Elena Mukhina
Encyclopedia
Elena Vyacheslavovna Mukhina (June 1, 1960 – December 22, 2006), born in Moscow
, Russian SFSR, was a former Soviet gymnast
who won the All-Around title at the 1978 World Championships at Strasbourg, France. Her career was on the rise and she was widely touted as the next great gymnastics star until a 1979 broken leg left her out of several competitions, and the recovery from that injury combined with pressure to master a dangerous and difficult tumbling move caused her to break her neck just two weeks before the opening of the 1980 Summer Olympics
, leaving her permanently quadriplegic just one month past the age of 20.
. When an athletic scout visited her school, she eagerly volunteered to try out for gymnastics. She later joined the CSKA Moscow
("Central Red Army") sports club. In recognition of her accomplishments, Mukhina was inducted into the CSKA Hall of Fame.
was born in Romania"), and Mukhina's transition to working with men's coach Mihajl Klimenko, who transformed her into one of the most show-stopping gymnasts of her time. She burst onto the scene at the 1978 World Championships
in Strasbourg
, France
. In one of the most stunning all-around performances in history, she won the gold medal, beating out Olympic Champions Nadia Comăneci
and top-ranked Soviet gymnast Nellie Kim
, among others. She also tied for the gold medal in the floor exercise
event final, as well as winning the silver in balance beam
and uneven bars
. She made history in this competition by unveiling her signature moves: a full-twisting layout Korbut Flip
on bars; a tucked double back salto dismount on beam (a move that is still being used over three decades later); and a full-twisting double back somersault on floor (still an E-rated move in the Code of Points
) dubbed the "Muchina". Yet, in spite of these innovations, Mukhina maintained the classic Soviet style, inspired by ballet movements and expressive lines. She quickly established herself as an athlete to watch for at the 1980 Summer Olympics
in Moscow.
A documentary film of the Soviet national team (1978) features Mukhina talking with her coach, Mikhail Klimenko, and footage of her rigorous training regimen.
(a 1 and 3/4 flip with 1½ twists ending in a forward roll, perfected by American gymnast Kurt Thomas
). Even though she successfully won the All Around title and floor exercises at the 1978 world championship with daring bar routines, a revolutionary balance beam dismount, and a floor routine with its own signature move, she was pressured to add this element to her floor exercises by her own coach and other higher-ranking Soviet coaches. Mukhina soon realized the Thomas salto was extremely dangerous for a woman because it depended on being able to get enough height and speed to successfully make all the flips and mid-air twists and still land in-bounds with enough room to do the forward roll, and it took near-perfect timing to avoid either under-rotation (and landing on the chin) or over-rotation (and landing on the back of the head). In the 1991 documentary More than a Game, Mukhina spoke of trying to convince her coach that the Thomas salto was a dangerous element:
In 1979, while training for the 1979 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships
, Mukhina suffered a broken leg, which kept her out of the World Championships in Fort Worth, Texas
, a competition in which the Soviet team suffered its first defeat at the hands of their archrivals from Romania
, with only Nellie Kim
and Stella Zakharova
able to medal in apparatus and All Around disciplines. With less than a year until the 1980 Summer Olympics to be held in Moscow, the pressure was on the Soviet team coaches and doctors to get the previous All Around champion Mukhina back on her feet and ready for the games. In an interview with Ogonyok magazine, Mukhina blamed the doctors at TsITO (Central Institute of Traumatology and Orthopedics) who were serving the National Team for attempting to rush her back into training too soon, saying she begged them not to remove her cast and discharge her because "they're dragging me from home to workouts" and she knew she was not yet healed. When doctors removed her cast against her wishes and had her try walking on the leg, she said that she knew she was walking "crookedly" and that something was not right. The TsITO doctors X-rayed the leg and discovered that the fracture had not healed properly and would not be able to sustain the pounding of gymnastics in its present condition. Mukhina was rushed into surgery that afternoon, but the damage had already been done to her reputation; one of the National Team coaches, she said in the Ogonyok interview, showed up at her bed the day after surgery and outright stated that she "wasn't conscientious" and that she could still "train in a cast." Once more against her wishes, the doctors removed her cast prematurely, and Mukhina returned to training for the Olympics while beginning a strenuous workout program at CSKA Moscow
to lose the weight she had gained while laid up from surgery.
