#natalia yurchenko

[warismenstrualenvy]

[freifraufischer]

Natalia Yurchenko (URS), VT, 1982 Moscow News

[cruyffista]

Natalia Yurchenko, November 1984 (x).

[lees-chaotic-brain]

5,15,23 (i picked at random lol)

hi bee!!! how are you doing? thanks for dropping by!!!

5. What was your favorite book as a child?

ooh boy you opened a can of worms with this one. i was a massive bookworm as a child, like i read multiple books in a day, so it's literally impossible for me to choose,but if i had to compile the top five books from when i was younger it would probably look something like this (order doesn't matter):

-Some Kind of Happiness by Claire Legrand. this book was what initially got me into writing, and i loved loved loved finley as a character because i identified with her so much

-Out of My Mind by Sharon M. Draper. this book is something that deeply impacted me. as ashamed as i am to admit it, there weren't any special education kids at my elementary school so i was kind of judgemental and snotty. this book literally rewired the way i looked at people with disabilities and helped me to grow so much as a person. to this day i still randomly think of melody, and remind myself to be a better person.

-Any and all Tamora Pierce books. These books introduced me to the idea of a badass fantasy female main character and i completely fell in love with the genre. I will always carry these books in my heart. they are my comfort books

-Wing of Fire series by Tui. T. Sutherland. i was obsessed, and still am obsessed, with dragons. i started reading this series when i was six, and when the 15 book series came to an end last year, i cried because i had literally spent the last eleven years of my life constantly waiting for the next book, then it was over. it felt like my childhood had ended

-Serafina and the Black Cloak series by Robert Beatty. this was literally my entire personality for three years. like i was a catamount for three halloween's in a row. i just loved the innocent romance, and how strong and fierce serafina was

15. Which element best represents you?

That's a really hard question to answer for me, but i think i would say wind maybe?? i'm very free-spirited and energetic, but i can also go from being completely calm and friendly to furious and raging to depressed and sad in a matter of minutes so...

23. Have you ever met someone famous?

So I've met Natalia Yurchenko and Chellsie Memmel, and they're famous gymnasts but other than that not really. I guess that the grandson of my grandma's best friend plays d1 college basketball, and his dad was a nfl player, but i've only met him once or twice

for this ask game!

[lobaznyuk]

Soviet gymnast Natalia Yurchenko performing her eponymous vault for the first time in Moscow, 1982. In this vault, she does a roundoff onto the springboard and a back handspring onto the horse– this entry is known as the Yurchenko. Here she finishes the vault with a back tuck with full turn, but Yurchenko debuted three different salto variations during this year, including the layout and the layout full. In 2021, Simone Biles became the first woman to perform the Yurchenko-entry vault with a salto in the piked position, with two full rotations.

[illyria-and-her-pet]

The move was the brainchild of her coach, Vladislav Rastorotsky.

“Our coach was such a great innovator,” Yurchenko says. “So, everybody tried to create something that they only can do.”

She and other women training alongside her at Rostov-on-Don got to work one day at the behest of Rastorotsky, who also coached greats like Ludmilla Tourischeva and Natalia Shaposhnikova.

“One time, he just came to the gym and said that we are going to do that vault,” Yurchenko said. “So, we stacked the mats, we thought it's kind of a crazy idea because it seems like it was pretty dangerous doing it on that horse. But OK, let's try it.”

Yurchenko quickly perfected the vault, first performing it six months later at the 1982 Moscow News, she says. She submitted the element to the International Gymnastics Federation later that year at the World Cup, which she won.

The element was controversial at first, Yurchenko explained. Another parallel to Biles’ daring innovations.

“There were a lot of debates to allow it or not to allow it,” Yurchenko recalls. “I performed it in America, and the American judges, some of them, were really against it because it seemed way too dangerous, because probably maybe I missed hands one time on the warmup or in training.”

But not everyone saw it that way, and the vault was allowed in competition.

“I think because a lot of progressive coaches who saw that vault, saw a lot of potential difficult vaults in future of vault, it probably influenced judges, the technical committee, and that's how it came to life,” she says.

