Background
Lopatin was born in Balashov to a locksmith and a teacher of Russian. His father and younger sister died of cholera when he was 3, and the rest of the family suffered malnourishment during the Russian Civil War.
Lopatin was born in Balashov to a locksmith and a teacher of Russian. His father and younger sister died of cholera when he was 3, and the rest of the family suffered malnourishment during the Russian Civil War.
They moved to Saratov, where in 1937 Lopatin took up weightlifting wishing to become stronger and healthier. Lopatin"s success in local and regional tournaments was interrupted by World World War World War II By then he lived with his family in Leningrad. Later Lopatin was enlisted to the Soviet Army.
He was injured in the Battle of Stalingrad and for many months after that could not use his left hand.
He spent the rest of the war recovering as a coach at a military school. He took silver in the division at the 1947 European Weightlifting Championships in Helsinki and gold in the same event at the 1950 edition in Paris.
That same year he took silver in the featherweight division at the World Weightlifting Championships. He worked as a coach at Dynamo Stadium in Moscow from 1949 through 1998.
He died on 21 July 2011.