Born in Saint Petersburg (then Leningrad) in the Russian SSR, he began training in athletics at the Leningrad sports club. He won his first major international medal at the 1983 Summer Universiade, taking the bronze behind America's Mike Carter and Zlatan Saračević of Yugoslavia. At age twenty-two, he made his global senior debut for the Soviet Union at the 1983 World Championships in Athletics, though he failed to get past the qualifying round.