A boycott of the 1984 Games in Los Angeles meant Yurchenko never got the chance to compete her element at the Olympics. By the time the 1988 Seoul Olympics came around, she had retired from the sport, but her vault had become the main entry used in women’s gymnastics.

Enter Biles, three decades and a complete redesign of the vault later. The vault table on which Biles performs her daring maneuvers isn’t the same vaulting horse Yurchenko first did the entry on.

Instead of a pommel horse-like piece of apparatus, the new vaulting table, introduced to international competition in 2001, resembles a tongue. It has increased surface area, perfect for the Yurchenko entry where a gymnast doesn’t see the vault before her hands touch it, and springs that help launch athletes into the air.

Yurchenko couldn’t foresee the revolutionised equipment nor Biles’ unmatched athleticism and flawless technique, but that doesn’t mean she and her coach didn’t dream of the possibilities.

Though she never competed the double flipping version Biles displayed at the recent U.S. Classic, Yurchenko says she tried them in training.

“We did try everything into the pits, not over the horse, but over the stacked mats, so we did double backs and double fulls, whatever you can pull in that time,” Yurchenko said. “Because in our gym, like I said, our coach was so innovative. We did a lot of difficult skills that we never competed because it was like ahead of time and not even in mind to develop them for competition.”

It was one of many elements she says she and her teammates worked in practice but never performed in competition. Others include a triple back on floor exercise and a double-twisting back flip balance beam mount.

“I really regret that we couldn't take a video of that time, but we were truly into working on very difficult stuff that when I tell people about, they don't really believe,” Yurchenko lamented about what surely would have been viral content in 2021. “But we have those girls who did that. They’re still alive and they know, they remember that time.”

Seeing Biles so perfectly utilise the entry she pioneered was a dream come true for the 1982 all-around, vault, and balance beam World Cup champion.

“It’s such a joy to see that something that you started doing, getting into such a progress and [allowing] other people to compete with more difficulties and raise the bar even higher and higher,” said Yurchenko. “I was dreaming about seeing it. It was kind of tears of joy because you create something and you wait for the future generation to use it... I don’t think it can be better. It was just so amazing. I was amazed that we have Simone Biles, who can raise us all to that kind of level.”

None of it would have been possible without either groundbreaking woman.

For Yurchenko, it was the culmination of her legacy in the sport and a dream she had as a child to leave something for future generations.

“When it happens that my vault became the future for generation and generation and generation, I looked back and said, ‘how did this happen?’” said Yurchenko. “As I’m becoming older, it feels even more great. When you’re young, you don’t appreciate it… but now when you’re becoming older, you kind of value [it more] and try to analyze, how did this happen?”

To her, it feels like destiny.

“I needed to meet the right people, right coaches, right group of girls who were working with me and who were able to do the same things I was doing,” Yurchenko continued. “Without that, it wouldn’t happen. It kind of happened by surprise, but also it’s meant to happen.”

[traceeverystars]

A collection of manual collages dedicated to the legendary Natalia Yurchenko, June 2020

[I’m going through all the edits I’ve done this year, and while a lot were posted on my Twitter (reinakatis), there’s some that deserve to be posted here. This collage set is one of them]

[gymfanconfessions]

“Josef Stalder, Aleksander Tkatchev, Bernd Jaeger, Natalia Yurchenko, Mitsuo Tsukahara, Haruhiro Yamashita... those who were so great that they got entire families of elements named after them.”

[just-gymnastics]

Happy birthday to Natalia Yurchenko!

Please join: www.facebook.com/groups/gymfans

[gym-gifs]

Natalia Yurchenko (1995 World Championships)

[warismenstrualenvy]

[freifraufischer]

So a Gymcastic rant:

Late last night I decided for some reason I'd watch the youtube version of their LA vs Olomouc episode from about a month ago.

It was late so I didn't check some of their takes until this morning but when I did check them how little work they went into actually figuring what was on the Olomouc video is pretty amazing. For context they know they don't have all the Olomouc routines to compare phase to phase against LA so they're doing a hand wavy "the general quality of the apparatus" discussion between the rival 1984 games. Which I want to be clear I'm actually fine with. But the problem is that their answers are basically vibes. I'm not even going to bring in the 1984 code. A lot of the statements they imply about potential corruption or bad scoring can be answered by ... actually looking at the scores.

