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As a senior, he participated in his first World Allround Championships in 1987 in Heerenveen.
In his international debut year 1992 he became European Champion Allround and finished second in the World Allround Championships, after Roberto Sighel.
Hilbert van der Duim became World Allround Champion in 1980, being the first skater in four years to beat Eric Heiden in international competition.
In each of those three years, he became World Allround Champion, making him one of only five male skaters to have won this title in three consecutive years – the other four being Oscar Mathisen (1912–1914), Ard Schenk (1970–1972), Eric Heiden (1977–1979), and Sven Kramer (2007–2010).
Competing for the Soviet Union, Oleg Bozhev had his best year in 1984 when he won a bronze medal on the 1,500 m at the Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, became World Allround Champion ten days later, became Soviet Allround Champion two weeks after that and skated a world record on the 1,500 m another two weeks later.
Among the best Soviet skaters of that time were Oleg Goncharenko and Boris Shilkov, who had taken one gold medal each and one silver medal each at the World Allround Championships of 1953 and 1954, making them the favourites at the 1954 European Allround Championships that followed.
With this time, he outpaced the 1,000 m favourite, Igor Zhelezovski, by 8 hundredths of a second, but Mey wound up finishing in second place, just behind another outsider, the World Allround Champion Nikolay Gulyayev.
The next year (1961), Kosichkin became Soviet and European Allround Champion, while winning silver at the World Allround Championships (behind Henk van der Grift).
His best season was 1958, when he won the overall silver medal in both the European Championships at Eskilstuna and in the World Championships at Helsinki, on both occasions trailing just behind Oleg Goncharenko.