Nastia Liukin
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Anastasia 'Nastia' Liukin (Liukina) (born October 30, 1989, Moscow, Russia) is an American gymnast. She is a four-time U.S. National Champion in artistic gymnastics.
Liukin trains at the World Olympic Gymnastics Academy (WOGA) in Plano, Texas and is coached by her father, former Soviet champion gymnast and 1988 Olympic gold medalist Valeri Liukin. Nastia's mother, Anna Kotchneva, was a 1987 World Champion in rhythmic gymnastics.
Nastia competed in her first national championships as a junior in 2002. While her WOGA teammates Carly Patterson and Hollie Vise finished first and second, Liukin suffered a fall on the uneven bars, finished 15th and barely eked onto the US National Team. However, in 2003 she became the Junior National Champion and won event final gold medals on the uneven bars, balance beam and floor exercise. She would repeat these accomplishments in 2004. Liukin was a member of the gold-medal winning US 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, Nastia was not age-eligible for the 2004 Olympics in Athens. Marta Karolyi, US National Team Coordinator, has said that if Nastia had been age-eligible, she would have been named to the Olympic team.
In 2005, Nastia won her first senior National Championships and, once again, earned gold medals on the bars and beam. At the 2005 World Championships in Melbourne, Nastia was ranked first in the all-around after the preliminary competition. However, in the finals she finished second to teammate Chellsie Memmel. 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 American Alicia Sacramone.
At the 2006 Pacific Alliance Championships, Liukin tied with Chellsie Memmel for first in the all-around, won the uneven bars title and a silver on beam, and contributed to the US team's gold medal performance. She competed at the 2006 US 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.
Liukin 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, she was only able to compete on the uneven bars at Worlds. In the team finals portion of the competition, Liukin earned the highest score of any competitor on any apparatus with a 16.2 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.
[edit] Other achievements
Outside of competitive gymnastics, Liukin has also 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.
