Svetlana Boguinskaya: Snapshot of a World Class Elite Gymnast

Gymnast Svetlana Boguinskaya is a former member of the Soviet and Belarussian national gymnastics teams. She was born in Minsk, Belarus on February 9, 1973. Before getting into gymnastics, Svetlana was a figure skater for several years, with dreams of being a model one day. She actually began gymnastics at 8 years old. A couple of years later, she relocated from her gym in Minsk to train full-time at Round Lake, Russia's (and the former Soviet Union's) national gymnastics training center. At age 14, she became a member of the Soviet national gymnastics team.

She was nicknamed the Belarussian Swan and the Goddess of Gymnastics because of her grace, elegance, height (she was tall for a gymnast at 5 feet and four inches), long legs, and the dance and artistry she typically displayed on the floor exercise. In fact, Svetlana was particularly known for having more artistry and very different, more mature choreographer in her floor exercise routines than most of her competitors during her career. Another trademark of Svetlana's, especially on her Yurchenko vaults, was to land with one foot placed ahead of the other; this made the landing look more elegant to the judges.

After 5 years of competing in elite gymnastics competition, Svetlana decided to retire after the 1992 Olympics. That didn't last for long, though. She decided to make a comeback, citing figure skater Katarina Witt for the inspiration. She had seen Witt make a comeback from retirement of her own at the 1994 Winter Olympic Games; Svetlana said she could see that Witt still had a passion for skating when she went out onto the ice, and Svetlana felt similarly about gymnastics too much to give it up at that point so she decided to compete again in 1995.

Svetlana Boguinskaya competed in three Olympic Games: 1988 in Seoul, South Korea; 1992 in Barcelona, Spain; and 1996 in Atlanta, Georgia USA. She is one of the few who've accomplished this in the sport (others include Larissa Latynina and Ludmilla Tourishcheva of the Soviet Union, Vera Caslavska of Czechoslovakia, Dominique Dawes of the United States, Lisa Skinner of Australia, Svetlana Khorkina of Russia, and Oksana Chusovitina of the Soviet Union/Uzbekistan). Due to her incredible accomplishments, Svetlana was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame in 2005.

Svetlana Boguinskaya moved to the Boston in 1994 and now lives as a permanent U.S. resident in Houston with her husband and two kids.