With lingering weakness in her leg and mounting exhaustion from the grueling weight loss workouts, Mukhina had great difficulty coming back up to speed on what was to be the new end element of one of her floor exercise tumbling passes, the Thomas salto, Despite Mukhina's warnings that the element was constantly causing minor injuries and was dangerous enough to potentially cause major injuries, she was pushed to keep the element in her floor routine, and she continued to practice it even knowing it was a dangerous element. On July 3, 1980, two weeks before the Moscow Olympics, Mukhina was practicing the pass containing the Thomas salto when she under-rotated the salto, crash-landed on her chin, and her spine snapped. She was instantly rendered a quadriplegic
. Mukhina was training at the Minsk
Palace of Sport when the injury occurred; her coach Klimenko was not present at the time of the accident. The Soviet Union
awarded her Order of Lenin
in response to her injury and in 1983, Juan Samaranch, the IOC President, awarded her the Silver Medal of the Olympic Order.
Following the injury, the Soviet Gymnastics Federation remained secretive about the events surrounding Mukhina's cataclysmic injury, with Soviet Team Coach Yuri Titov
as the point man discouraging reporters' questions by playing coy regarding Mukhina's condition and deflecting inquiries about whether she would be trying for a comeback in 1984, even blaming Mukhina's "injury" on attempting a skill that she "was not able to do but thought she needed to make the team[...]she suffered injury and missed her chance.[...]All the bad stories, they are not true. Meanwhile, as word spread among the Olympic community that Mukhina's injuries were far worse than the Soviet spokesmen were saying, coaches all over the world wondered not only what the specific injury was, but how the accident had happened. Initial rumors were that she had fallen on approach to the vault, then Soviet newspapers reported she'd fallen during her dismount from the balance beam and had a blackout but then got back up to finish her floor exercise without knowing how badly she'd been injured, then finally word emerged that she had fallen catastrophically during the floor exercise. Elena herself was reclusive following the incident, seldom publicly discussing the accident. In a rare interview with Ogonyok magazine, Elena spoke about the Soviet gymnastics program, criticizing it for deceiving the public about her injury, and for the system's insatiable desire for gold medals and championships:
"...for our country, athletic successes and victories have always meant somewhat more than even simply the prestige of the nation. They embodied (and embody) the correctness of the political path we have chosen, the advantages of the system, and they are becoming a symbol of superiority. Hence the demand for victory - at any price. As for risk, well... We've always placed a high value on risk, and a human life was worth little in comparison with the prestige of the nation; we've been taught to believe this since childhood.[...]There are such concepts as the honor of the club, the honor of the team, the honor of the national squad, the honor of the flag. They are words behind which the person isn't perceived. I'm not condemning anyone or blaming anyone for what happened to me. Not Klimenko or especially the national team coach at that time, Shaniyazov. I feel sorry for Klimenko - he's a victim of the system, a member of the clan of grownups who are 'doing their job.' Shaniyazov I simply don't respect. And the others? I was injured because everyone around me was observing neutrality and keeping silent. After all, they saw that I wasn't ready to perform that element. But they kept quiet. Nobody stopped a person who, forgetting everything, was tearing forward - go, go, go!"
Despite this, Mukhina took some of the responsibility for not saying no to protect herself from further harm, and noted that her first thought as she lay on the floor with her neck severely broken was, "Thank God, I won't be going to the Olympics."
, where he lived with his children until his death from cancer on November 14, 2007, his 65th birthday.
