Larisa Latina

Larisa Semyonovna Latynina (Ukrainian: Лариса Семенівна Латиніна, Russian: Лари́са Семёновна Латы́нина, born in Kherson, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union, on December 27, 1934) is the most decorated woman and gymnast in history and the Olympic Games with eighteen medals in artistic gymnastics.

Career in gymnastics

Latynina during the jump award ceremony at the 1964 Olympic Games.

In 1956, at the age of 21, Latynina made her debut at the Melbourne Olympic Games. In the all-around event, she faced stiff competition to win gold. She placed first on the vault, second on the uneven bars and floor exercise, and fourth on the balance beam. She also led the Soviet Union to victory in the team event.[1]

After a very successful World Championship in 1958 (winning five of the six titles despite competing while four months pregnant and medaling in all events]], Latynina was the favorite for the Summer Olympics in 1960 in Rome. In the all-around event, he led the Soviet Union to the top four places, thus also securing victory in the team competition by a margin of nine points. Latynina defended her floor title, taking silver medals in the balance beam and uneven bars events, and bronze in the vault competition.

Latynina became world champion in artistic gymnastics at the 1962 World Championships, beating Věra Čáslavská of Czechoslovakia. At the 1964 Summer Olympics, she still defending the world title, she was defeated by Čáslavská in the all-around competition. Latynina added two more gold medals to her tally, winning the team event and the floor event, both for the third time in a row. A silver medal and two bronzes in the other apparatus events brought her total Olympic medals to eighteen: nine gold, five silver and four bronze. She won a medal in every event she competed in, except the 1956 balance beam, in which she placed fourth.

Latynina's nine gold medals rank second on the list of multiple Olympic gold medalists. She is the only woman to have won the most Olympic medals (individually or as a team) from 1964 to 2012. She is the only woman to have won nine gold medals. She is also the only female athlete to ever hold the record for the most Olympic gold medals. Furthermore, within the sport of gymnastics, she is the only woman to have won a medal in the all-around in more than two Olympics, the only woman to have won an individual event (floor exercise) in more than two Olympics, and a one of only three women to have won all the individual events at the World Championships or at the Olympic Games. She is the only gymnast to have won the team gold medal twice, the gold medal in the all-around and the gold medal in the final of an event at the same Olympics, in 1956 and four years later, in 1960. As of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, she and Věra Čáslavská are the only gymnasts to have won the individual all-around gold medal at consecutive Olympic Games.

Achievements

Specifically, she won nine gold, five silver and four bronze medals and until the 2012 London Olympics, she was the greatest Olympic medalist in history, when she was surpassed in this edition by the American swimmer Michael Phelps in total medals and tied at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games with the 14 medals obtained individually by the same athlete. Latýnina participated in the Olympic Games in Melbourne 1956, Rome 1960 and Tokyo 1964. She retired at the World Championships in Dortmund in 1966, at the age of 31.

Family

She is the daughter of Pelageya Anisimovna Barabamyuk (1902-1975) and Semyon Andreevich Diriy (1906-1943), who died in the Battle of Stalingrad. Latynina was married three times, her last and current husband is Yuri Izrailovich Feldman (born 1938), a member of the Russian Academy of Electrotechnical Sciences and a former competitive cyclist. Her daughter from a previous marriage, Tatyana Ivanovna Latynina (born 1958), is a folk dancer. She was born just five months after her mother won a world eventing title, and seven months after her birth Latynina competed at the national championships. Latynina kept her pregnancy a secret, even from her trainer. She also had a son.

Retreat

Latynina retired after the 1966 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships and became coach of the Soviet national gymnastics team, a position she held until 1977. Under her direction, the Soviet women's team won team gold in the 1968, 1972 and 1976 Olympic Games.