Valeri Borisovich Kharlamov Project work in English by Valeria Slyotova Form 7”A”

 Valeri Borisovich Kharlamov (January 14, 1948 – August 27, 1981) was a star ice hockey player from the Soviet Union and was considered one of the greatest players in the world.

 Kharlamov's mother, Aribot Abbad Hermann, was a Basque who came over as a refugee from the Spanish Civil War. His father, Boris Kharlamov, was Russian. Kharlamov began systematic training to play hockey at age 14, when he was admitted to the Children and Youth Sports School of CSKA on Leningradsky Prospekt, where his first trainers were Vitaly Erfilov and Andrei Starovoitov.

 Later that spring, he was seriously injured in a car accident and for a time, his hockey career seemed in doubt. He was unable to play in the 1976 Canada Cup and, though he recovered sufficiently to return to the Soviet national team in the coming years, he was never again the player he once had been. He was a part of the Soviet Union team that lost to the "Miracle on Ice" U.S. team in the medal round at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, but won the silver medal.

 In August 1981, another automobile accident took the lives of him at the age of thirty-three and his wife, Irina. Valeri Kharlamov is buried in the Novokuntsevskoe Cemetery in Moscow.