Sergey Artyukhin came from a sportive family. His father Yevgeny was the World Greco-Roman super-heavyweight champion in 1983 and was considered as the main favorite to the Olympic Greco-Roman super-heavyweight gold before the Soviets boycotted the 1984 Olympics. His brother, also named Yevgeny, is an ice hockey player, who played 199 games in NHL between 2005 and 2010 in such teams as the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Anaheim Ducks and the Atlanta Thrashers. In the early 2000s, Artyukhin, coached by his father, was considered as one of the top Russian Greco-Roman super-heavyweight wrestlers, but due to fierce competition inside the Russian national team, he represented Russia internationally only once, at the 2001 World Cup, where he won the team gold medal. The heavy competition to get to the international tournaments led Artyukhin adopting Belorussian citizenships in 2005 and now representing his new country, he won the 2005 European Greco-Roman super-heavyweight title. He also won bronzes at the 2006 and 2007 World Championships and was considered to medal also at the 2008 Olympics Games, but at the Olympics, he lost to eventual gold-medalist Mijaín López of Cuba and bronze-medalist Yury Patrikeyev of Armenia and had to settle with a disappointing 11th place. Artyukhin retired from competitive wrestling in 2009 and died due heart attack in September 2012 while playing recreational ice hockey with friends.
Belarus