After Mukhina's paralysis and several other close calls with other Olympic-eligible female gymnasts, the Thomas salto
has been removed from the Code of Points as an allowed skill for women. It remains an allowed skill for men as of 2008. The current Code of Points for all forms of gymnastics can be found at FIG Code of Points downloads.
Her condition notwithstanding, Mukhina was a guest columnist for Moscow News
in the late 1980s. Her injury was a featured topic in an A&E
documentary More Than a Game; and her World Championship performance is captured in the ABC Sports video Gymnastic's Greatest Stars. Mukhina took a keen interest in children and young gymnasts both before and after her injury. She also expressed a deep religious faith, and was fond of horses and animated cartoons.
Elena Mukhina died of apparent complications from quadriplegia
on . As a memorial to one of the greatest Soviet-era gymnasts ever, the biggest sports newspaper in Russia, Sovietskij SPORT, dedicated the cover of their Christmas 2006 issue to her. A memorial service was held in her honor on December 27, and she was laid to rest at the Troekourov Cemetery in Moscow.
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, Russian SFSR, was a former Soviet gymnast
Gymnast
Gymnasts are people who participate in the sports of either artistic gymnastics, trampolining, or rhythmic gymnastics.See gymnasium for the origin of the word gymnast from gymnastikos.-Female artistic:Australia...
who won the All-Around title at the 1978 World Championships at Strasbourg, France. Her career was on the rise and she was widely touted as the next great gymnastics star until a 1979 broken leg left her out of several competitions, and the recovery from that injury combined with pressure to master a dangerous and difficult tumbling move caused her to break her neck just two weeks before the opening of the 1980 Summer Olympics
1980 Summer Olympics
The 1980 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXII Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event celebrated in Moscow in the Soviet Union. In addition, the yachting events were held in Tallinn, and some of the preliminary matches and the quarter-finals of the football tournament...
, leaving her permanently quadriplegic just one month past the age of 20.
Biography
Elena Mukhina lost both of her parents by the time she was five years old. She was raised by her grandmother, Anna Ivanova. As a youngster she took an interest in gymnastics and figure skatingFigure skating
Figure skating is an Olympic sport in which individuals, pairs, or groups perform spins, jumps, footwork and other intricate and challenging moves on ice skates. Figure skaters compete at various levels from beginner up to the Olympic level , and at local, national, and international competitions...
. When an athletic scout visited her school, she eagerly volunteered to try out for gymnastics. She later joined the CSKA Moscow
CSKA Moscow
CSKA Moscow is a major Russian sports club based in Moscow. It is popularly referred to in the West as "Red Army" or "the Red Army team" because during the Soviet era, it was a part of the Armed Forces sports society, which in turn was associated with the Soviet Army...
("Central Red Army") sports club. In recognition of her accomplishments, Mukhina was inducted into the CSKA Hall of Fame.
Career
Up until 1975, Elena Mukhina was an unremarkable gymnast. She was not a serious competitor and Soviet coaches largely ignored her. Then, two separate incidents brought her skills into the forefront for the Soviet Team: The Romanian dominance over the Soviet gymnastics machine at the 1976 Olympics (for which the director for Soviet Women's Gymnastics, Larisa Latynina, was blamed; Latynina's response was, "it's not my fault that Nadia ComăneciNadia Comaneci
Nadia Elena Comăneci is a Romanian gymnast, winner of three Olympic gold medals at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and the first female gymnast ever to be awarded a perfect score of 10 in an Olympic gymnastic event. She is also the winner of two gold medals at the 1980 Summer...
was born in Romania"), and Mukhina's transition to working with men's coach Mihajl Klimenko, who transformed her into one of the most show-stopping gymnasts of her time. She burst onto the scene at the 1978 World Championships
1978 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships
The 19th Artistic Gymnastics World Championships were held in Strasbourg, France, in 1978 from October 23 to October 29.The new rule was introduced: eight gymnasts competed in each of the apparatus finals....
