, nickname= , country= , formercountry= Russia , birth_date= , birth_place=

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

Russian SFSR The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Russian SFSR or RSFSR ( rus, Российская Советская Федеративная Социалистическая Республика, Rossíyskaya Sovétskaya Federatívnaya Soci ...

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

, hometown=Russia , death_date= , death_place= , height=155 cm (5'1") , discipline=

Artistic gymnastics Artistic gymnastics is a discipline of gymnastics in which athletes perform short routines on different apparatuses. The sport is governed by the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG), which designs the Code of Points and regulates ...

, level=Senior Elite Gymnast , natlteam= 1978–86 (

URS Urs (from ''‘Urs'') or ''Urus'' (literal meaning wedding), is the death anniversary of a Sufi saint, usually held at the saint's dargah (shrine or tomb). In most Sufi orders such as Naqshbandiyyah, Suhrawardiyya, Chishtiyya, Qadiriyya, etc. ...

) , club= , gym= , collegeteam= , headcoach= , assistcoach= , formercoach= , music= , eponymousskills=

Yurchenko Yurchenko is a Ukrainian patronymic surname that comes from the name Yuriy. It may refer to: * David Yurchenko (born 1986), Russian-Armenian footballer * Denys Yurchenko (born 1978), Ukrainian pole vaulter * Ihor Yurchenko Ihor Mykolayovych Yurc ...

, Yurchenko loop , retired= , show-medals = yes , medaltemplates= Natalia Vladimirovna Yurchenko (russian: Наталья Владимировна Юрченко) (born 26 January 1965) is a retired

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

artistic gymnast Artistic gymnastics is a discipline of gymnastics in which athletes perform short routines on different apparatuses. The sport is governed by the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG), which designs the Code of Points and regulates ...

, who won the women's all-around gold medal at the

1983 World Championships The 1st 1983 World Championships in Athletics were run under the auspices of the International Association of Athletics Federations and were held at the Olympic Stadium in Helsinki, Finland between 7 and 14 August 1983. Summary The overall me ...

. Renowned for her innovative and daring gymnastics, she is best known as the originator of the Yurchenko vault family, 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

. In 1999, she immigrated to the United States. She lives in Chicago with her husband,

Igor Sklyarov Igor Yevgenyevich Sklyarov (russian: Игорь Евгеньевич Скляров; born 31 August 1966) is a former Russian footballer. Background Igor grew up in Russia, playing football his whole life, and eventually got the chance to play ...

Career

Yurchenko was coached by

Vladislav Rastorotsky Vladislav Stepanovich Rastorotsky (russian: Владислав Степанович Растороцкий; 14 June 1933 – 2 July 2017) was a Russian (and former Soviet) artistic gymnastics coach, ''Honoured Trainer of the USSR'', who trained in ...

at the Dinamo sports society in

Rostov on Don Rostov-on-Don ( rus, Ростов-на-Дону, r=Rostov-na-Donu, p=rɐˈstof nə dɐˈnu) 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 ...

. 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. 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 A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase ''universitas magistrorum et scholarium'', which ro ...

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 Friendship Games, or Friendship-84 (russian: Дружба-84, ''Druzhba-84''), was an international multi-sport event held between 2 July and 16 September 1984 in the Soviet Union and eight other socialist states which boycotted the 1984 ...

Olomouc Olomouc (, , ; german: Olmütz; pl, Ołomuniec ; la, Olomucium or ''Iuliomontium'') is a city in the Czech Republic. It has about 99,000 inhabitants, and its larger urban zone has a population of about 384,000 inhabitants (2019). Located on th ...

, Yurchenko returned from injury, battled with

Olga Mostepanova Olga Vasilyevna Mostepanova (russian: Ольга Васильевна Мостепанова, born 3 January 1970) is a retired former Soviet gymnast. She won three gold medals at the World Championships. Personal life Mostepanova's birth year ...

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 Vault may refer to: * Jumping, the act of propelling oneself upwards Architecture * Vault (architecture), an arched form above an enclosed space * Bank vault, a reinforced room or compartment where valuables are stored * Burial vault (enclosure ...

and

balance beam The balance beam is a rectangular artistic gymnastics apparatus and an event performed using the apparatus. Both the apparatus and the event are sometimes simply referred to as "beam". The English abbreviation for the event in gymnastics scoring i ...

), 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

Fairfax, Virginia The City of Fairfax ( ), colloquially known as Fairfax City, Downtown Fairfax, Old Town Fairfax, Fairfax Courthouse, FFX, or simply Fairfax, is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. At the 2010 census the p ...

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, for almost nine years, at

Parkettes National Gymnastics Training Center Parkettes National Gymnastics Training Center, or Parkettes for short, is a gymnastics club located in Allentown, Pennsylvania that had its beginnings in the early 1960s with a middle school gymnastics program in Allentown that gradually grew into ...

in Allentown, Pennsylvania and at the Lakeshore Academy of Artistic Gymnastics in Chicago Illinois. 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, symbolic of Japan and a good omen. T ...

Kobe Kobe ( , ; officially , ) is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture Japan. With a population around 1.5 million, Kobe is Japan's seventh-largest city and the third-largest port city after Tokyo and Yokohama. It is located in Kansai region, w ...