Vitali Klitschko - Personal Life

Personal Life

His father, Vladimir Rodionovich Klitschko (1947–2011), was a Soviet Air Force major general and a military attaché of the Soviet Union in the East Germany. He was also one of the commanders in charge of cleaning up the effects of the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster in 1986 and was afterward diagnosed with cancer. His mother is Nadezhda Ulyanovna.

Klitschko is married to Natalia Egorova, a former athlete and model. They met in Kiev and got married on 26 April 1996. He has three children, Yegor-Daniel, Elizabeth-Victoria and Max (named after the former World Heavyweight Champion Max Schmeling).

In 1996, he graduated from the Pereyaslav-Khmelnytsky Pedagogical Institute (Ukraine) and was accepted into the postgraduate study program at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. On 29 February 2000, he presented his doctoral thesis on "talent and sponsorship in sports" at the "Kyiv University of Physical Science and Sports" and his PhD in Sports Science was conferred.

Both Vitali and his brother are avid chess players. Vitali is a friend of former world chess champion Vladimir Kramnik and the two have played, with Kramnik always winning. Vitali has commented that "chess is similar to boxing. You need to develop a strategy, and you need to think two or three steps ahead about what your opponent is doing. You have to be smart. But what's the difference between chess and boxing? In chess, nobody is an expert, but everybody plays. In boxing everybody is an expert, but nobody fights."

Vitali and his brother also have been involved in charitable activities dedicated to support the needs of schools, churches and children. In 2002, the Klitschko brothers announced that they had agreed to work for UNESCO.