Oksana Stepicheva


Oksana Stepicheva is a Russian former track and field athlete who competed in sprinting events for the Soviet Union and Russia. She is the 1992 European Indoor Champion in the 200 metres.

Career

Born Oksana Kovalyova, she won her first international medal at the 1987 European Athletics Junior Championships, finishing as runner-up to East Germany's Diana Dietz in the 200 metres. The two repeated this finish in the 4×100 metres relay, where the Soviet women's team which included Lyudmila Dmitriadi took second place. She changed her name to Stepicheva in 1989 and competed under that name for the rest of her career.
Stepicheva rose to the top of the national scene with a 200 m win at the 1990 Soviet Athletics Championships, where she ran a best of 22.97 seconds. This was to be her sole outdoor national title. An indoor national title followed in 1991 and she repeated that win at the interim Commonwealth of Independent States indoor championships in 1992.
The 1992 season was to be the most successful of her career. First, she ran a personal best indoors of 22.97 seconds at the Meeting Pas de Calais in France. Then, she went on to win the gold medal in the 200 m at the 1992 European Athletics Indoor Championships, holding off Romania's Iolanda Oanta to claim her first senior European title. She ran a lifetime best of 22.73 seconds in Duisburg in the outdoor season, ranking her in the top 25 in the world that year, but it proved to be her last season of major competition.

International competitions