Natalia Vladimirovna Yurchenko () (born 26 January 1965) is a retired

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

artistic gymnast Artistic gymnastics is a discipline of gymnastics in which athletes perform short routines on different types of apparatus. The sport is governed by the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG), which assigns the '' Code of Points'' used ...

, who won the women's all-around gold medal at the 1983 World Championships. Renowned for her innovative and daring gymnastics, she is best known as the originator of the

Yurchenko vault family Yurchenko vaults, also known as round-off entry vaults, are a family of Vault (gymnastics), vaults performed in artistic gymnastics in which the gymnast does a Roundoff, round-off onto the Springboard (gymnastics), springboard and a Handspring ( ...

, which is a round-off back handspring entry onto the vault, and then performing a series of twists and flips off.

Personal life

Yurchenko was born on 26 January 1965 in

Norilsk Norilsk ( rus, Нори́льск, p=nɐˈrʲilʲsk) is a closed city in Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, located south of the western Taymyr Peninsula, around 90 km east of the Yenisei, Yenisey River and 1,500 km north of Krasnoyarsk. Norilsk is 300 ...

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. In 1999, she immigrated to the United States. She is married to Igor Sklyarov.

Career

Yurchenko was coached by Vladislav Rastorotsky at the Dinamo sports society in

Rostov on Don Rostov-on-Don is a port city and the administrative centre of Rostov Oblast and the Southern Federal District of Russia. It lies in the southeastern part of the East European Plain on the Don River, from the Sea of Azov, directly north of th ...

. Her first international competition was the 1978 Junior Friendship Tournament, where she placed 5th all-around and won gold medals in the team competition and on bars. In the same year she debuted in the senior Riga International meet, earning the bronze on the

floor A floor is the bottom surface of a room or vehicle. Floors vary from wikt:hovel, simple dirt in a cave to many layered surfaces made with modern technology. Floors may be stone, wood, bamboo, metal or any other material that can support the ex ...

. Four years later, she won the all-around title at the USSR Championships, USSR Cup, at the prestigious ''

Moscow News ''The Moscow News'', which began publication in 1930, was Russia's oldest English-language newspaper. Many of its feature articles used to be translated from the Russian language ''Moskovskiye Novosti.'' History Soviet Union In 1930 ''The Mo ...

'' tournament and the World Cup. In 1983, she won almost all gold medals (except for the floor exercise) at the University Games and the USSR Championships. She also became the all-around World Champion, achieving two perfect 10s in the process. She qualified to all the event finals, but withdrew from the uneven bars, balance beam and floor exercise finals after an injury during the vault final, leaving with two world championship titles. At the

Friendship Games The 1984 Friendship Games, or Friendship-84 (, ''Druzhba-84''), was an international multi-sport event held between 2 July and 16 September 1984 in the Soviet Union and eight other Eastern Bloc states which boycotted the 1984 Summer Olympics in ...

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, Yurchenko returned from injury, battled with

Olga Mostepanova Olga Vasilyevna Mostepanova (; born 3 January 1969) is a retired former Soviet gymnast. She won three gold medals at the World Championships. Personal life Mostepanova's birth year has been variously reported as 1968 or 1969. She herself state ...

and managed to win the gold medal on vault and team competition. In 1985, she once again won almost all events at the University Games (except vault and

balance beam The balance beam is a rectangular artistic gymnastics apparatus and an event performed using the apparatus. The apparatus and the event are sometimes simply called "beam". The English abbreviation for the event in gymnastics scoring is BB. The bal ...

), and contributed to the team's gold medal at the World Championships. Yurchenko was awarded the title of Honoured Master of Sports of the USSR. She retired from gymnastics in 1986, but made an appearance at the 1991 World Professional Championships in

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Eponymous skills

The Yurchenko vault is named after her in the Code of Points. The Yurchenko family is now a group of vaults based on the entry she used in her original Yurchenko vault (a round-off onto the table, followed by a back tuck). The Yurchenko loop is another skill she originated, but it no longer appears in the Code of Points.

Post-competitive career

Yurchenko coached at LVSA, a gymnastics club in

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

, for almost nine years, at

Parkettes National Gymnastics Training Center Parkettes National Gymnastics Training Center, widely known as Parkettes, is a gymnastics club located in Allentown, Pennsylvania. It has produced several teams and individual gymnasts representing the United States, the Czech Republic, and Canada ...

Allentown, Pennsylvania Allentown (Pennsylvania Dutch language, Pennsylvania Dutch: ''Allenschteddel'', ''Allenschtadt'', or ''Ellsdaun'') is a city in eastern Pennsylvania, United States. The county seat of Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, Lehigh County, it is the List o ...

, and at the Lakeshore Academy of Artistic Gymnastics in

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

. In June 2015, she opened her own gymnastics academy, C.I.T.Y. Club Gymnastics Academy, in Chicago's South Loop.

Achievements

References

1985 Summer Universiade The 1985 Summer Universiade, also known as the XIII Summer Universiade, took place in Kobe, Japan. Mascot The mascot of the Kobe Universiade, "Unitan", designed by Osamu Tezuka, is a red-crested white Crane (bird), crane, symbolic of Japan and ...

Kobe Kobe ( ; , ), officially , is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. With a population of around 1.5 million, Kobe is Japan's List of Japanese cities by population, seventh-largest city and the third-largest port city after Port of Toky ...