Background
Belits-Geiman was born in Moscow, where he attended the Transport Engineering Institute, studied journalism, and worked as a journalist for the magazines Sports Life in Russia and Soviet Sport.
journalist speed skater swimmer
Belits-Geiman was born in Moscow, where he attended the Transport Engineering Institute, studied journalism, and worked as a journalist for the magazines Sports Life in Russia and Soviet Sport.
He competed at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo and finished in seventh place in the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay and eights in the 400 meter freestyle.
Belits-Geiman began swimming when he was eight. In 1965, his time in the 1,500 m was the second-fastest in the world (17:0190). In 1966, he was ranked number three in the world in the 1,500-meter freestyle.
On 8 March 1966, he set a world record in the 800 m freestyle, at 8:47.4, in Budapest.
That was 4.1 seconds faster than the former record set by Australian Murray Rose in 1962. In the 4 × 200 m relay, one of his teammates was Vladimir Bure.
He also swam two individual freestyle events, finishing seventh in the 200 m freestyle, and ninth in the 400 m race. He broke 67 Soviet national freestyle records.
In 1974, he was named president of the Moscow Swim Federation and vice president of the Soviet Union Federation.
Later in his life he competed in cross-country skiing and speed skating and became a Soviet Master of Sport and coach in both disciplines. Beginning in the early 1980s, he developed training programs for figure skaters. He created a program to increase coordination and flexibility which was used by Australian ice dancing champions Natalie Buck and Trent Nelson-Bond in the early 2000s.
In 1999, they moved to Stamford, Connecticut.
He was affiliated with the Moscow club Dynamo and became a member of the Soviet swimming team in 1962.