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ROZALIA GALIYEVA
Rozaliya Ilfovna Galiyeva or Roza Galieva (born April 28, 1977 in Olmaliq, Uzbek SSR)
is a Russian gymnast who competed in the 1992 Summer Olympics and 1996 Summer Olympics.
Galiyeva was born on April 26, 1977 in Olmaliq, Uzbekistan. She began competing internationally for the USSR in 1991, sharing
in the team gold medal at the 1991 World Championships in Indianapolis. A solid gymnast but never a star, Galiyeva was a strong support
to the Soviet team.
Galiyeva competed with the Unified Team at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. She exceeded expectations in the preliminary competition,
finishing 8th and qualifying for the individual all-around final behind teammates
Svetlana Boguinskaya and Tatiana Lysenko.
However, before the all-around, coach Alexander Alexandrov pulled Galiyeva from the competition, citing a knee injury. Her replacement
was teammate Tatiana Gutsu. Although Gutsu had fallen from the balance beam in the team finals,
she was the reigning European all-around champion and a Worlds medalist on vault and bars. It was later revealed that Galiyeva's
injury was nonexistent, and that the substitution was made because Gutsu was considered to have better medal-winning potential.
Indeed, Gutsu emerged from the Olympic all-around as the gold medalist. While Gutsu split her prize money with Galiyeva, Galiyeva
always remained angry about this turn of events.
After the 1992 Olympics, Galiyeva continued competing for Uzbekistan. An ethnic Russian whose family had been exiled by Stalin,
she successfully applied for Russian citizenship in 1995 and began competing for the Russian team. Her first major meet for Russia
was the European Championships in 1996 where she won gold on balance beam, beating such renowned gymnasts as Gina Gogean and former
teammate Svetlana Boguinskaya, who was now competing for Belarus.
As the only returning Olympian, Galiyeva was named team captain of the Russian squad at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.
However, these Olympics would also prove to be less than positive for her. The Russian squad was bitterly disappointed in the team
finals, where they finished second to the U.S. after leading for the first half of the competition. Galiyeva, along with other gymnasts such as
Lavinia Milosovici and Svetlana Khorkina, were severely
distracted by the rowdy crowd. In the team finals Galiyeva found herself in the unenviable position of competing just after
Kerri Strug vaulted; the crowd watched her with more attention than they had her teammates but really,
the spotlight was very firmly elsewhere. The situation was repeated in the all-around finals, when Galiyeva performed on floor while
Shannon Miller was on beam and could not hear her music over the crowd noise. Individually,
she finished in the top 10 in the All-Around competition, fulfilling her goal to compete, but again she was disappointed. A beam medal
was a possibility; Roza's team optionals and all-around beam scores would have been enough to tie her for first and second respectively.
But she fell in the finals and finished in seventh place.
After Atlanta, Galiyeva participated in exhibition tours and competitions in the United States. Her last major competition was the
World University Games in 1997. After retiring, she performed in an ice skating show, Moscow Circus on Ice, and judged gymnastics
competitions in Russia. She is now married and, with husband Mischa, has one son, Nikita, and one daughter, Tatyana.
For more information, visit her
profile page on the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique website.
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