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NASTIA LIUKIN
Official website: www.nastialiukin.com
Other websites:
AAI Gymnastics Equipment by Nastia Liukin
Nastia Liukin News
Go.Nastia.Liukin: Your Online Source for Everything About Nastia
Nastia Fan Forum
Anastasia Valeryevna Liukina (born October 30, 1989), better known as Nastia Liukin,
is an American gymnast. She is a four-time U.S. National Champion in artistic gymnastics and is the 2007 and 2005 World
Champion on the balance beam and the 2005 World Champion on the uneven bars. With nine World Championships medals, seven
of them individual, Liukin is currently tied with Shannon Miller as the most
decorated American gymnast in World Championships history.
Liukin is coached by her father, Valeri Liukin, at her family's gymnastics club,
WOGA, in Plano, Texas.
Nastia Liukin was born on October 30, 1989 in Moscow, Russia. She is the only child of two former Soviet champion gymnasts:
1988 Olympic gold medalist Valeri Liukin and 1987 World Champion in rhythmic gymnastics,
Anna Kotchneva.
The family moved to the United States when Liukin was two and a half years old, after the breakup of the Soviet Union,
and settled first in New Orleans before moving to Texas. In 1994, Valeri Liukin teamed with another former Soviet champion
athlete, Evgeny Marchenko, to open the World Olympic Gymnastics Academy (WOGA) in Plano.
Liukin began gymnastics at the age of 3 because she was "always hanging around in the gym" with her parents, who could
not afford a babysitter to look after her while they were working as coaches. Liukin's parents initially did not aspire for
their daughter to become a gymnast, knowing the pressure of high-level competition firsthand, but relented when they noticed
her aptitude for the sport.
Liukin competed in her first National Championships as a junior in 2002, at the age of 12-1/2. While her WOGA teammates
Carly Patterson and Hollie Vise finished
first and second, Liukin suffered a fall on the uneven bars, which rendered her unable to finish the routine. She continued
through the rest of the competition, and despite the incomplete bars set, finished 15th, which landed her one of the final
spots on the U.S. National Team. She was chosen to compete with the U.S. team at the 2002 Junior Pan American Championships,
where she contributed to the team gold medal and placed second on the uneven bars, balance beam and all-around.
By 2003, Liukin was one of the strongest junior gymnasts in the United States. She won the junior division of the U.S.
National Championships, as well as gold medals on three of the four events: uneven bars, balance beam and floor exercise.
She repeated these accomplishments in 2004. Liukin was a member of the gold-medal winning U.S. team at the 2003 Pam Am Games;
she took second place in the all-around behind fellow American Chellsie Memmel.
She also won the all-around in the junior division of the 2004 Pacific Alliance Championships.
Born in 1989, Liukin was one year too young to compete as a senior in 2004, and thus was not eligible for a place on the
U.S. team for the 2004 Olympics in Athens. Marta Károlyi, U.S. National Team Coordinator, has said that if Liukin
had been eligible, she would have been named to the Olympic team.
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September 2, 2007 | Stuttgart, Germany
Anastasia Liukin of USA performs on balance beam during team qualifications in women's artistic gymnastics at 2007 World Championships.
Photograph copyright © Tom Theobald. |
In 2005, Liukin won her first senior National Championships and, once again, earned gold medals on the bars and beam.
At the 2005 World Championships in Melbourne, she was ranked first in the all-around after the preliminary competition.
In the all-around final she tied with Chellsie Memmel, but a scoring system that
truncated the individual apparatus scores (as opposed to using the full scores or rounding up) artificially lowered
Liukin's total score. Memmel's final score was 37.824; Liukin's was 37.823; the competition was the closest in gymnastics
history, excluding the tie at the 1985 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, where USSR gymnasts
Elena Shushunova and Oksana Omelianchik
tied for the gold. Liukin rallied in event finals to win the gold on the uneven bars and balance beam, ahead of Memmel;
and the silver on the floor exercise behind teammate Alicia Sacramone.