Which for the record the entire Olomouc score matrix is on wikipedia.

So first of all some context... the Olomouc footage is a mess and it was pretty clearly put together by some Czechoslovakian media person who picked whatever routines appealed to them because it's a mix of routines from optionals/all around/event finals. And they didn't pick the best version of a routine that would be good for propaganda value.

For instance take Hana Říčná's bars. I'm going to talk a bit about the gymcastic take on Říčná but they really loved her bars. Which is fair, her bars are amazing. You can find them at 4.54 in the above video and it's absolutely a modern ahead of it's time bars routine that I have absolutely no problem saying would have been competitive for a bars medal in LA and should have been.

But it also highlights a weirdness about judging quality of routines at Olomouc based on this footage. Because that was not Říčná's highest scoring bars routine from that meet which you would think the Czechoslokian film producers would have picked for the star of their own team. Říčná did optionals bars 3 times here, team optionals, the all around, and event finals.

Team Optionals: 9.90 All Around: 10.00 Event Finals: 9.50

So this routine is obviously from her optionals and she fell in event finals (or had some other kind of disaster she came last in the bars EF). Why the film producers didn't put their home star's perfect bars 10 in this I have no idea.

But I want to point out something about the people they did show in this film on bars and where these routines come from in the competition cross referenced with their scores.

Olga Mostepanova (URS) - 9.75 - This means it's her team optionals routine because she got a 10 in the AA and didn't make the bars final.

Birgit Senff (GDR) - 9.80 - This is a puzzling choice. Seniff is a good bars worker because it's hard to be an East German gymnast and be a bad bars worker but she only did optionals bars once at Olomouc in in team optionals. She was tied for 3rd best bars worker on the East German team here. Why they put her routine in here instead of Gabriele Fähnrich who got a 9.90 optionals bars and a 10.00 in the event finals I don't know. Other than that Senff has a flashy round off over the low bar mount that would later be named after Martina Jentsch at 1987 worlds. But Senff didn't make the AA or EF. I get why they can't judge how Fähnrich would have done in LA because the Olomouc footage doesn't show her.... but it's worth pointing out that she would be the 1985 World Champion and got a bronze on bars at Olomouc so I am inclined to include her in what if scenarios about an non-boycotted LA.

Hana Říčná (TCH) - 9.90 - As discussed this comes from her Team Optionals

Natalia Yurchenko (URS) - 9.95 - Team Optionals (she got a 9.90 on bars in the AA and 9.975 in the bars final).

Alena Dřevjaná (TCH) - 9.95 - Could be any of her 3 optionals bars routines here as she got the same score in Team Optionals, the AA, and the bars EF.

Maxi Gnauck (GDR) - 10.00 - Could be either Team Optionals or the Event Final but not her AA (which I will discuss later).

Now seeing that list you might go "oh so the Olomouc footage is just the Team Optionals." But no, the routines from other apparatus in the film are from different phases. This is not a representative sample of the bars quality at this event ... which is fine because the fact that we have any footage of this event is a miracle. But the thing I want to demonstrate here is that unlike what gymcastic said... it's not the case that "we don't know what phase these routines are from". It's not that hard to figure out. It's weird because it was clearly put together by someone in a studio that didn't know what they were doing but what else is new in gymnastics coverage?

Anyway I want to go back to their judging of the AA because their conclusion was that who should have won the hypothetical non boycotted games would have been Mostepanova, then Retton (they had decided that Szabo's optionals bars makes the LA results clear which ... I actually have no opinion on because i've never seen all the compulsories). But they take issue with Hana Říčná's silver here and suggest it was a corrupt gift to the host country. Now I have... issues with implying/saying that about a competition with no new life where we have a little over 24 minutes of video. I do think it's also worth saying Říčná now lives in the states (and owns a gym) and her daughter is in NCAA right now on the Stanford team so it's not like she or her family wouldn't hear this speculation. Normally I don't know that that should come into a discussion like this but ... I kind of think it's a little irresponsible when they're this far out over their skis in speculation territory.

