Aleksandr Kovalenko took up athletics at age 11. Initially a sprinter, Kovalenko took up triple jumping when he was 15 and was selected for the Soviet national team in 1986. The apex of Kovalenko’s career came at the 1988 Olympics, where he won bronze. He also competed at the 1987 World Championships, where he was fourth, and at the 1992 Olympics, where he was seventh. He was the Soviet triple jump champion in 1986-88 and CIS champion in 1992. Kovalenko retired from sports after the fall of the Soviet Union and later worked as an athletics and fitness coach in Belarus, Latvia and Norway.
