| Personal information | ||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Yekaterina Olegovna Rudenko | |||||||||||||||||
| National team |  Kazakhstan | |||||||||||||||||
| Born | 16 October 1994 Aqmola, Kazakhstan | |||||||||||||||||
| Height | 1.77 m (5 ft 10 in) | |||||||||||||||||
| Weight | 53 kg (117 lb) | |||||||||||||||||
| Sport | ||||||||||||||||||
| Sport | Swimming | |||||||||||||||||
| Strokes | Backstroke | |||||||||||||||||
| College team | Drury University (U.S.)[1] | |||||||||||||||||
| Coach | Natalia Dolgikh Natalia Shpileva[1] | |||||||||||||||||
Medal record
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Yekaterina Olegovna Rudenko (Kazakh: Екатерина Олеговна Руденко; born October 16, 1994) is a Kazakh swimmer, who specialized in backstroke events.[1][2] She represented her nation Kazakhstan in two editions of the Olympic Games (2008 and 2012), finished fifth in the girls' 50 m backstroke at the 2010 Summer Youth Olympics in Singapore, and later captured two silver medals in the 50 and 100 m backstroke at the 2014 Asian Games in Incheon.[3]
Rudenko became the youngest ever swimmer (aged 13) to compete for the Kazakh team at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, swimming in the 100 m backstroke. She cruised to the top of the field with a 1:03.84 to invincibly slide under the FINA B-cut (1:03.86) by two hundredths of a second (0.02) at the Kazakhstan Open Championships three months earlier in Almaty.[4] Inexperienced to the Olympic scene, Rudenko rounded out the field to last place and forty-fifth overall in heat two with a 1:04.85.[5]
At the 2012 Summer Olympics, Rudenko competed for the second time in the women's 100 m backstroke, by downing her FINA B-cut to 1:02.60 at the Kazakhstan Open.[6] Rudenko touched behind the leader Tao Li of Singapore on the initial length in heat two, before fading down the stretch to save the seventh spot in 1:03.64, missing the semifinals with a much improved, thirty-eighth overall placement in the prelims.[7]
Two years later, at the 2014 Asian Games in Incheon, Rudenko upgraded her standards with a striking silver medal double in the women's 50 and 100 m backstroke, blistering a lifetime best of 28.04 (50 m backstroke) and 1:00.61 (100 m backstroke), respectively.[8][9][10]
Rudenko is currently training for the Drury Panthers women's swimming and diving team under head coach Brian Reynolds, while taking up undergraduate studies at Drury University in Springfield, Missouri.