Gymnastics is one of the most fascinating sports. At first, artistic gymnastics appeared. It included various exercises and competitions on apparatus.
Much later, competitions in this sport were held with music and some object. In fact, it is an acrobatic and graceful dance. The objects that athletes perform with include: ribbon, mace, ball, jump rope and hoop.
If we compare sports, the latter is a safer and more beautiful sport. Russian gymnasts take first place in gold medals at various international competitions. In 1999, a professional holiday was approved for athletes, which takes place annually on the last Saturday of October.
Russia gave the world performances by the most beautiful and titled athletes in the entire era of gymnastics. Many of them have completed their careers, but are engaged in social activities and lead an active public life. The performances of Russian gymnasts still attract the attention of many fans of this sport around the world.
Pioneers
Lyudmila Savinkova was the first champion in rhythmic gymnastics. She was born in 1936. The girl’s coach was Tamara Lisitsian, later her sister Maria. Lyudmila won her award in Budapest; she was the first among 28 athletes.
Svetlana Khorkina is a native of Belgorod. She was born in 1979. Came into sports in 1983. In 1992, thanks to hard work and extraordinary talent, she joined the artistic gymnastics team. The coach was Boris Pilkin. Gold at the Olympics in 1996 and 2000 in the uneven bars exercise. Three-time world champion and three-time absolute European champion. Honored (1995). At that time, all the young gymnasts in Russia looked up to her.
In 2004, Svetlana announced the end of her career. In 2005, Khorkina gave birth to a son, Svyatoslav. The birth took place in Los Angeles, so the child automatically received US citizenship. In 2011, Svetlana’s life changes dramatically, and she marries security service general Oleg Kochnev. In 2007, a monument to Svetlana Khorkina was erected in Belgorod. Today she holds the position of vice-president of the Russian Artistic Gymnastics Federation. Svetlana is also a beloved woman and a caring mother.
Rhythmic gymnasts of Russia
Born in Omsk in 1982. She came to sports at the age of 6, and by the age of 12 she was already a member of the Russian rhythmic gymnastics team. At a young age she won the CIS Spartakiad. 2004 brought Olympic silver in Athens. Her coach was the famous Irina Viner. In 2001, there was an unpleasant disqualification from the sport for two years due to a doping scandal.
After finishing her career, Irina began participating in television shows and opened a rhythmic gymnastics school in Barnaul. My personal life was also good. She met Evgeny Arkhipov and got married in 2011. Russian gymnasts are educating the younger generation today, and they are doing it no worse than performing at international competitions.
Talents from Tashket
Alina Kabaeva is from Tashkent. Born in 1983. Alina started playing sports at the age of 3. Alina’s mother, observing the development of the girl’s sports talent, decided to move to Moscow. Irina Viner was Alina's coach. Since 1996, she has also been a full member of the Russian national team.
Kabaeva is one of the most titled gymnasts. She has 25 gold medals, 6 silver and 5 bronze. In 2007, she ended her career in sports and the same year she entered politics. Alina became a State Duma deputy. Gymnasts of the Russian national team also do an excellent job with public affairs.
Yana Batyrshina. This athlete, like Alina Kabaeva, is a native of Tashkent. Born in 1979. I started gymnastics at the age of 5. At first she played for the Uzbekistan national team. After the collapse of the USSR, she moved to Russia and began playing for the national team. Her achievements are impressive. Yana has 180 medals of various denominations. In 1997, Yana was awarded the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, II degree. She left big sports at the age of 19. She went to Brazil and worked as a head coach in rhythmic gymnastics. She is happily married to Timur Weinstein and has two daughters.
Bashkir beauty
Laysan Utyasheva. Bashkiria gave us this beautiful athlete. She was born in 1985. The parents wanted to send the girl to ballet, but Nadezhda Kasyanova, a gymnastics coach, noticed her quite by chance in a store. Since 1994, Laysan trained with Tatyana Sorokina, and then with Alla Yanina and Oksana Valentinovna Skaldina.
In the 90s, Laysan deservedly received the title of Master of Sports. In 2001, she became the absolute winner at the World Cup and received a gold medal at the championship in Madrid. In 2002, she was injured and underwent treatment, but she was still contraindicated from playing sports. In 2006, she retired from the sport.
Having completed her career, she did not go into the shadows. Laysan stars in TV series, works as a sports commentator, and hosts a TV show. The gymnast successfully married TV presenter Pavel Volya and gave birth to a son, Robert, and a daughter, Sofia.
Pupil of Irina Viner
A native of the city of Omsk. Born in 1990. Her mother was a master of sports in gymnastics, so the girl’s future was determined from early childhood. From the age of 12 she performed as a member of the Moscow youth team. Afterwards, Zhenya trained at the Olympic reserve school. Her coach was also Irina Viner.
Kanaeva has many achievements and awards, including 57 gold and 3 silver medals. In 2012, she ended her career. Her personal life is successful, she is married, and in 2014 her first child, son Vladimir, was born.
