Nastia Liukin

Anastasia Valeryevna Nastia Liukin is a Russian American retired artistic gymnast. She is the 2008 Olympic individual allaround champion, the 2005 and 2007 world champion on the balance beam, and the 2005 world champion on the uneven bars. She is also a fourtime allaround U.S. national champion, winning twice as a junior and twice as a senior. With nine World Championships medals, seven of them individual, Liukin is tied with Shannon Miller for the thirdhighest tally of World Championship medals . Liukin also tied Millers record as the American gymnast having won the most medals in a single nonboycotted Olympic Games.

Liukin was born on October 30, 1989, in Moscow, Russia SFSR, Soviet Union. She is the only child of two former Soviet champion gymnasts 1988 Summer Olympics gold medalist Valeri Liukin and 1987 world clubs champion in rhythmic gymnastics Anna Kotchneva. Liukin and her family are members of the Russian Orthodox church. Her nickname Nastia is a Russian diminutive for Anastasia. The family immigrated to the United States when Nastia was two and a half years old, following the breakup of the Soviet Union, and settled first in New Orleans before moving to Texas. In 1994, Valeri Liukin teamed up with another former Soviet champion athlete, Evgeny Marchenko, to open the World Olympic Gymnastics Academy in Plano, Texas.

Source: Wikipedia