Svetlana Khorkina
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Svetlana Vasilievna Khorkina (Russian: Светлана Васильевна Хоркина, born January 19 1979 in Belgorod, Russia) is a popular Russian gymnast and seven-time Olympic medalist, who is now a deputy at the Russian State Duma. With an unprecedented nine gold, eight silver, and three bronze World Championships medals, she is one of the most successful female gymnasts of her era and has been cited as a fan favorite in various polls in gymnastics magazines.[1] Khorkina is also notable because she was able to continue competing and winning medals for more than a decade, participating in three Olympics and three changes to the Code of Points. She won her final World Championships all-around title at the age of 24 in 2003 which tied her with Vera Caslavska as the second oldest female World Champion, second to Larissa Latynina who won her second World All Around title in 1962 at the age of 27.
Khorkina is known for her expressive dance, extreme difficulty, and innovative routines.[2] She has also been heavily criticized for bad sportsmanship and is notorious for proclaiming herself the winner in events where she did not win.[3][4] Khorkina is renown for being a "diva," but has embraced such charges, stating "I don't mind. I wouldn't have been called a diva or a queen if I wasn't creative."[5]
At 1.65 m (5'5"), Khorkina was unusually tall for her sport. Known for her long, elegant lines, she was discouraged from gymnastics because of her height, but with the help of her lifelong coach Boris Pilkin, she created new moves to accommodate her height and exploit her strengths. She has an unprecedented 8 moves named after her in the Artistic Gymnastics Code of Points. Her most successful apparatus was the uneven bars, where she won a total of two Olympic and five World Championships titles between 1995 and 2001. She was also the first gymnast to win three all-around titles at the World Championships.[6]
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1994-1995
Khorkina won her first senior international medals at the 1994 World Championships in Brisbane: a silver medal on vault introducing a round-off ½-on, piked Cuervo off skill; and another silver on uneven bars (her routine included a Markelov release, to be named the 'Khorkina' for women's event).
She was even more successful at the European Championships later that year. Here, she tied for silver in the all-around with teammate Dina Kochetkova and won bars outright. Khorkina also competed at the Goodwill Games and Team World Championships that year. Her first All-Around win came at the 1995 European Cup, where she also won medals on vault, uneven bars and in the floor exercise. She was expected to be a top contender for All-Around gold at the World Championships later that year. She omitted a triple twist in her floor exercise instead pulling off only a double. This resulted in low scoring for the routine, but solid performances on beam and vault and a stellar showing on the bars helped her to clinch a silver medal behind Ukranian Lilia Podkopayeva. In the uneven bars final, Khorkina won the gold medal with an incredible 9.90, beating Mo Huilan of China into second place. This was the first of many world titles to come.
1996
Prior to the Olympics, Svetlana retained both her world and European titles on bars, and also helped the Russians to team silver at the European Championships in Birmingham, as well as taking bronze on vault. A fall from beam in the all-around, prevented her from medalling finishing 6th overall, not the first time this would happen to Svetlana.
Thanks to her recent successes, Khorkina was considered to be a top contender for the All-Around gold going into the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia, and the Russian team was looking stronger than it had since the break-up of the USSR. However, the competition proved to be a disappointment both for her and for the Russian team. Svetlana and the other more experienced members of the team, Rozalia Galiyeva and Dina Kotchetkova, performed strongly, but the younger athletes made several mistakes, seemingly overwhelmed by both the intense noise from the crowd and the strong performances from the US team. As the team trooped off, Svetlana was one of the only members not to be in tears. There was to be no consolation in the All-Around. Khorkina performed solidly on floor, beam and vault, but dropped out of contention for a medal when she fell from the uneven bars on a clear underswing half-turn transition from the low bar to high bar, a skill named after her; she finished in 15th place. However, she saved her Olympics by winning the gold on bars, much to her delight, and took the only gold for the Russian women's gymnastics team in Atlanta.
1997-2000
Khorkina became the one to watch, with long lean lines and top acrobatic and execution skills. Her physicial glamor of blonde hair and grey eyes competed with her emotional ambitions and intensely patriotic but forthright personality.
