Maria Yuryevna Polyakova (; born 8 May 1997) is a Russian diver. She is a

European Games The European Games is a continental multi-sport event in the Olympic tradition contested by athletes from countries served by national Olympic committees within the European Olympic Committees (EOC), the regional association for such committ ...

and European champion. Polyakova also competed in

NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates College athletics in the United States, student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, and Simon Fraser University, 1 in Canada. ...

diving for the

UCLA Bruins The UCLA Bruins are the athletic teams that represent the University of California, Los Angeles. The Bruin men's and women's teams participate in NCAA Division I as part of the Big Ten Conference and the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF ...

, becoming UCLA’s first national champion in women’s diving, and graduating as the university’s record holder in both the 1 and 3 metres. She was named

Pac-12 The Pac-12 Conference is a collegiate athletic conference in the Western United States. It participates at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I level for all sports, and its football teams compete in the Football Bowl ...

Diver of the Year in 2017 and 2019. Polyakova has qualified for the

2020 Summer Olympics The officially the and officially branded as were an international multi-sport event that was held from 23 July to 8 August 2021 in Tokyo, Japan, with some of the preliminary sporting events beginning on 21 July 2021. Tokyo ...

Personal life

Maria was born on 8 May 1997. She was a student-athlete majoring in

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school the ...

, and graduated in 2019.

References

Russian female divers 1997 births Living people Place of birth missing (living people) Divers at the 2015 European Games European Games medalists in diving European Games gold medalists for Russia European Games silver medalists for Russia Summer World University Games medalists in diving FISU World University Games bronze medalists for Russia Divers at the 2020 Summer Olympics Olympic divers for Russia European Aquatics Championships medalists in diving 21st-century Russian sportswomen ] {{Russia-acrobatics-diving-bio-stub