in Strasbourg
Strasbourg
Strasbourg is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in eastern France and is the official seat of the European Parliament. Located close to the border with Germany, it is the capital of the Bas-Rhin département. The city and the region of Alsace are historically German-speaking,...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. In one of the most stunning all-around performances in history, she won the gold medal, beating out Olympic Champions Nadia Comăneci
Nadia Comaneci
Nadia Elena Comăneci is a Romanian gymnast, winner of three Olympic gold medals at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and the first female gymnast ever to be awarded a perfect score of 10 in an Olympic gymnastic event. She is also the winner of two gold medals at the 1980 Summer...
and top-ranked Soviet gymnast Nellie Kim
Nellie Kim
Nellie Vladimirovna Kim is a retired Soviet gymnast who won three gold medals and a silver medal at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, and two gold medals at the 1980 Summer Olympics...
, among others. She also tied for the gold medal in the floor exercise
Floor (gymnastics)
In gymnastics, the floor refers to a specially prepared exercise surface, which is considered an apparatus. It is used by both male and female gymnasts. The event in gymnastics performed on floor is called floor exercise. The English abbreviation for the event in gymnastics scoring is FX.A spring...
event final, as well as winning the silver in balance beam
Balance beam (gymnastics)
The balance beam is an artistic gymnastics apparatus, as well as the event performed using the apparatus. Both the apparatus and the event are sometimes referred to as simply "beam". The English abbreviation for the event in gymnastics scoring is BB....
and uneven bars
Uneven bars (gymnastics)
The uneven bars or asymmetric bars is an artistic gymnastics apparatus. It is used only by female gymnasts. It is made of a steel frame. The bars are made of fiberglass with wood coating, or less commonly wood. The English abbreviation for the event in gymnastics scoring is UB or AB, and the...
. She made history in this competition by unveiling her signature moves: a full-twisting layout Korbut Flip
Korbut Flip
Two gymnastics skills are known by the name, Korbut Flip. They are the same skill performed on two separate apparatus. Both, extremely difficult, were first performed internationally by the Soviet gymnast Olga Korbut....
on bars; a tucked double back salto dismount on beam (a move that is still being used over three decades later); and a full-twisting double back somersault on floor (still an E-rated move in the Code of Points
Code of Points
Code of Points may refer to:* Code of Points *Common name for the ISU Judging System, scoring system currently used to judge the figure skating...
) dubbed the "Muchina". Yet, in spite of these innovations, Mukhina maintained the classic Soviet style, inspired by ballet movements and expressive lines. She quickly established herself as an athlete to watch for at the 1980 Summer Olympics
1980 Summer Olympics
The 1980 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXII Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event celebrated in Moscow in the Soviet Union. In addition, the yachting events were held in Tallinn, and some of the preliminary matches and the quarter-finals of the football tournament...
in Moscow.
A documentary film of the Soviet national team (1978) features Mukhina talking with her coach, Mikhail Klimenko, and footage of her rigorous training regimen.
Injury
Mukhina's floor exercise tumbling passes were considered revolutionary at the time because they included a never-before seen combination salto (the "Muchina"), but in 1979, her coach wanted her to become one of the few female gymnasts doing an element taken from men's gymnastics, the Thomas saltoThomas salto
The Thomas salto is an extremely difficult and dangerous move performed during the floor exercise in Artistic gymnastics. It is named after American gymnast Kurt Thomas.-Technical details:...
(a 1 and 3/4 flip with 1½ twists ending in a forward roll, perfected by American gymnast Kurt Thomas
Kurt Thomas (gymnast)
Kurt Bilteaux Thomas is an American Olympic gymnast.While at Indiana State University in Terre Haute, Indiana, Thomas became a member of the US Olympic team at the 1976 Summer Olympics. In 1978, Thomas was the first American male gymnast to win a gold medal in floor exercise in a world championship...