Like her compatriot Aleksei Nemov, Khorkina's performances over the next four years were uneven. Khorkina might perform solidly or accede to the pressure that felled many other gymnasts. Scoring was a hot topic. In the 1997 World Championships in Lausanne, changes in the Code of Points were expected to negatively affect Khorkina, but she clinched her first world all-around title after a stellar finish on the bars, earning her the highest score of the championship. She beat Olympic vault champion Simona Amanar into second place, a scenario that was also repeated in the 1998 European Championships.
In the two years after winning the world title, Khorkina tempered excellence with occasional inconsistency. Yet her skills were difficult and innovative in all events, especially on the uneven bars and balance beam. On the bars, she continued to dominate; she was soon nicknamed the "Queen of the Bars".
Khorkina won the European All-Around title in 1998, but faltered during the All-Around in the Goodwill Games. She entered the 1999 World Championships as a favorite, but finished well out of the medals after a disaster on beam. The Russian team as a whole couldn't stick a gold medal performance and to make things worse, the Russian team lost the gold medal when Khorkina stepped off the beam in the final performance of the last rotation. She continued her winning streak on bars, however, winning her 4th consecutive world title.
2000 Olympic Games
Khorkina entered the 2000 Sydney Olympics in Sydney, Australia as the favorite for the All-Around title. Despite her disappointment in Tianjin, she had retained her European all-around title and had beaten most of the gymnasts who could rival her for the all-around title. After preliminaries in the Olympics, she held a large lead on the pack. She unveiled a very difficult vault that had never been seen before - not even in practice. She stuck the vault - a Khorkina II - in the team competition. She also performed well in the floor exercise and uneven bars, qualifying to both event finals. Her score did allow her to qualify for the Balance Beam final, but was unable to compete in the final as she was the third highest Russian in qualifications behind Lobaznyuk and Produnova - only two gymnasts per country may compete in the event finals. The rest of her team were also successful in preliminaries, beating world champions Romania comfortably, and the stage seemed set for Russian glory.
However, they had a nightmare in the team finals. Khorkina fell from bars, Elena Produnova sat down her vault, and disastrously both Elena Zamolodchikova and Yekaterina Lobaznyuk fell from the beam. The first three errors were not entirely disastrous, as at that time the lowest score on every apparatus was dropped, so one fall alone did not ruin a team's chances. Still, the less renowned gymnasts on the team manged only solid scores, which was not enough. Despite a near perfect floor rotation to wind up the competition, the Russians finished two tenths behind Romania. Without the errors, they would have been comfortably ahead, which would have given Russia their first ever team title in women's gymnastics. Though it was the beam which really took Russia out of the running, had Khorkina hit bars and received the same score as she did in event finals, the Russians would have taken the title by a mere five thousands of a point. The initial errors hurt the Russian squad's chemistry and caused finger pointing on who would be to blame for losing the team title. This set Khorkina against the rest of her teammates, who spoke to and consoled each other but ignored Khorkina. Khorkina removed her silver medal as soon as she stepped down from the podium. For the second Olympics running, her team were bitterly disappointed with their silver.
Infamously, before the All-Around competition began, the vault was accidentally set 5cm (2 inches) too low -highly significant in a sport where the success of an element rests on spatial awareness and very small margins. A number of gymnasts made uncharacteristic errors, including Elise Ray and Annika Reeder, the latter who was too injured to continue. Khorkina complained about the vault to an Australian official after the warm-up but was ignored. It wasn't until Australian Allana Slater echoed Khorkina's sentiments in the next rotation that the error was corrected. Khorkina had been in the lead after the first rotation, but came to the mis-measured vault in the second and crashed on her first attempt. Psychologically devastated by this, she then fell in her signature routine, the uneven bars.[7] Shortly afterward, she was formally informed that the height of the vault had been corrected, and these who were affected were allowed to perform their vaults again, but their scores on the other apparatus would stand. As that would still leave her out of the running for a medal, let alone the All-Around title, Khorkina declined the opportunity and finished 10th, storming out of the area in tears. Her scores on bars and vault from the preliminaries, plus what she received on beam and floor in the all-around, would easily have won her the Olympic all-around title. In several interviews following the Olympics, Khorkina referred to the incident as a "black spot in my soul".[8]
That competition saw another great upset; Viktoria Karpenko entered the final rotation in the lead but a fall during the floor excercise dropped her to 12th. The Romanians initially swept the All-around podium, with Andreea Răducan, Simona Amânar, and Maria Olaru finishing in the top three. Răducan was stripped of her gold after a positive drug test, due to being administered a banned cold medicine, and Amânar was officially named the 2000 Olympic All-Around champion, though she herself has never accepted this and gave her gold medal to Raducan.[9]
After these crushing disappointments, both Khorkina and her Russian teammates bounced back in event finals. In a tense and emotionally charged competition, Svetlana narrowly retained her bars title. Once again she beat a Chinese athlete into second place, this time edging Ling Jie by a narrow margin.[10] She also won a silver on floor behind teammate Elena Zamolodchikova.
