Vadzim Makhneu
Vadzim Henadzevich Makhneu is a Belarusian flatwater canoeist who has competed since 2000. Competing in three Summer Olympics, he won four medals with a gold, a silver and two bronzes.Career
Makhneu never represented Belarus as a junior but won four European championship gold medals for his country at under-23 level as a member of the K-4 crew.
In 2001 he was promoted to the senior K-4 boat and won his first senior medals at the European championships in Milan. A year later the same crew went to the world championships in Seville and took the K-4 500 m silver medal.
In 2003, Makhneu formed a K-2 partnership with Raman Piatrushenka, moving to Mozyr to work under Piatrushenka's coach Vladimir Shantarovich. In their first season together the pair won the 500 m silver medal at the world championships in Gainesville, USA.
Both men were still competing in the K-4 as well and had won another 500 m European medal, this time silver, in 2004.
This decision was amply rewarded in 2005 when the Belarus K-4 500 m crew of Piatrushenka/Abalmasau/Turchyn/Makhneu were crowned first European and then world champions.
He would win nine more medals at the ICF Canoe Sprint World Championships with a bronze in 2006, two more in 2007, and four golds in 2009, and in 2010, a gold and a silver.
In 2005 Makhneu secretly married Alina, a receptionist of the hotel he had lived in while training in Mozyr.
His father, Gennady, finished seventh for the Soviet Union in the K-4 1000 m event at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.
