Yelena Davydova

Yelena Viktorovna Davydova (Еле́на Ви́кторовна Давы́дова; born 7 August 1961) is a Russian-Canadian gymnastics coach and judge who competed for the former Soviet Union.

By 1972 Davydova was the best in her age group at the school.

Davydova has a brother, Yuri, who is 12 years her junior.

In 1973 Davydova won her first international tournament.

In 1974 she became a member of the USSR junior squad.

At the 1975 USSR Junior Championships Davydova finished 3rd AA and won golds on vault and bars.

Following her success here she became a member of the senior squad.

In March 1976 Davydova achieved second place all-around at the USSR championships, in her first try as a senior.

She also won the gold on bars and a silver on floor.

At the inaugural American Cup, Davydova performed a side somersault on the beam, the first woman ever to do so.

However, she only received third place AA.

At the USSR Cup Davydova tied for sixth place AA – and won bronze on vault, only 0.025 behind world vault champion Olga Korbut – but only the top five and one gymnast in ninth place were chosen for the Soviet Olympic team.

In August Davydova won the Antibes tournament in France.

In addition, she won gold on the vault, and silvers on beam, bars, and floor.

At the Riga International she scored the highest per-routine score in the competition (9.75 on vault), and won silver in the AA competition.

She dominated event finals, winning three gold (beam, vault, bars) and a bronze on floor.

In October, she was made a member of the USSR gymnastics display team, which visited the UK.

She subsequently performed her beam routine on the Blue Peter show.

In December 1976, Davydova finished third AA at the Chunichi Cup in Japan, and won a gold on vault and a bronze on floor at the Tokyo Cup.

She was the only woman in the competition to perform a front somersault vault.

She also tied for first AA with Kische and Kraker of East Germany.

In 1977 Davydova again won the gold medal on bars at the USSR Cup, scoring a perfect 10.

In September 1977 Davydova appeared on the front cover of a new magazine with an emphasis on young gymnasts, entitled Gymnastics World.

She was one of the four "Mighty Mites" featured in that issue.

She was also a member of the USSR Display Team, along with Kim, Korbut, Grosdova, Filatova and Gorbik that performed in Great Britain.

Davydova suffered a serious injury when a bone detached itself from her knee.

The injury could have been a career-ender, but she recovered.

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.

In October 2016, she was elected a member of the International Gymnastics Federation's Women Technical Committee.

Davydova was born in Voronezh, 500 kilometres south of Moscow, to Victor, a mechanic, and Tamara, an employee at the Leningrad Optical and Mechanical Works.

She became interested in gymnastics at age six after seeing on television the famous Soviet Olympic gold medallists Larisa Petrik and Natalia Kuchinskaya.

She wanted to be enrolled in Spartak Gymnastics school, but was turned away for having the wrong physique.

Soon a coach at the school, Gennadiy Korshunov, noticed her.

He invited her into the school.

He asked his wife, Ina, also a gymnastics coach at the school, to train Davydova in her group.

Yuri Shtukman, the administrator at the school, did not like this initiative by his new training staff and reprimanded the Korshunovs; however he allowed Davydova to stay in the school.

It soon became apparent that she was a talented gymnast and Gennadiy took over her coaching himself.