). Even though she successfully won the All Around title and floor exercises at the 1978 world championship with daring bar routines, a revolutionary balance beam dismount, and a floor routine with its own signature move, she was pressured to add this element to her floor exercises by her own coach and other higher-ranking Soviet coaches. Mukhina soon realized the Thomas salto was extremely dangerous for a woman because it depended on being able to get enough height and speed to successfully make all the flips and mid-air twists and still land in-bounds with enough room to do the forward roll, and it took near-perfect timing to avoid either under-rotation (and landing on the chin) or over-rotation (and landing on the back of the head). In the 1991 documentary More than a Game, Mukhina spoke of trying to convince her coach that the Thomas salto was a dangerous element:
"...my injury could have been expected. It was an accident that could have been anticipated. It was inevitable. I had said more than once that I would break my neck doing that element. I had hurt myself badly several times but he (coach Mikhail Klimenko) just replied people like me don't break their necks."
In 1979, while training for the 1979 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships
1979 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships
The 20th Artistic Gymnastics World Championships were held in Fort Worth, USA, in 1979. In November 1977 the 55th FIG Congress, held in Rome, changed the cycle of world championships: since 1979 they were to be held each two years, and the pre-Olympic ones were to be qualifications for the Olympic...
, Mukhina suffered a broken leg, which kept her out of the World Championships in Fort Worth, Texas
Fort Worth, Texas
Fort Worth is the 16th-largest city in the United States of America and the fifth-largest city in the state of Texas. Located in North Central Texas, just southeast of the Texas Panhandle, the city is a cultural gateway into the American West and covers nearly in Tarrant, Parker, Denton, and...
, a competition in which the Soviet team suffered its first defeat at the hands of their archrivals from Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
, with only Nellie Kim
Nellie Kim
Nellie Vladimirovna Kim is a retired Soviet gymnast who won three gold medals and a silver medal at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, and two gold medals at the 1980 Summer Olympics...
and Stella Zakharova
Stella Zakharova
Stella Zakharova is a retired gymnast who competed internationally for the former Soviet Union between 1977 and 1982. She was an Olympic and World Championship gold medalist in team competitions, and won individual all-around titles at other events.Zakharova won her first all-around championship...
able to medal in apparatus and All Around disciplines. With less than a year until the 1980 Summer Olympics to be held in Moscow, the pressure was on the Soviet team coaches and doctors to get the previous All Around champion Mukhina back on her feet and ready for the games. In an interview with Ogonyok magazine, Mukhina blamed the doctors at TsITO (Central Institute of Traumatology and Orthopedics) who were serving the National Team for attempting to rush her back into training too soon, saying she begged them not to remove her cast and discharge her because "they're dragging me from home to workouts" and she knew she was not yet healed. When doctors removed her cast against her wishes and had her try walking on the leg, she said that she knew she was walking "crookedly" and that something was not right. The TsITO doctors X-rayed the leg and discovered that the fracture had not healed properly and would not be able to sustain the pounding of gymnastics in its present condition. Mukhina was rushed into surgery that afternoon, but the damage had already been done to her reputation; one of the National Team coaches, she said in the Ogonyok interview, showed up at her bed the day after surgery and outright stated that she "wasn't conscientious" and that she could still "train in a cast." Once more against her wishes, the doctors removed her cast prematurely, and Mukhina returned to training for the Olympics while beginning a strenuous workout program at CSKA Moscow
CSKA Moscow
CSKA Moscow is a major Russian sports club based in Moscow. It is popularly referred to in the West as "Red Army" or "the Red Army team" because during the Soviet era, it was a part of the Armed Forces sports society, which in turn was associated with the Soviet Army...
to lose the weight she had gained while laid up from surgery.
