After the 1980 Olympic Games and 1980 European Championships, it was decided to hold women's continental tournament biennialy each odd year – just like men's European Basketball Championship. Soviet team continued to win but in late 1980s, as a result of changing of generation, their superiority became not such overwhelming as it was before. In 1986 they suffered first defeats at international competition for 28 years - at first, they lost to United States at the decisive match of the 1986 Goodwill Games with margin of 23 points (60–83) and next month they lost to US team with margin of 20 points (88–108) in the final match of home World Championship (both matches were played in Moscow). Nevertheless, Soviet team continued to dominate at European area. They won 1987 European Championship held in Spain after beating Czechoslovakia (89–81) in semifinals and Yugoslavia (83–73) in the final match. But next year at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, Yugoslavia managed to perform better - they took silver medals by losing just 7 points to US team in the final match (70–77) while Soviet team surprisingly failed to reach final and unexpectively finished only at third place for first time in their history. At the group round of the 1989 European Championship held in Bulgaria, Soviet team defeated Czechoslovakia and Netherlands with margin of just 3 points (78–75 and 59–56 respectively) and then reached final where defeated Czechoslovakia once again with same margin (64–61). But at the 1990 World Championship in Malaysia, Soviet Union lost in the second group round to Czechoslovakia (79–82) and Yugoslavia (63–64) and finished only at fifth place. It was first and only time when Soviet team failed to reach podium at the international competition where they participated. Like two years ago, Yugoslavia took silver medals after losing to US in the final match (78–88).