Gymcastic takes issue with Říčná's AA medal because of her vault and beam. The 10.00 on vault with obvious errors (2.18 in the above video) is a silly 10 no doubt. But... like... all 1983/84 scoring is a bit silly. Particularly vault. The vaulter right before Říčná in that section of the film (which is from the AA) is Shushunova who gets a 9.95 with a HUGE step. I'm fairly certain in the wacky world of early 1980s vault judging they would have considered those vaults appropriately ranked even if the 10 is not a 10. Which goes back to the attitude about imperfect 10s of the era. Look at the ranking in competition not just the single routine to pick deductions. Do I like that? No. But it was how it was seen at the time by many judges.

Now Říčná's AA beam (timestamp 10.16 in the above video) also has a major leg up wobble. It wouldn't have cost her gold (because you know... Mostepanova got a 40...) but it's undoubtedly a major mistake. But ... she did get deducted. She got a 9.85 for that beam. You can argue that she should have been deducted more maybe... but that was a fairly low score for a competitive AAer in the bizarro world of 1983/84.

But I do think it's possible to tease how why Říčná won silver here. Let's start with Gnauck who came in with the second place score from compulsories/optionals but she had some sort of major bars disaster (I'm assuming a fall) and that knocks her down. It was very much obviously a much greater error than a wobble in Říčná's beam. If she had done what she had done in every other bars routine at that meet she would have won silver free and clear. 1984 Shushunova is an excellent optionals gymnast so despite coming into the AA in 5th she is able to claw her way up because of Gnauck's poor bars and Yuchenko's ding on her floor.

So why didn't Shushunova get silver? After all she'd tie for the world championship the next year and win the 1988 AA. Well remember I described her as an excellent optionals gymnast. She got a 9.70 on compulsory beam and a 9.75 on compulsory floor which in a world of an 1984 AA was a hole she was lucky to dig herself out of for a bronze (I hope Elena sent flowers to Gnauck for her fall because otherwise she doesn't win a medal in this AA). Říčná had an advantage over her from compulsories.

Like most things in pre 1989 gymnastics... in an era with both compulsories and no new life if you think something looks like corruption maybe it's just that you can't get your brain around how the competition was actually structured. Even if you take issue with Říčná's vault and beam, why she wins silver does not require a conspiracy theory and as much as this was a silly exercise in the first place I do think Gymcastic (and Jessica's) "well everything was corrupt" statements about the 1980s gives many fans a false impression and diminishes the accomplishments of the gymnasts from the era.

Some more odds and ends from their take about this competition:

They were very taken with Irina Baraksanova. Which is understandable Baraksanova is a lovely gymnast to watch she's one of my favorites. But there was a certain amount of "she was robbed" in the way they talk about her in the episode. But you see... Baraksanova had terrible compulsories. Or at least terrible compulsories for a Soviet here. The lowest on the entire team and an even a 9.55 on compulsory floor which for a Soviet is actually pretty shocking. Something bad must have happened in that compulsory floor. On a team with Mostepanova, Shushunova, and Yuchenko she wasn't going into any finals and I think anyone at the time would have found it weird to suggest she was robbed of anything. She got a team gold medal and contributed ot that result and that was what she was there for.

But there is something telling about their brief talk about Baraksanova. Jessica pronounces her name a few ways (even jokes about turning it into a combination of Obama's name). It's a little weird because it's not that hard a Russian name to say... but also it's not that hard to know how to say it because she was a very active figure in 1985/86. She was one of the two gymnasts Galieva'd out of the 1985 AA so the commentators on that worlds mention her name a lot and she was THE antagonist figure in the 1986 American Cup where Kristie Phillips is depicted as a break out star and the next Mary Lou (remember Mary Lou was the Mary Lou of 1985 American Cup). That she doesn't know how to say her name (and she does say it right at least once) tells me that they didn't look at any other routines from these gymnasts than the 24ish minutes of Olomouc footage and the LA Olympics that they had previously watched for another episode.

But you know that's Jessica and her memory is spotty (she apparently is now saying Mike Jacki was in the bar in her very fanciful version of the Marsden 1987 cheating story ... which at least is not the version from the 1988 press accounts). But Spencer, Spencer is more responsible he would have done his research. Let me tell you why I don't think he bothered either. Besides the fact that neither of them mention Gabriele Fähnrich in their bars discussion he remarks how he didn't recognize Shushunova with a pony tale. Shushunova was a dominating figure the entire next quad. She has that pony tale through not only 1984 but 1985 and 1986 and she doesn't cut her hair short until AFTER 1987 Europeans. How much of Shushunova's career have you watched Spencer? Or have you just watched 1988 a lot?

