Nastia Liukin is a short name for the famous Russian gymnast who is now retired as we speak. Her wonderful performances on the 2008 Olympic championship made her one of the best gymnasts in the world and she won so many medals that she could not personally cound them all.
She was a member of the U.S. senior team back when she was actually doing gymnastics, and she is very good at balance beam.
On the Olympic Games, she won a gold medal, three silver ones and a bronze one. On World Championships, she won four gold medals, five silver ones and later in Pan American Games she won three gold medals, 3 silver and two bronze ones. In Pacific Rim championships, she got a wonderful number of 6 gold medals, 2 silver ones.
Early years
She was born on October 30th in 1989 and her full name is much more complicated to remember than her short one that she put for the simplicity of Olympic games. Her full name is actually Anastasia Valeryevna Liukin, but many of her friends and family call her Nastia, so she continued to call out on this name.
She was born in Moscow in Russia and she is an only child of a famous pair of gymnasts: Valeri Liukin and Anna Kotchneva. This is a recipe to success, obviously, since her father won the Summer Olmypics of 1988 and he rmother was a champion in 1987. Her parents moved to the United States of America when Nastia was almost three and they decided to stay in New Orleans.
Her father had been good friends with a man called Yevgeny Marchenko and they opened up an Academy for gymnasts in Tecas.
Nastia speaks both English and Russian. She went to Spring Creek Academy and wanted to get a business major, however in 2008 she had to go prepare for the Olympic Games and had to pause.
Career development
Her career actually started at 3 years old because her parents had been bringing her to the gym with them for a long time. She used to look at them working very hard and during this time, the couple had no money to pay for a babysitter so she was with them everywhere.
Her parents didn’t want her to become a gymnast at first because they both knew what kind of huge pressure is put on people during training and the contests themselves. However, Nastia showed immense interest for gymnastics and her parents weren’t strong enough to make her quuit it.
Her father was her trainer and she started out as a junior in 2002 when she was almost 13. She, however, fell and she could not continue her routine. It didn’t matter much because she was noticed by scouts anyway and made it to the U.S. National Team.
By 2013, she had already gotten much training and she was one of the best junior gymnasts. She was on the U.S. National Championships and she started to get medals.
Sadly, she was ten months too young to get into 2004 Olympics team so she worked very hard for her next olympics that she was very excited to do.
In 2005, she got into senior championships and she finished seconds in the Wolrd Championship in Melbourne. She was soon so good that she won various medals at Pacific Alliance Championships.
She had a very good streak of winning medals until 2007 when she had ankle surgery and the recovery lasted a long time. She was afraid that she wasn’t going to make it to the next Olympics and this was very sad for her, but she did her best to stay fir.
Her next competition was in Stuttgart and she sadly slipped in the competition so she hurt het foor and wasn’t able to make it.
In 2008, she was performing both at the U.S. National Championship and at the 2008 Olympics. It was both very important to her and she won various medals on both. She wore her sign colour, pink, and was noticed by many important people.
In 2009, she made an appearance on CoverGirl Classic and she came second, and in 2012 she wanted to go to the Olympic trials. She made it, but she fell off bars in the trials and it was the moment she decided that it was time for her to say goodybe to her gymnastics career.
She is very well known for great flexibility, but she is weak on vault. Besides her great skills and everything she had done great in career, many believe she didn’t go to her full potential.
Personal life
She has an official blog and she also uses Twitter to communicate with her fans a lot.
There was a rumor by People Magazine that she dated Evan Lysacek in2010. He is a figure skater. However, he said that they were just very close friends.
She went back to college in 2013 and she decided to get two majors: sports management and psychology. She did finish both of them in 2016.
In 2015 she got engaged to her boyfriend called Mastt Lombardi, he used to be a hockey player so they met because of their interests in sport. On Instagram, she let people know that they couple was now engaged which was pretty big for her.
In 2017, the whole Larry Nassar scandal occurred. Larry was a physician and a doctor for various USA competers in the field of gymnastics and he was accused to be a child molester, later proved that he really was one. It was very shocking to Liukin and she claimed that, thankfully, her working with Larry was only professional.
Nastia is now pretty popular on Instagram where she has got a bit less than a million followers. She posts pictures of herself, her trips, her fiance and her business called Grander. It is a global community for the next generation of female athletes and it is very important to Nastia.
Quick summary
Full name: Anastasia Valeryevna Liukin
Date of birth: October 30th in 1989
Birthplace: Moscor, Russia, Soviet Union
Age: 29
Profession: gymnast
Height: 160 cm
Weight: 50 kg
Net Worth: $2 million
