Iurii Zakharov
Iurii Zakharov is a Kyrgyz former swimmer, who specialized in backstroke and individual medley events. He represented his Kyrgyzstan in two editions of the Olympic Games.
Zakharov made his first Kyrgyz team, as a 19-year-old, at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, where he competed in the men's 200 m backstroke. Swimming in heat one, he recorded the slowest prelims time of the event in 2:10.45 to close out the field of thirty-six swimmers to last place.
At the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, Zakharov qualified this time for the men's 200 m individual medley, by clearing a FINA B-cut of 2:05.43 from the Russian Swimming Championships in Moscow. He challenged six other swimmers on the first heat, including fellow two-time Olympians Omar Pinzón of Colombia, Andrejs Dūda of Latvia, and Danil Bugakov of Uzbekistan. Zakharov edged out Bugakov to take a sixth spot by three seconds in 2:07.01. Zakharov failed to advance into the semifinals, as he placed forty-fifth overall in the preliminary heats.