I'm sorry that this is a rant but Hana Říčná is a gymnast a lot of fans only know for her eponymous bars skill and lazily implying she didn't deserve one of the major medals of her career angered me a lot.

[cruyffista]

does anyone else think that soviet gymnast natalia yurchenko kind of looks like the female paolo maldini or is it just me

[gym-montage-recs]

1986 USSR Display: Everytime We Touch by gymn4life

(Youtube version)

[viktoriakomova]

natalia yurchenko deserves to be a billionaire. the blueprint if there ever was one. where would these heaux be without her? yes precisely, nowhere.

[illyria-and-her-pet]

Gymnasts from the same era who don’t try to stop bills that protect gymnasts from sexual abuse and have medals from competitions that weren’t boycotted

Olga Mostepanova performing one of the best beam routines of all time at the 1984 Alternate Games where she became the only gymnast to ever have a perfect 40 all around competition. At the Alternate Games, she won team, all around, vault, beam, and floor gold. She would have made that other gymnast irrelevant if the boycott didn’t happen. She has 5 world medals (3 gold, 2 silver).

While most gym fans acknowledge that Mostepanova and the Soviets would have swept the floor with that other gymnast, Hana Ricna gets very little recognition. She came in 2nd to Mostepanova at the 1984 Alternate Games and was the first to do the stalder tkatchev on uneven bars, which is still a very popular skill today. She had one of the most difficult uneven bars sets at the time because she did 3 major releases: her eponymous skill, “the Ricna” (E), the Deltchev (D), and the Comaneci (E). She has 2 world medals (1 silver, 1 bronze).

Ma Yanhong’s 1984 uneven bars gold is the only title from 1984 that I‘m 100% sure would have still happened even if there was no boycott. My favorite routine from her is that one she did at 1981 Worlds. She did a jump full turn to the low bar mount, clear hip 1/1, hecht 1/2, and her famous F rated dismount. Sadly, she was robbed here and only given a 9.9, so she came in 2nd to Maxi Gnauck who was given a perfect 10 despite having a less difficult routine and a hop on the dismount. She has 3 world medals (1 gold, 2 silver).

Maxi Gnauck is known for her uneven bar work, but she was also a great all arounder and floor worker. In 1979 and 1980, she was able to do a tucked full in and triple twist on the floor with no springs. At the 1984 Alternate Games, she came third in the all around and won bars and floor. Springs were added to the floor by then and she did the best piked full in and triple twist in that era. She has 9 world medals (5 gold, 1 silver, 3 bronze). She also has 4 medals (1 gold, 1 silver, 2 bronze) from the 1980 Olympics, which were also boycotted, but the countries that boycotted wouldn’t have really made a difference in any of the results in that games except for maybe on uneven bars.

Natalia Yurchenko’s vault entry is probably the most innovative skill to ever happen in gymnastics. For decades now, almost every top gymnast has done a yurchenko style vault. She won the team and all around gold at the 1983 World Championships, but suffered an injury in vault finals that took her out of the rest of the championships. She came back from the injury to win the team and vault gold, as well as the uneven bars silver at the 1984 Alternate Games. She also made the 1985 Soviet team that won gold at Worlds. Other notable skills she did were her tkatchev + deltchev combination on uneven bars and loso mount and yurchenko loop on beam.

Tumblr only allows you to embed 5 videos, but special shout outs to baby Elena Shushunova who won the all around bronze at the 1984 Alternate Games and then went on to have one of the greatest careers ever in 1985-1988 and Julianne Mcnamara, the American gymnast that actually has a medal from a non boycotted competition with her 1981 uneven bars bronze.

And of course shout out to Ecaterina Szabo who won 4 gold medals and actually beat that other gymnast in the all around final in 1984. Sadly, there was no new life and she fell on uneven bars in the team optionals, so the score carried over and she lost by 0.05. She has 10 world medals (2 gold, 6 silver, 2 bronze).