2001-2004
Khorkina stayed competitive as she aimed for a spot in a third Olympic Games. She appeared at the 2001 World Championships and won the All-Around title as well as the vault, and continued her winning streak on the uneven bars. With 5 consecutive World titles and 2 Olympic titles, Khorkina was now the most accomplished gymnast ever, male or female, on a single apparatus. From 1995 to 2001, she had won every World and Olympic title on the bars.
Khorkina won the European All-Around title in 2002. She beat Verona van de Leur of the Netherlands despite crashing her vault. Many including commentator and former USA Olympic gymnast Bart Connor felt that Van De Leur should have won, and that Khorkina only won due to favouritism from judges.
In 2003, Khorkina admitted that gymnastics took its toll on her body, that she had begun to "feel her age", but vowed to return to the Olympics for a third time. At the 2003 World Championships in Anaheim, California she became World All-Around champion for a third time, a feat that had never been accomplished by any woman.
2004 Olympic Games
Khorkina went into the 2004 Athens Olympics as one of the favorites and her last Olympic games. Somewhat underpar in prelims, nonetheless she qualified to the all-around and bars finals. In the team competition, her solid performances helped Russia to a surprise bronze, and their delight at this result was in stark contrast to the reaction to the silver at the two previous Games (the 1996 and 2000 Russian teams were considered contenders for the gold, while the 2004 squad was not as strong).
In the all-around competition, she won silver behind the American Carly Patterson. She had been leading after two events, but wobbles on beam and an incomplete triple spin on floor, in addition to the fact that Patterson's floor exercise and beam routines had higher difficulty, allowed Patterson to move ahead and take the title. In a press conference after the medal ceremony Khorkina claimed that Patterson only won because she was American before stating that this was only a joke and that she, Khorkina, was still Olympic champion. It is unclear whether Khorkina meant that she was the rightful champion of the 2004 all-around, or was referring to the fact that she was the reigning bars champion after her victory in Sydney. However, in a later interview with a Russian newspaper, Izvestia, Khorkina claimed that Patterson's win was 'fixed' and that it had been decided in advance, citing the lengthy delay in posting her vault score whilst judges conferred.
Life Outside Gymnastics
Khorkina has enjoyed almost as much attention for her activities outside the gym. She posed nude for the Russian version of Playboy in November 1997. She has aspirations to become an actress, and has taken to the stage as Brenda Venus, Henry Miller's last love, in a Sergei Vinogradov production. She claimed that she did not have the patience to coach. She is currently focused on motherhood: she gave birth to her first child, a son named Svyatoslav, on July 21 2005 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, thus giving her child American citizenship. Since December 2004 she has been vice-president of the Russian artistic gymnastics federation. She has been a member of the political party of United Russia since 2003. On March 12, 2007 in her native city of Belgorod, the sport complex of the Belgorod State University is opened. The complex was named after Svetlana. At the front of the complex there is a statue of her as well. She was elected as a member of the United Russia party delegate to the Russian State Duma in 2007[4]. She is the vice-president of the committee of youth there.
Her autobiography was published on April 22, 2008. The title of the book is "Somersaults on High Heels".[5] The book is published by Olma-Press. It is unknown if the book will be published in English yet.
