My reaction when I read this posted by kat on Gym Chat was, Guinness has got it wrong:
“Octavian Belu in Guinness World Records as World’s most successful coach”
– published in issue 4075 page 10 at 2007-12-03
Surely Leonid Arkaev, past Head Coach at various times of both Mens and Women’s Soviet, United and Russian National Teams has had far, far more champions.
Most Successful Coach-world record set by Octavian Bellu
[Dec 1]
BUCHAREST, Romania–Octavian Bellu, 56, Romanian gymnastics coach, has set the world record as the Most Successful Coach: 16 Olympics Gold Medals and a total of 279 medals at World and European Championships and Olympic Games.
Highly successful, Octavian Bellu led the Romanian gynastics team to five world and two Olympic titles, as well as coaching numerous individual gold medalists – since the 1991 break-up of the Soviet Union, Romania has been the most successful women’s gymnastics power.
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Octavian Bellu was head of the national team, with interruptions, between 1988 and 2005. He has been the coach of the Romanian Women’s Team since the defection of Bela Karolyi for political reason in 1981.
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Octavian Bellu was appointed as the new president of Romania’s sports governing body
Personally, I’m not a big fan of Bellu though, obviously, I admire the results of Romania, a sports mad, but small and impoverished nation. It’s astonishing what they have accomplished.
Leave a comment if you know anything else — or have statistics — comparing Bellu and Arkaev.
UPDATE: Kat did some further research, confirming that Arkaev won about 400 Olympic, World Championships, and European Championships medals, about 150 of those gold. As far as the team medals are concerned, every single medal isn’t counted, but rather one per team. link – Gym Chat
Certainly far more than Bellu.
If we compare only medals won by the women’s teams, it would be closer.
Octavian Bellu bio – Romanian-Gymnastics.com
Note: Bellu is a more correct spelling than Belu, though both are used.
Gymnastics Coaching.com 