The renowned Soviet basketball coach, Alexander Gomelsky, is considered the father of modern basketball in this country.

Dubbed ‘Alexander the Great’, Gomelsky was known by the international sports community as one of the most shrewd basketball minds. Under his watchful eye the Russian national team won seven European and two world championships. He led this country’s squad to four Olympic medals, most notably, the 1988 gold medal in Seoul that ended a streak of 21 consecutive wins of the United States. From 1953 to 1986, as a coach of this country’s best basketball clubs, Gomelsky won 15 Soviet national titles.

His son, Alexander, who is Vice-President of the Gomelsky International Charitable Fund, says: “My father was a man fanatically devoted to basketball. All his life centered on basketball. One of the hallmarks of his career was the long-awaited gold medals at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, which were won when he was already 60. He was a very good psychologist and tactician. As a leader, he could be pretty tough in achieving his goals. At the same time, I’ve never met a person who was kinder than he was. He took care of his trainees, as if they were his own children, and they treated him as a father, calling him ‘papa’. He was the father of his four sons, the father of his charges, and the father of the whole Russian basketball. I consider myself very fortunate to have been born in his family and to bear the name of this outstanding man.”

Born in 1928 into a family of a Red Army officer, Alexander Gomelsky survived the Leningrad siege during World War II. He became interested in basketball when still a boy, after meeting his first coach, Alexander Novozhilov, who brought up the first post-war generation of Leningrad basketball players. Gomelsky began his coaching career at the age of 18, when he was entrusted to coach the Spartak women’s basketball team. Many of his trainees were experienced athletes, and their young coach was many years their junior. As Gomelsky later recalled, he learned much from them. They would actually mould him as both a coach and a person. At the same time, Alexander continued to play basketball himself – for the team of the Institute of Physical Culture, and later for the Leningrad Sports Army Club. During 1950s, Gomelsky coached the Riga Army Sports Club, leading the team from the Latvian capital to five Soviet league titles and three European Cups. In 1969, he was appointed coach of the Central Army Club in Moscow. Under his guidance, the club won nine Soviet league championships and two national cups. This five-foot-five-inches-tall man was invariably regarded by the giant players with reverence. He brought up a whole constellation of such celebrated basketball players as Arvydas Sabonis, Sergei Belov, Janis Krumins, and Gennady Volnov, who are well-known to basketball gourmets around the world.

Alexander Gomelsky was relieved of duty on several occasions when the team he led failed to win gold medals, bringing home ‘only’ silver and bronze. Nevertheless, his popularity in and outside Russia was tremendous. Georgy Zhukov, a legendary Soviet military commander, called Gomelsky ‘the Marshall of basketball’, apparently, acknowledging his outstanding contribution to the game. At the 1972 Olympic games in Munich, the Soviet national squad was led by another coach, Vladimir Kondrashin, although Gomelsky was expected to coach the team. That year Russian basketball players won their first Olympic gold medal in what is known as ‘the most controversial game’ against the United States team. Alexander Gomelsky called that moment the most exciting and most disappointing in his life, because HE was not there. Yet, he watched with pride as Soviet basketball players, whom he called ‘my boys’, play on a par with American athletes.

“He was truly a legendary figure in the game,” said Doug Collins, a former NBA star, speaking about the great Russian coach, adding that Gomelsky was one of the first coaches to use American methods, while working with the Russian team. Alexander Gomelsky admitted more than once that he knew American basketball better than anyone else in this country, calling himself ‘a well-informed optimist’. One of the books he wrote is titled “Basketball Conquers the Planet”. In the 1980s, Gomelsky used his skills and influence to organize an unprecedented game between Russian and United States basketball stars in Moscow’s Red Square. In his later years, Alexander Gomelsky continued his coaching career abroad. He once said, “Having worked in Spain, France, and the United States, I realize that my life must go on in Russia. I see my basic aim in making basketball more popular here as the most spectacular, elegant, and intellectual game.”

Alexander Gomelsky was also a popular sports commentator, who covered Russian and world championships. In 1995, he was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts, the only Russian coach to be given this honor. He presided over the Central Army Basketball Club until his death in 2005 after a prolonged illness. The Russian Olympic Committee has named Gomelsky this country’s best coach of the 20th century.

In one of his last interviews Gomelsky said: “I’ve lived such an interesting and eventful life, with so much seen and so much achieved. I’ve brought up four sons. I have no regrets…”