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:
“Let us, then, take our compass; we are something, and we are not everything. The nature of our existence hides from us the knowledge of first beginnings which are born of the nothing; and the littleness of our being conceals from us the sight of the infinite. Our intellect holds the same position in the world of thought as our body occupies in the expanse of nature.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)