Nina Ponomareva, a champion discus thrower who earned the Soviet Union its first Olympic gold medal when she competed in the 1952 Helsinki Games and touched off a diplomatic crisis four years later when she shoplifted five hats in a London store, died on Friday in Moscow. She was 87.
Dmitry Shlyakhtin, the head of the Russian Track and Field Federation, announced her death, the news agency TASS reported.
Ponomareva (pronounced puh-nah-mar-YOVE-uh), competing under her married name of Romashkova, led a strong women’s discus contingent when the Soviet Union made its first appearance in the Olympic Games.