Larisa Semyonovna Latynina is a former Soviet artistic gymnast. Between 1956 and 1964 she won 14 individual Olympic medals and four team medals. She holds the record for the most Olympic gold medals by a gymnast, male or female, with 9. Her total of 18 Olympic medals was a record for 48 years. She held the record for individual event medals, winning 14 over 52 years. She is credited with helping to establish the Soviet Union as a dominant force in gymnastics.
Věra Čáslavská was a Czechoslovak artistic gymnast and Czech sports official. She won a total of 22 international titles between 1959 and 1968 including seven Olympic gold medals, four world titles and eleven European championships. Čáslavská is the most decorated Czech gymnast in history and is one of only two female gymnasts, along with Soviet Larisa Latynina, to win the all-around gold medal at two consecutive Olympics. She remains the only gymnast, male or female, to have won an Olympic gold medal in each individual event. She was also the first gymnast to achieve perfect 10 at a major competition in the post-1952 era. She holds the record for most individual gold medals among all female athletes in Olympic history as well.
Nadia Elena Comăneci Conner is a Romanian retired gymnast and a five-time Olympic gold medalist, all in individual events. In 1976, at the age of 14, Comăneci was the first gymnast to be awarded a perfect score of 10.0 at the Olympic Games. At the same Games she received six more perfect 10s for events en route to winning three gold medals. At the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, Comăneci won two more gold medals and achieved two more perfect 10s. During her career Comăneci won nine Olympic medals and four World Artistic Gymnastics Championship medals.
Yelena Viktorovna Davydova is a Russian-Canadian gymnastics coach and judge who competed for the former Soviet Union. She was the women's artistic individual all-around champion at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. She's the owner and head coach at Gemini Gymnastics, a gymnastics club in Oshawa, Ontario. In July 2012, Davydova was one of the coaches of the Canadian Women's Artistic Gymnastics Team. In 2016 Davydova was head floor judge at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Olga Valentinovna Korbut is a retired Belarusian gymnast who competed for the Soviet Union. Nicknamed the "Sparrow from Minsk", she won four gold medals and two silver medals at the Summer Olympic Games, in which she competed in 1972 and 1976 for the Soviet team, and was the inaugural inductee to the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame in 1988.
Carly Rae Patterson is an American singer, songwriter and former artistic gymnast. She was the all-around champion at the 2004 Olympics, the first all-around champion for the United States at a non-boycotted Olympics, and is a member of the USA Gymnastics Hall of Fame. Patterson frequently joins radio segments on 1310 AM and 96.7 FM The Ticket in Dallas Fort-Worth.
Olga Vasilyevna Morozova is a retired tennis player who competed for the Soviet Union. She was the runner-up in singles at the 1974 French Open and 1974 Wimbledon Championships.
Elena Vyacheslavovna Mukhina was a Soviet gymnast who won the all-around title at the 1978 World Championships in Strasbourg, France. Her career was on the rise, and she was widely touted as the next great gymnastics star until 1979, when she broke a leg and missed several competitions. The rushed recovery from that injury, combined with pressure to master a dangerous and difficult tumbling move caused her to break her neck two weeks before the opening of the 1980 Summer Olympics, leaving her permanently quadriplegic.
Nellie Vladimirovna Kim is a retired Soviet and Belarusian gymnast of Sakhalin Korean and Tatar descent 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 in Moscow. She was the second woman in Olympic history to earn a perfect 10 score and the first woman to score it on the vault and on the floor exercise, rivaling Nadia Comăneci, Ludmilla Tourischeva, and other strong competitors of the 1970s.
Sofia Ivanovna Muratova was a Soviet gymnast. She competed in the 1956 and 1960 Olympics and won eight medals.
Olga Anatolyevna Bicherova is a retired Soviet gymnast, who won the women's all-around gold medal at the 1981 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships.
Olga Vasilyevna Mostepanova is a retired former Soviet gymnast. She won three gold medals at the World Championships.
Elena Anatolyevna Tchaikovskaia, also spelled as Chaykovskaya or Chaikovskaia is a Russian figure skating coach, choreographer, and former competitor for the Soviet Union. She runs a skating school at the Yantar Sports Center, built in 2010 in the Strogino District west of Moscow. She coaches in collaboration with Vladimir Kotin, her former pupil.
Gabriele Fähnrich is a German former gymnast who represented East Germany (GDR). She is the 1985 World champion on the uneven bars. She also finished fourth in the all-around event at the 1985 World Championships, and won a bronze medal in the team event at the 1988 Olympic Games.
The age requirements in gymnastics are established by the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG) and regulate the age at which athletes are allowed to participate in senior-level competitions.
Abortion doping is a rumoured practice of purposely inducing pregnancy specifically for athletic performance-enhancing benefits, and then aborting the pregnancy. Rumours and allegations began during international sporting events in the mid-twentieth century, and a number of doctors and scientists have repeated claims about it, but it remains unproven, and is often regarded as a myth.
Irina Alexandrovna Viner, formerly Irina Alexandrovna Viner-Usmanova, is an Uzbek-born Russian rhythmic gymnastics coach who is head coach of the Russian national team, president of the Russian Rhythmic Gymnastics Federation, and former vice president of the Rhythmic Gymnastics Technical Committee of the International Gymnastics Federation.
Olga Tass was a Hungarian gymnast who competed at the 1948, 1952, 1956, and 1960 Summer Olympics. She was born in Pécs.
Zarina Mayramovna Gizikova is a Russian retired individual rhythmic gymnast, an Honored Master of Sports of Russia and the 2002 Russian National All-around champion.
The Soviet Union women's national artistic gymnastics team represented the Soviet Union in FIG international competitions. They were the dominant force in the sport from the 1950s until the Soviet Union's collapse. They lead the medal tally for women's artistic gymnastics with 88 medals including 33 gold. Larisa Latynina is also the most decorated female athlete at the Olympic games with a total of 18 medals. Soviet dominance was unprecedented in scale and longevity and was likely the result of the country's heavy investment in mass and elite sports to fulfill its political agenda.
Soviet Union 
