A gymnast with a long & illustrious career spanning 7+ years and 3 Olympic cycles, Natalia Yurchenko trained under legendary coach Vladislav Rostorosky--who had successfully guided Turishcheva and Shaposhnikova to multiple Olympic gold medals.
Natalia was one of the sport's great innovators. She was attempting a punch front beam mount in the late 70s. And while she was age-eligible for the 1980 Olympics, inexperience kept her out of the running for the team.
She came into her own in 1982, following a couple years of setbacks and injuries. She tied with Olga Bicherova for all-around gold at the prestigious World Cup in 1982, introducing a new vault family in the process. Her signature entry consisted of a round-off onto the springboard and a back dive onto the horse. It completely revolutionized the sport; its impact has reverberated non-stop over the intervening four decades, right up to the current day. Simone Biles' historic Yurchenko double pike is possible because of the entry Yurchenko and Rostorosky created.
Yurchenko became AA World Champion in Budapest 1983, a couple months shy of her 19th birthday. Success at this age (and older) had been common in past decades, but it had already fallen out of favor in WAG by the early 80s. In fact, it would be 18 years before a gymnast older than Natalia (fellow Russian Svetlana Khorkina, aged 22 in 2001) would again win the World AA Title.
Yurchenko suffered many ups and downs over the course of her career. She'd qualified for all four EF at 83 Worlds, but injured herself during Vault Finals, leaving her unable to add to her medal haul.
She was one of the many victims of the 1984 Soviet Boycott, thus never competing at an Olympic Games. As the reigning World Champion prior to 84, she definitely would have been in the mix; instead she won 3 medals at the Alternate Games in Olomouc.
Natalia competed at two Europeans, again coming up empty-handed. She went on to made her second World Team in 1985, but costly errors left her only fifth AA in defense of her World title, and with no EF medals.
As with Bicherova, this World AA gold would be Yurchenko's only career individual World or Olympic medal.
26 авг 2024
