Yekaterina Lobaznyuk - Rise To Fame at 1999 Worlds

Rise To Fame At 1999 Worlds

1999 and 2000 were the best years of Yekaterina's competitive career. She 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. Needless to say, coach Dianov was thrilled. "She performed wonderfully", he was quoted as saying afterwards. Once again, she garnered a lot of attention and many more fans, partly due to ESPN's broadcast of the competition. Without her impressive performance at the World Gymnastics Championships, she might not have made it to the Olympics the next year.

Sydney, Australia was the site of the 2000 Olympic Games, and the location of the highest point in Yekaterina's career. She immediately charmed loads of Aussies with her pretty smile, short hair, and constant bounciness. She was also perhaps the top gymnast on the Olympic team, surpassing Svetlana Khorkina and Elena Zamolodchikova, the best known members of the team at the time. Winning a pair of silver medals (on the beam and on team final) and a bronze on the vault was the highlight of many gymnastics fans' Olympics. She did make a few mistakes that probably cost her team a shot at the gold medal in team final. After Zamolodchikova fell off the balance beam, Lobaznyuk wanted to get a 10.0 SV (start value) so badly that she included a move not originally in her beam routine and promptly fell off the side of the beam. Dianov remarked afterwards, "It was a noble impulse and so it was impossible to rebuke her for it". In the all-around final, mistakes also cost Lobaznyuk a medal. Finishing fifth, had she not stepped out of bounds on her floor routine, or misstepped on beam, it was likely she would have won a medal.