Elena Shportun (born 1980 in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia-Russia) is an amateur female bodybuilder who mainly competes in European bodybuilding competitions. She is known in the bodybuilding world for her artistic style of posing which involves modern and belly dancing, classic lines and symmetry which are often compared with those from the female bodybuilders from the late 1970s and early 1980s such as Cory Everson and Anja Langer. Although Shportun has had the opportunity to compete at the pro level she has opted to remain competitive as an amateur level and recently won the 2009 Arnold Amateur International Bodybuilding Championship.Shportun was born in a city near Krasnoyarsk, Russia. At an early age she began to play a different types of sports. When she was seven, she started doing Artistic Gymnastics, and stopped after two years. Afterwards, her mother became her mentor and coached Shportun in swimming and cross-country skiing. Later on at the age of 17 she continued her athletic lifestyle by doing karate. In 1995, at the age of nineteen, Shportun began weight training when she visited a bodybuilding studio for the first time. Four years later she competed at an amateur bodybulding competition for the first time; after her first experience competing in bodybuilding she decided that she needed to improve her performance on stage and began to take choreography and lessons in modern and belly dancing. This would later help her improve her posing routines on stage.
During the late 90s and early 2000s, Elena has had a very successful amateur career in her native Russia as well as Europe. She has won the All-Russian Championships (2002–03) and World Amateur Championships twice (2005 and 2007), and the European Championships (2005). Recently 2009, proved to be a very good year for Shpoturn, having won the 2009 Arnold Amateur Classic Championships, Oslo Grand Prix, and the Loaded Cup. Despite having had the opportunity to turn pro after winning the 2007 World Amateur Championships, Shpoturn has opted to stay away from the pro events citing the fact that the professional female bodybuilders carry more muscle than what she wants to have and also does not want to discourage women from weight training.
Outside of the competitive stage Elena has a college degree from the Siberia-Aero Academy and worked as economist and lived for some time in Zheleznogorsk, Siberia until she moved to Germany after marrying her husband Klaus Willamer, a freelance photographer. During her free time she enjoys writing poems, painting, and works as a make-up artist and costume designer.