On the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games she was a commentator for the Artistic gymnastics competitions for the Russian TV station NTV+.
Competitive Highlights
| Major events | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Russian Championships | European Championships | World Championships | Olympic Games | ||||||||||||||||||||
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| Years | AA | UB | B | V | F | AA | UB | B | V | F | Team | AA | UB | B | V | F | Team | AA | UB | B | V | F | Team |
| 1993 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | - | - | - | |||||||||||||||
| 1994 | - | 2 | 1 | 5 | 5 | 8 | 2 | 9 | 2 | - | 2 | 8 | 3 | - | |||||||||
| 1995 | 1 | - | - | - | - | - | 2 | 1 | - | 5 | - | 4 | - | ||||||||||
| 1996 | - | 6 | 1 | - | 4 | - | 2 | - | 1 | - | - | - | - | 15 | 1 | - | - | - | 2 | ||||
| 1997 | - | - | 1 | 1 | 2 | 8 | 2 | 2 | - | ||||||||||||||
| 1998 | - | 1 | 1 | - | - | 1 | 2 | - | - | ||||||||||||||
| 1999 | - | - | 12 | 1 | - | - | 3 | 2 | - | ||||||||||||||
| 2000 | - | 1 | 1 | 1 | - | - | 1 | - | 10 | 1 | - | - | 2 | 2 | |||||||||
| 2001 | - | - | 1 | 1 | - | 1 | 3 | 2 | - | ||||||||||||||
| 2002 | - | 1 | 1 | 2 | - | 5 | 1 | - | 7 | 4 | - | - | - | - | |||||||||
| 2003 | - | - | 1 | - | - | - | - | 6 | - | ||||||||||||||
| 2004 | - | 4 | 1 | 3 | - | 7 | 3 | - | 2 | 8 | - | - | - | 3 | |||||||||
Major achievements
- Gold medal, uneven bars, 1996 Summer Olympics, Atlanta
- Gold medal, uneven bars, 2000 Summer Olympics, Sydney
- Silver medal, team competition, 1996 Summer Olympics, Atlanta
- Silver medal, team competition, 2000 Summer Olympics, Sydney
- Silver medal, floor, 2000 Summer Olympics, Sydney
- Silver medal, all-around, 2004 Summer Olympics, Athens
- Bronze medal, team competition, 2004 Summer Olympics, Athens
- At the European Championships, she won uneven bars six times (1994, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004 -- record) and the all-around three times (1998, 2000, 2002 -- a record tie with Nadia Comaneci). From 1994 to 2004, she collected 20 medals: 13 gold, 5 silver, and 2 bronze. Both wins and medals are all time records.
- Svetlana is nine time World Champion: five uneven bars (1995, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2001), three all-around (1997, 2001, 2003 -- a record for a male or female gymnast), and one vault (2001).
Original Skills
Khorkina has an unprecedented 8 skills in the Code of Points, including at least one on each apparatus, and more than any other gymnast, male or female.
Skills named after Svetlana Khorkina:
Vault:
- Khorkina I - Round-off ½ on piked Cuervo
- Khorkina II - Round-off ½ on tucked Rudi (this was a phenomenally difficult skill for her due to her height and as she got older she seldom practiced it because of the wear and tear on her body from falling on that skill. Nevertheless she managed to hit this skill in competition with some success, most notably at the 2003 World Championships and the 2004 Summer Olympics.)
Uneven Bars:
- Khorkina I - Front giant to hop release and regrasp the bars in the hect position. Also known as a Markelov in the men's code of points.
- Khorkina II - Shaposhnikova with a ½ twist (the only gymnast in the world to perform this skill)
- Khorkina/Chow - Stalder-Kim pirouette
Beam:
- Khorkina I - Gainer full twisting back flip
- Khorkina II - Gainer 2½ twist dismount
Floor Exercise:
- Khorkina- Jump 1½ turn in horizontal plan to land in prone
Citation
External links
- Svetlana Khorkina at Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique
- Svetlana Khorkina (portuguese)
- List of competitive results at Gymn Forum
- Sveta's Page the unofficial Svetlana Khorkina website
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