Vadim Kapranov

In the 1960s and 1970s Russian basketball player Vadim Kapranov played for CSKA Moskva and the Soviet national team. Kapranov then became a successful coach of CSKA, the Russian women’s basketball team, and two teams in France. As a player with CSKA he was a seven-time champion of the USSR (1965–66, 1969–73) and won two European Champions Cups (1969, 1971). At the 1968 Mexico City Olympics he was part of the Soviet team that won the bronze medal, where he played in seven matches, scoring 30 points.

Kapranov coached the CSKA women’s team from 1975 to 1980 and again from 1982 to 1988, interspersed with a spell of coaching the men’s team in 1981. He led the women’s team in victory in the USSR Cup in 1978 and the USSR Championship in 1985. During the 1990s Kapranov spent most of the decade coaching with two women’s teams in France. With Challes-les-Eaux Basket he won the French women’s championship, and with Bourges he won two women’s EuroLeague titles and five French championships.

On the national stage Kapranov worked as the assistant coach to Yevgeny Gomelsky when the Unified Team won gold in the women’s tournament at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. Four years later Kapranov was the head coach of the women’s team at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, with the team finishing in fifth. He finally won an Olympic medal as a coach at the 2004 Athína Games when the Russian team went home with bronze.