a boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, two months before the Soviet's invasion of Afghanistan and almost six months before American President Jimmy Carter's actual boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics.