#elena shushunova

[freifraufischer]

Oksana Omelianchik & Elena Shushunova (URS), Dual Beam, 1988 USSR Display - London

[gym-oldies]

[lobaznyuk]

Countdown to the Olympics: 50 days

Elena Shushunova of Russia (USSR) competes at the 1988 Seoul Olympic games, in the all-around final. Her main competition was Daniela Silivaș; the two going neck and neck going throughout the competition and into their final rotation, vault. Silivaș had a very slight lead over Shushunova, so she would need a near-perfect score in order to beat the Romanian. She ends up nailing her vault, the final routine of the competition, and snags her second perfect ten of the evening and the gold medal. Shushunova and fellow Russian gymnast Ludmila Tourischeva are still the only two female gymnasts to have won the grand slam of all-around titles – Olympic Games, World Championships, World Cup and ("But what about Simone--") European Championships.

[mo-salto]

Shushunova was racking up 10s well before her Olympic all around win. Here she is at the 1985 European Championships

[barmaleikin]

Elena Shushunova ( St. Petersburg, Russia 23.04.1969 Gymnast ), two-time Olympic champion, repeated world champion

[russianglitter]

Gymnastics lost a legend today. RIP Elena. :(

(news article about her death)

[uchi-mura]

I wrote a post about Elena for my blog on women in history, please give it a read :)

[kittysha]

I just found out Elena Shushunova died this summer... What?!

[traceeverystars]

Someone is fiddling with Premiere Pro again and it's almost "remembering Seoul 1988" season. A Shushunova vs Silivas video edit? It is coming! (yep i filmed this on my phone)

[freifraufischer]

Elena Shushunova (URS), FX, 1982 Moscow News

Because you always wanted to watch a 13 year old do a rollout skill. *shudders*

[gym-oldies]

[illyria-and-her-pet]

Gymnasts who competed the double twisting yurchenko even when it had the same start value as the full twisting yurchenko (1986-1992):

Elena Shevchenko (URS)

Elena Gurova (URS)

Aleftina Priakhina (URS)

Vera Kolesnikova (URS)

Eugenia Golea (ROM)

Elena Shushunova (URS)

Natalia Laschenova (URS)

Svetlana Baitova (URS)

Gabriela Potorac (ROM)

Chen Cuiting (CHN)

Olesya Dudnik (URS)

Cristina Bontas (ROM)

Natalia Kalinina (URS)

Tatiana Lysenko (URS)

Tatiana Gutsu (URS)

[mo-salto]

A belated tribute to 1988 Olympic champion Elena Shushunova, who even looked graceful doing still rings in a pink windbreaker. 

[barmaleikin]

Elena Shushunova ( St. Petersburg, Russia 23.04.1969 Gymnast ), two-time Olympic champion, repeated world champion

[lobaznyuk]

Countdown to the Olympics: 53 days

The 1988 Seoul Olympics Soviet gymnastics team consisted of Elena Shushunova, Svetlana Boginskaya, Natalia Laschenova, Svetlana Baitova, Elena Shevchenko and Olga Strazheva. Here they continue their 36th year winning streak (excluding the boycotted Olympics in 1984) and win the gold medal. This, however, was the last Olympics that the Soviet Union ever competed at.

Where are they now?

Shushunova: retired after the 1988 Olympics and returned to Saint Petersburg, where she worked for the city's sports committee. She sadly passed away in 2018 due to complications from pneumonia.

Boginskaya: retired from competition after the 1992 Olympics, then came back in 1995 and led her home country of Belarus to a sixth place finish at the 1996 Olympics. She now lives in the US where she owns multiple businesses, including a pizzeria. One Yelp review reads: "I only order from here because of Svetlana Boginskaya. She was my crush at the Olympics-- I was 12, she was 19. If only I could have gotten to Barcelona, we may have had a chance. I wish her pizza were better."

Laschenova: Latvian born, Laschenova retired in 1991 due to not being able to compete at the 1992 Olympics. Latvia was one of the ex-soviet countries that chose not to compete as part of the Unified Team. She now lives in the States and works at Universal Gymnastics. According to the gym's website, one of her co-workers is a Golden Retriever named Lyndi.

Baitova: retired in 1990 and since then has worked as gymnastics coach in Belarus. In 2002, she was invited to coach in Qatar on a five-year contract, but returned after 11 months because she couldn’t stand the heat. Like, the weather. Not metaphorical heat.

Shevchenko: retired from competitions in 1989 and since then has worked as a gymnastics coach and judge. That’s all I’ve got, sorry.

Strazheva: during this final, Strazheva suffered a ACL tear on beam. Despite this, she returned to the sport the very next year and won another gold medal with the Soviet team at the 1989 World Championships. She was the first WAG gymnast to perform a double front on floor, debuting the skill as a junior in 1986.

[monkberries]

The Beatles As My Favourite Tumbling Passes

Paul: Oksana Omelianchik, 1985 second pass (starts at :44) - SHE IS THE MOMENT. This pass, much like Paul’s career, goes on forever, is made up of a hundred intricate pieces put together immaculately, and she comes out of this exhausting ordeal with an easy smile. A true innovator and delightful showman.

John: Elena Shushunova, 1988 second pass (starts at :56) - Like John, this is a crazy piece of art retired well before its time. I love this pass and its insanity. To this day I still have no idea how to describe what she’s doing. 3/4 twist to side straddle flip to rollout?? A back handspring to her knees just for funsies? It reminds me of how John would think about how he wanted something to sound - totally out of line with how regular people think about music but it ends up beautiful all the same.

George: Kim Un Jong, 2004 first tumbling pass (starts at :06) - One of my absolute favourites and it’s so overlooked and underappreciated!!! Three direction changes in a row as complex and hard as George’s chord progressions and time signature shifts, but they both do it so easily that you almost miss it.

Ringo: Vanessa Atler 1999, first tumbling pass (starts at :19) - Another fave! Needs that impeccable timing to rebound out of two skills in a row and then she just continues into choreography as if nothing happened. Similarly Ringo could perform difficult transitions and pattern changes that required perfect timing and just continue on as if he didn’t just do something very special.