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Svetlana Khorkina
The "queen of the uneven bars," she has won two Olympic gold medals and five world titles on the uneven bars.
Born: January 19, 1979
Country: Russia
Height: 165 cm
Weight: 46 kgs
Event: Gymnastics
Olympic Record:
2000 Sydney Olympics: 1st Asymmetrical Bars
1996 Atlanta Olympics: 1st Asymmetrical Bars
Other Records:
1995 World Championship 1st Asymmetrical Bars
1995 European Cup 1st All Around
1996 European Championships 1st Asymmetrical Bars
1996 World Championships 1st Asymmetrical Bars
1997 World Championship: 1st Asymmetrical Bars
1999 European Championship: 1st Asymmetrical Bars
2000 European Championship: 1st All around
2001 World Championship: 1st Asymmetrical Bars, vault, All Around, 2nd in Teams
2002 World Championship: 1st Asymmetrical Bars
2003 European Team Championships 1st Teams
Russia's most successful gymnast, with a remarkable and unique style, is Svetlana Vasilevna Khorkina. She is tall, using her height to full advantage.
Almost contradicting the laws of physics, on her own speciality apparatus, the asymmetric bars, Svetlana has won about every major medal, dominating podiums all over the world, including a unique series of four consecutive world titles.
She has been on the Russian national team since 1992. She is the only Russian gymnast to have posed for Russian Playboy magazine and to pose for Speed-Info magazine.
Athens will be her third Olympics. The "queen of the uneven bars," she has won two Olympic gold medals and five world titles on that apparatus. At 25, she is much older than most elite gymnasts and could become the first non-teenager since 1968 to win the women's Olympic all-around title.
She has faltered time and again in the major championships. At the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, a fall on the bars kept her from gold in the all-around. In the Sydney all-around, she fell twice on the bars dashing Russia's gold-medal hopes in the Teams. But she kept alive her eight-year streak of gold medals on the individual apparatus at Worlds, Europeans and the Olympics -- until November 2002.