All of these greatest gymnasts in Russia are Honored Masters of Sports, and some are Masters of Sports of international class.
Rio de Janeiro
At the last Olympic tournament, the main hope of the fans was the gymnasts. Russia, for which the Olympics were associated with unpleasant doping scandals, hoped for its female athletes more than ever.
And if the gold in the team championship in rhythmic gymnastics was predictable, then the bronze medal in sports was a pleasant surprise.
Elena SOBOL from Pesaro
The culmination of the individual tournament was the Olympic discipline - all-around. On the third day of the competition, the gymnasts showed all four of their programs again, gathering the full stands of the Adriatic Arena. That evening, the crowded stadium in a small Italian town was buzzing so loudly that the whole neighborhood could hear it - the best of the best were performing on the carpet. But the warmest greetings were, perhaps, the Italians as hostesses and the Russians as the absolutely strongest.
Debutantes of the world championship Dina And Arina Averina became first and second in the all-around, having collected all five gold medals in the individual competition between them, and in total having already won ten medals in Italy. In addition to five gold, four silver and one bronze.
NEW LEADERS
To this success sisters Averina it's been a long time coming. Last year, the athletes were ready to perform at the highest level, which they proved at the Grand Prix and World Cup competitions, but remained in the shadow of the first numbers, the Olympians Yana Kudryavtseva And Margarita Mamun. However, after their older friends left the sport, the twin sisters did not give up and managed to firmly take leadership positions. So that they again remain out of reach of their rivals and win by a large margin.
After the judges announced the scores Dina Averina for the fourth exercise and it became clear that no one would beat her, Arina met her sister, ran out to her in the kiss and cry area, and hugged her warmly. Head coach Irina Viner-Usmanova I also couldn’t hide my smile - her athletes gave their all on the mat.
The fight for third place in the all-around took place between several gymnasts, but they did not miss their goal Linoy Ashram from Israel, who was third and qualified. For the Israeli gymnast, this award is a great success and a good foundation for the future.
MOST ELEGANT
The winners were awarded Alina Kabaeva- the official ambassador of this World Cup. She was present at all competitions and warmly congratulated the all-around winners, thanks to whom the crowded arena froze to the Russian anthem, and two tricolors immediately soared under the dome in their honor. After the award, the Olympic champion presented the Italian Milena Baldassarri award in his name - a small figurine in the form of a gymnast. The special prize "Miss Elegance" went to another Italian - Alexandre Ajirdjiculese.
Dina AVERINA: “WE HAVE COME DONE WITH THE TASK, WE ARE WELL DONE”
The absolute world champion talks about her emotions after the victory.
I'm happy that it's over and that everything turned out well. I want to say a huge thank you to everyone! Irina Aleksandrovna Viner-Usmanova congratulated me and said that we had coped with the task, that we were great, we tried. She is happy and content. When I found out that I was the first, there were even tears of joy. I'm Arina I met her, we hugged and that was it... I cried with happiness that everything ended well.
World Championship. Personal all-around. 1. D. AVERINA - 74,700 2. A. AVERINA - 73,450 3. Ashram (Israel) - 70,025.
Today, stunning victories of Russian gymnasts at various competitions are familiar to contemporaries. But 30 years ago these achievements did not exist at the Olympic Games. The history of rhythmic gymnastics at the Olympics, in its impeccable and victorious form, began not so long ago.
Olympic history of rhythmic gymnastics
Rhythmic gymnastics as a type of competition came to the Olympics only in 1984. The decision to accept this sport as part of the Olympic tournaments was made at a congress held after the 1980 Olympics. 1984 became the starting point of the Olympic competitions in rhythmic gymnastics, where only women's teams took part. However, the USSR national team did not take part in these debut competitions - the Union declared a boycott and refused to participate in this Olympics. This was a response to the boycott by the United States at the 1980 Olympics.
The very first Olympic champion in rhythmic gymnastics was Canadian athlete Laurie Fang. Of course, without the participation of Soviet athletes, other countries of the world had significant chances of winning. But, having refused to participate in the games at the 1984 Olympics, many countries united and created an alternative tournament. Here, gymnasts from Bulgaria especially distinguished themselves in rhythmic gymnastics.
The golden age of Bulgarian gymnasts
The unofficial games of the Soviet countries were held in Sofia, and two Bulgarian gymnasts received the highest award. The debut performance of the USSR rhythmic gymnastics team was marked by second place.
Marina Lobach went down in history as the first Soviet Olympic champion in rhythmic gymnastics.
At the 1988 Olympics, the struggle for championship in gymnastics was already much more serious. Bets were placed on the brilliant performance of the Bulgarian athletes in the past, but the girls from the USSR national team did not plan to retreat and were excellently prepared. The final fight between two Bulgarians and girls from the USSR was brilliant, but Marina Lobach flawlessly completed the qualifying program, so she got the gold. And so began the triumphant march of Russian gymnasts across the Olympic podiums.