With lingering weakness in her leg and mounting exhaustion from the grueling weight loss workouts, Mukhina had great difficulty coming back up to speed on what was to be the new end element of one of her floor exercise tumbling passes, the Thomas salto, Despite Mukhina's warnings that the element was constantly causing minor injuries and was dangerous enough to potentially cause major injuries, she was pushed to keep the element in her floor routine, and she continued to practice it even knowing it was a dangerous element. On July 3, 1980, two weeks before the Moscow Olympics, Mukhina was practicing the pass containing the Thomas salto when she under-rotated the salto, crash-landed on her chin, and her spine snapped. She was instantly rendered a quadriplegic
Quadriplegia
Tetraplegia, also known as quadriplegia, is paralysis caused by illness or injury to a human that results in the partial or total loss of use of all their limbs and torso; paraplegia is similar but does not affect the arms...
. Mukhina was training at the Minsk
Minsk
- Ecological situation :The ecological situation is monitored by Republican Center of Radioactive and Environmental Control .During 2003–2008 the overall weight of contaminants increased from 186,000 to 247,400 tons. The change of gas as industrial fuel to mazut for financial reasons has worsened...
Palace of Sport when the injury occurred; her coach Klimenko was not present at the time of the accident. The Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
awarded her Order of Lenin
Order of Lenin
The Order of Lenin , named after the leader of the Russian October Revolution, was the highest decoration bestowed by the Soviet Union...
in response to her injury and in 1983, Juan Samaranch, the IOC President, awarded her the Silver Medal of the Olympic Order.
Following the injury, the Soviet Gymnastics Federation remained secretive about the events surrounding Mukhina's cataclysmic injury, with Soviet Team Coach Yuri Titov
Yuri Titov
Yuri Yevlampiyevich Titov is a former Russian gymnast, Olympic champion and four times world champion, who competed for the Soviet Union. He received a total of nine Olympic medals from three Olympic games .-Olympics:...
as the point man discouraging reporters' questions by playing coy regarding Mukhina's condition and deflecting inquiries about whether she would be trying for a comeback in 1984, even blaming Mukhina's "injury" on attempting a skill that she "was not able to do but thought she needed to make the team[...]she suffered injury and missed her chance.[...]All the bad stories, they are not true. Meanwhile, as word spread among the Olympic community that Mukhina's injuries were far worse than the Soviet spokesmen were saying, coaches all over the world wondered not only what the specific injury was, but how the accident had happened. Initial rumors were that she had fallen on approach to the vault, then Soviet newspapers reported she'd fallen during her dismount from the balance beam and had a blackout but then got back up to finish her floor exercise without knowing how badly she'd been injured, then finally word emerged that she had fallen catastrophically during the floor exercise. Elena herself was reclusive following the incident, seldom publicly discussing the accident. In a rare interview with Ogonyok magazine, Elena spoke about the Soviet gymnastics program, criticizing it for deceiving the public about her injury, and for the system's insatiable desire for gold medals and championships:
Despite this, Mukhina took some of the responsibility for not saying no to protect herself from further harm, and noted that her first thought as she lay on the floor with her neck severely broken was, "Thank God, I won't be going to the Olympics."
Aftermath
According to Larisa Latynina's 2004 interview, Mukhina's trainer Mikhail Klimenko was affected by her injury. Because of her devastating injury, Mukhina could not be added to the 1980 Soviet Olympic team roster. There was little doubt that the Soviet Olympic women's gymnastics team would get the gold medal in the team competition at the 1980 Summer Olympics, as it did at all previous Olympics. Nevertheless, Klimenko had desperately wanted Mukhina to make the Olympic team roster because he wanted to become the "Olympic champion's trainer." Soon after Mukhina's paralytic injury, Klimenko emigrated to ItalyItaly
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, where he lived with his children until his death from cancer on November 14, 2007, his 65th birthday.
After Mukhina's paralysis and several other close calls with other Olympic-eligible female gymnasts, the Thomas salto
Thomas salto
The Thomas salto is an extremely difficult and dangerous move performed during the floor exercise in Artistic gymnastics. It is named after American gymnast Kurt Thomas.-Technical details:...
has been removed from the Code of Points as an allowed skill for women. It remains an allowed skill for men as of 2008. The current Code of Points for all forms of gymnastics can be found at FIG Code of Points downloads.
