Lobaznyuk's Beginnings
The second daughter of a gymnastics coach (who is also a former gymnast) and a sports school director, Lobaznyuk grew up in Uzbekistan amid the strife and turbulence of the 1980s. She began her gymnastics career at the young age of six, when her mother brought her to a gym in Fergana; everyone who watched the tiny little girl was captivated by her charm and ability to enthrall. In the 1990s, after the USSR fell apart, the Lobaznyuk family fled to Tashkent due to violence and riots in the Fergana Valley area. The family attempted to join a circus there but, failed. Help came in 1994 thanks to her grandmother, living in Russia at the time; the Lobaznyuks eventually settled in Rubtsovsk, a city of some 170,000 people located in southwestern Siberia.
It was in Rubtsovsk that Yekaterina (known as Katya to her friends and family) met her future coach, Valery Fyodotovich Dianov, and the two quickly became a team. Known for her stubborn character, Katya was nevertheless able to work with coach Dianov while being able to express herself in the feisty and "cute" way she would eventually be known for.
Read more about this topic: Yekaterina Lobaznyuk
Famous quotes containing the word beginnings:
“These beginnings of commerce on a lake in the wilderness are very interesting,—these larger white birds that come to keep company with the gulls.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)