The victory at the 1988 Olympics was the final one for the gymnasts of the Soviet Union. After the collapse of the USSR, a team formed from gymnasts from the CIS countries went to the 1992 Olympic Games. The team included Alexandra Timoshenko and Oksana Skaldina, both girls were from Ukraine. The gold medal of those games went to Alexandra, and the silver went to Spain.
The Summer Games in 1996 were not so victorious for the Russian team. The performers Yana Batyrshina and Amina Zaripova amazed the audience and the jury with their new elements and general approach to the performance. But Yana could only get silver in the individual all-around. In the group performance, Russia received bronze. This situation only spurred coach Irina Viner and the athletes, and already at the next Olympics Russia became the owner of the gold medal.
Wiener, Zaripova, Kabaeva, Batyrshina at competitions in Japan. 1997
The 2000 Sydney Olympics became “golden” for Yulia Barsukova, but unanimously the star of the games, according to journalists, was Alina Kabaeva. It is she who will get the gold medal at the next Olympic competitions. In 2004, the team will take home 2 medals in total - Irina Chashchina will win silver in these competitions.
Olympic champions
In 2008, the sports world met a unique Russian gymnast - Evgenia Kanaeva. The winners of the Beijing Games were Zhenya Kanaeva, who took first place, and Anna Bessonova, who took home bronze. Returning to Moscow, the girls trained even more intensively, preparing for new Olympic heights. The next Olympics, held in London in 2012, left no chance for gymnasts from other countries to win. Both the highest awards - the gold and silver medals in the individual all-around - went to Russia with their owners - Zhenya Kanaeva and Dasha Dmitrieva. Karolina Sevastyanova from Ukraine won gold in group exercises. Two-time winner and Olympic champion in rhythmic gymnastics Evgenia Kanaeva is almost finishing her sports career, but worthy athletes are already preparing to replace her.
The 2016 Rio Olympics made the Russian team the absolute winner in both types of performances - the girls took first place in both the group and individual all-around events. The amazing Russian exercises demonstrated by the gymnasts brought Yana Kudryavtseva to the finals with a silver medal. And in the group all-around, the victory was not easy - the number with ribbons barely brought the Russian team into the TOP-3 according to estimates, which made all the fans nervous. But a little later, in the routine with hoops and clubs, the athletes decisively took the lead, leaving no chance for other teams.
At the same Olympics, a new star of Russian gymnastics appeared on the sports horizon - Margarita Mamun. According to the results of the competition, the young, 19-year-old girl won an unconditional victory in the individual all-around.
Undoubtedly, rhythmic gymnastics and Russia are almost inseparable concepts in the world of sports. Being the winners of all Olympic competitions, Russian gymnasts do not stop, winning more and more titles in other tournaments. And many athletes in the standings, based on the results of all their victories, have titles with the prefixes “multiple,” “absolute,” or “record.” This speaks of the phenomenal diligence and hard work of fragile but strong girls.
November 12, 2016, 10:41 pmSvetlana Khorkina twice won Olympic gold in artistic gymnastics, became a three-time absolute world champion and a three-time absolute European champion. Thanks to her performance of the most difficult combinations on the uneven bars, she received the unofficial title “Queen of the Uneven Bars.”
Alina Kabaeva- one of the most titled gymnasts in the world. Her name is inscribed in the Guinness Book of Records, since at the age of 15 Alina became the absolute European champion in rhythmic gymnastics among adults. Today she is known not only for her sporting achievements, but for her active political and social activities.
Evgenia Kanaeva became the first ever two-time Olympic champion in rhythmic gymnastics in the individual all-around. And at the 29th World Championships in the Japanese city of Mye, the athlete set an absolute record, winning 6 gold medals out of 6 possible.
Aliya Mustafina In Rio de Janeiro, she won Olympic gold for her country in artistic gymnastics for the second time. The first time this happened was at the 2012 Olympics in London - the same year Aliya was recognized as athlete of the year in Russia.
World champion, six-time European champion Laysan Utyasheva won many stunning victories; four elements of rhythmic gymnastics she invented were named after her. And although an injury suffered in 2002 forced her to give up big-time sports, she continues to be a media personality as a television and radio host.
Irina Chashchina achieved fame at the same time as Alina Kabaeva, which is why the athlete was in a “secondary role” for a long time. One such case is the Olympic Games in Athens, where Irina lost gold to Kabaeva.
Two-time Olympic champion in artistic gymnastics 2000 Elena Zamolodchikova won many more victories at the world and European championships, but the title “Bride of Sydney” was assigned to her.
Two-time silver medalist at the 2016 Olympics Apiary Maria Currently performing the most difficult vault in the Russian artistic gymnastics team.
Margarita Mamun brought Russia a gold medal in the individual all-around in rhythmic gymnastics at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. The coach and fans call the girl the “Bengal Tigress”, since her father is from Bangladesh.
Yana Kudryavtseva, who brought Russia a silver medal at the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, is the youngest absolute world champion in the history of rhythmic gymnastics.