In March of 2006, Liukin placed first in the all-around at the American Cup. At the 2006 Pacific Alliance Championships,
Liukin tied with teammate and frequent competitive rival Chellsie Memmel for first
in the all-around, won the uneven bars title and a silver medal on beam, and contributed to the U.S. team's gold medal performance.
She competed at the 2006 U.S. Classic as the defending all-around champion, but falls on the uneven bars and floor resulted
in a fourth-place finish. However, she scored extremely well on the balance beam, and was the only competitor in the meet,
junior or senior, to earn a score over 16.00 on this event.
In late August, at the 2006 U.S. National Championships, Liukin successfully defended her all-around, beam and bars titles,
becoming a two-time senior National Champion. She was named to the U.S. team for the 2006 World Gymnastics Championships in
Aarhus, Denmark, and was expected by many to be a strong contender for the all-around title. However, due to an ankle injury
sustained in training before the competition began, she was only able to compete on one event, the uneven bars, at Worlds.
In spite of her injury, in the qualification round, Liukin's bars set earned a 16.2, the highest score of any competitor
on any apparatus in the meet. Her bars routine in team finals scored a 15.7 and helped the U.S. team win the silver medal.
Liukin also qualified for the event finals on bars, where she took a small step on her dismount and finished with a 16.05,
earning a silver medal behind Britain's Beth Tweddle.
Liukin's ankle injury required surgery, and the recovery period kept her out of both national and international competition
for much of the year. In July 2007, although she was still recovering from her injury, she returned to competition as a member
of the American team for the Pan Am Games in Rio de Janeiro. She competed only on bars and beam, contributing to the team's
gold medal finish and winning individual silver medals on both events.
Despite limited training time on floor and vault in the summer of 2007, Liukin opted to compete all-around at the 2007
U.S. National Championships. She posted the highest scores of the entire meet on bars and beam on the second day of competition,
winning the senior bars title for the third year in a row and placing second on beam. However, she also suffered several
falls and errors on floor and vault, and finished in third place overall, over five points behind
Shawn Johnson, the all-around gold medalist.
Following Nationals, Liukin was named to the American team for the World Championships in Stuttgart, Germany, competing
all-around in the team qualifying round and in on bars and beam in the finals. Liukin's score for her bars routine in team
finals was a 16.375, the highest score of the day and, in the end, the entire World Championships. However, at the end of
her beam routine, her foot slipped while she was setting up her dismount, prompting her to change her usual skill, a two
and a half twisting salto, to a simple back tuck. While she lost credit for her dismount, she also avoided a deduction for
a fall, and earned a 15.175. The team recovered from this and other mistakes to finish first overall with 184.400, nearly
a point ahead of the silver medal Chinese.
Liukin's struggles with the balance beam continued in the all-around final, where she fell from the apparatus during
her flight series. In spite of a 16.100 on bars, the highest score of the day from any competitor on any event, she finished
the competition in fifth place. In the event finals, however, Liukin rallied and regained her World Champion title on the
balance beam with a score of 16.025. She also earned a silver on the uneven bars, scoring a 16.300 after taking a step on
her dismount.
Outside of competitive gymnastics, Liukin has made several appearances in film and television, most notably a commercial
for Adidas with Nadia Comaneci, which ran during the 2004 Olympics, and a cameo
in the April 2006 Disney film Stick It. She has
expressed a desire to become an actor in the future.
Liukin has several corporate sponsorships, including Visa, AT&T, GK Elite Sportswear, Longines and Adidas, and has served
as a Longines Sports Ambassador of Elegance since 2006. She also has her own line of gymnastics equipment, which includes
mats and balance beams in her signature pink, produced by AAI.
Liukin is fluent in both English and Russian. She graduated from high school in the spring of 2007, and was accepted to
Southern Methodist University.
For more information, visit her
profile page on the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique website.
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