Overview
- Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics announced Semenova’s death, prompting tributes for one of women’s basketball’s most dominant figures.
- With the USSR she won two Olympic golds, three World Championships and ten straight European titles, losing only one game in 18 years.
- At club level she starred for TTT/Daugava Riga, collecting 15 Soviet league crowns and 11 European Cups.
- In 1987 she joined Spain’s Tintoretto Getafe with Soviet approval as authorities took most of the payments, a move that boosted visibility for women’s basketball in Spain.
- Semenova lived with acromegaly and later severe health problems and financial hardship, and she was inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame in 2007.