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LARISSA LATYNINA
Larissa Semyonovna Latynina (born December 27, 1934 in Kherson, Ukrainian SSR) was a Soviet gymnast who was the first
female athlete to win nine Olympic golds. She still holds the record for being awarded the most Olympic medals at 18 (nine gold medals,
five silver and four bronze).
Born Larisa Dirij, she first practiced ballet, but turned to gymnastics after her choreographer moved out of town. She graduated from
high school in 1953 and moved to Kiev to attend the Lenin Polytechnic Institute and continue training. There Latynina trained at the
Burevestnik Voluntary Sports Society. At the age of 19, she debuted internationally at the 1954 Rome World Championships, winning the
gold medal in the team competition.
At the 1956 Summer Olympics, she competed with Ágnes Keleti of Hungary to become
the most successful gymnast of the Olympics. Latynina beat Keleti in the all-around event, and the Soviet team also won the team event.
In the event finals, Latynina won gold medals on the floor (shared with Keleti) and vault, a silver medal on the uneven bars, and a
bronze medal in the now discontinued team event with portable apparatus. Keleti also won six medals, comprised of four golds and two silvers.
After a very successful World Championships in 1958 (winning five out of six titles despite competing whilst pregnant), Latynina
was the favorite for the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome. In the all-around event she led the Soviet Union to take the first four places,
thereby also securing a win in the team competition by a margin of nine points. Latynina also successfully defended her floor title,
took silver medals in the balance beam and uneven bars events, and bronze in the vault competition.
Latynina won all-around titles at the 1962 World Championships, beating Vera Cáslavská
of Czechoslovakia. Still the defending World Champion at the 1964 Summer Olympics, she was beaten by Cáslavská in the all-around
competition. Latynina did however add two more gold medals to her tally, winning the team event and the floor event both for the third time
in a row. A silver medal and two bronzes in the other apparatus events brought her total of Olympic medals to eighteen —
nine gold medals, five silver and four bronze. She won a medal in every event in which she competed.
Latynina retired after the 1966 World Championships and became a coach for the Soviet national gymnastics team, a position she held until
1977. She organized the gymnastics competition at the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow, and around the year 2000 appeared in the "Soviet Sports Wars"
episode of the PBS documentary The Red Files, discussing her experiences as a gymnast and Soviet coach.
She is a citizen of Russia, and lives (as of 2004) in her estate near the town Semenovskoye, Moscow region.
For more information, visit her
profile page on the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique website.
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