Ekaterina Vladimirovna Lobaznyuk is a former Olympic gymnast who competed for Russia in the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia, winning three medals.
15 Facts About Yekaterina Lobaznyuk
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The second daughter of a gymnastics coach and a sports school director, Yekaterina Lobaznyuk grew up in Uzbekistan amid the strife and turbulence of the 1980s.
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Yekaterina Lobaznyuk began her gymnastics career at the young age of six, when her mother brought her to a gym in Fergana.
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Yekaterina Lobaznyuk made her debut as a junior elite gymnast in a children's meet sometime prior to 1996.
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In 1998, Yekaterina Lobaznyuk broke her right arm as a result of a fall off her least favorite event, the uneven bars, and missed the two biggest junior events of the year, the Junior European Championships and World Youth Games.
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Yekaterina Lobaznyuk healed completely enough at the end of the year to win over Ukrainian gymnast Viktoria Karpenko at the Acapulco Cup in Mexico.
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Yekaterina Lobaznyuk was an integral part of the 1999 World Championships team from Russia that won a silver medal, as she picked up the most points overall for her team in the team final.
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Yekaterina Lobaznyuk was perhaps the top gymnast on the Olympic team, surpassing Svetlana Khorkina and Elena Zamolodchikova, the best known members of the team at the time.
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Yekaterina Lobaznyuk won a pair of silver medals and a bronze on the vault.
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At the 2001 Russian Cup, while performing one of her signature Yurchenko vaults, Yekaterina Lobaznyuk landed very hard on the mat and collapsed in pain; she had to be picked up and carried off by one of her coaches.
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Yekaterina Lobaznyuk had two surgeries because the first one in Moscow, Russia was not performed properly; the second took place in Johannesburg, South Africa during her visit for a rehabilitation stint.
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The next month Yekaterina Lobaznyuk attempted a comeback at the Russian National Championships, performing only on beam and floor exercise while her surgically repaired knee continued to heal.
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Yekaterina Lobaznyuk did OK in the eyes of national team coaches, but not well enough to rejoin the team, as other, younger gymnasts were coming along to take her place.
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Yekaterina Lobaznyuk now resides in Langley, British Columbia, Canada where she trains as a competitive coach alongside her mother Ludmila, who herself is a coach at the Langley Gymnastics Foundation.
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Yekaterina Lobaznyuk is married and has a son named Alexei.