Her condition notwithstanding, Mukhina was a guest columnist for Moscow News
Moscow News
The Moscow News, which began publication in 1930, is Russia’s oldest English-language publication newspaper. Many of its feature articles used to be translated from the now defunct Russian Moskovskiye Novosti.-History:...
in the late 1980s. Her injury was a featured topic in an A&E
A&E Network
The A&E Network is a United States-based cable and satellite television network with headquarters in New York City and offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, London, Los Angeles and Stamford. A&E also airs in Canada and Latin America. Initially named the Arts & Entertainment Network, A&E launched...
documentary More Than a Game; and her World Championship performance is captured in the ABC Sports video Gymnastic's Greatest Stars. Mukhina took a keen interest in children and young gymnasts both before and after her injury. She also expressed a deep religious faith, and was fond of horses and animated cartoons.
Elena Mukhina died of apparent complications from quadriplegia
Quadriplegia
Tetraplegia, also known as quadriplegia, is paralysis caused by illness or injury to a human that results in the partial or total loss of use of all their limbs and torso; paraplegia is similar but does not affect the arms...
on . As a memorial to one of the greatest Soviet-era gymnasts ever, the biggest sports newspaper in Russia, Sovietskij SPORT, dedicated the cover of their Christmas 2006 issue to her. A memorial service was held in her honor on December 27, and she was laid to rest at the Troekourov Cemetery in Moscow.
Achievements
| Year | Event | AA | Team | VT | UB | BB | FX |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1977 | World Cup | 1st | 1st | ||||
| European Championships | 2nd | 3rd | 1st | 1st | 1st | ||
| USSR Championships | 2nd | 3rd | 1st | ||||
| USSR Cup | 2nd | ||||||
| 1978 | World Championships 1978 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships The 19th Artistic Gymnastics World Championships were held in Strasbourg, France, in 1978 from October 23 to October 29.The new rule was introduced: eight gymnasts competed in each of the apparatus finals.... |
1st | 1st | 2nd | 2nd | 1st | |
| USSR Championships | 1st | 1st | 3rd | ||||
| 1979 | European Championships | 1st | 2nd | ||||
| USSR Championships | 1st |
See also
- Elena Shushunova, a Russian gymnast who successfully executed the Thomas Salto in the 1987 European Gymnastics Championships
- Julissa GomezJulissa GomezJulissa D'anne Gomez was an American gymnast whose rapid rise through the ranks of elite gymnastics in the mid-1980s was cut short by a vaulting accident in 1988 that left her a quadriplegic...
, an American gymnast paralyzed in a vaulting accident at a 1988 meet in Japan while attempting the difficult-to-master Yurchenko vault - Christy HenrichChristy HenrichChristina "Christy" Renee Henrich was a world-class American artistic gymnast whose death from anorexia nervosa at 22 led to major reforms in the way women's gymnastics is covered on television and in the news media....
, an American gymnast who was told by an international gymnastics judge in 1989 to lose weight and pushed by coaches to lose weight while continuing to train until constant dieting led to her eventual death from complications of anorexia nervosaAnorexia nervosaAnorexia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by refusal to maintain a healthy body weight and an obsessive fear of gaining weight. Although commonly called "anorexia", that term on its own denotes any symptomatic loss of appetite and is not strictly accurate...
less than five years later
External links
- List of competitive results at Gymn Forum
- Footage of Mukhina in her prime, Chinese female gymnast He Xuemei successfully doing the Thomas salto at the 1992 Summer Olympics1992 Summer OlympicsThe 1992 Summer Olympic Games, officially known as the Games of the XXV Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event celebrated in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, in 1992. The International Olympic Committee voted in 1986 to separate the Summer and Winter Games, which had been held in the same...
, and other famous gymnasts whose careers were cut short by injuries or illnesses