Gymnasts

Simone Biles is an artistic gymnast. Having won a combined total of 30 World Championship and Olympic medals, Biles is the world's third-most decorated gymnast and the most decorated in America. Regarded as the greatest gymnast of all time by some, Simone Biles continues to inspire several aspiring gymnasts around the world, especially gymnasts from the black community.

Shawn Johnson is a former artistic gymnast who won the 2008 Olympic balance beam gold medal. She is a five-time Pan American Games gold medalist and a three-time U.S. all-around champion as well. She retired from gymnastics in  2012. She was the winner of season eight of the dance competition show Dancing with the Stars.  

Born to Puerto Rican-American parents, Laurie Hernandez was homeschooled since third grade and began training in gymnastics at age 5. At 16, she was the youngest of the Final Five that won a team gold at the 2016 Rio Olympics. Her wide smile has earned her the nickname The Human Emoji.

Olga Korbut is a former gymnast who represented the Soviet Union in two Olympic Games, winning four gold medals and two silver medals. Nicknamed the Sparrow from Minsk, Korbut also participated in the 18th Artistic Gymnastics World Championships where she won two gold medals and four silver medals. In 1988, she was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame. 

The youngest member of the US artistic gymnastics team at the 2012 London Olympics, Kyla Ross won the team gold at the event, and became the first female gymnast to win the Olympic, the World, and the NCAA championships. Now a youth gymnastics coach, she has also launched her own line of leotards.

Alicia Sacramone is a retired artistic gymnast who won a silver medal with the United States team at the 2008 Summer Olympics. With a total of 11 Olympic and World Championship medals, she is one of the most decorated U.S. female gymnasts. She is also a spokeswoman for a fitness company and has appeared in a few commercials. 

Known as Awesome Dawesome, Dominique Dawes is a retired star gymnast from the U.S. who was part of the gold-winning team at the Atlanta Olympics. She also became the first African-American to earn an individual Olympic medal, with her bronze. She is also part of the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame.

Carly Patterson is a former artistic gymnast who was the all-around champion at the 2004 Olympics. She was coached by former Israeli Olympian Yohanan Moyal and started competing internationally in 2000. She is a member of the USA Gymnastics Hall of Fame. She is also a singer-songwriter and a motivational speaker. She has appeared on the TV show Celebrity Duets. 

Retired artistic gymnast Gabby Douglas became an all-around Olympic champion in 2012, becoming the first African-American to achieve the feat. She is also the first American to win gold in both the individual and team competitions at the same Olympic event. She inspired the biopic The Gabby Douglas Story.

Nadia Comaneci is a Romanian former gymnast. One of the best-known gymnasts in the world, Comaneci has five Olympic gold medals under her belt. Credited with popularizing gymnastics around the world, Nadia Comaneci was honored by the Laureus World Sports Academy by including her in their Athletes of the 20th Century list in 2000.

Nastia Liukin made headlines with her 5-medal haul at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Born to an Olympic medalist gymnast father and a world champion gymnast mother, she was destined to make a career in the sport. She is now part of the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame.

Retired gymnast Mary Lou Retton, known for her trademark, The Retton Flip, made history by becoming the first American female gymnast to win an individual Olympic gold medal and was the first gymnast named to the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame. She later became a motivational speaker.

Shannon Miller is a former artistic gymnast who is one of the most decorated US female gymnasts in Olympics history. She is the winner of seven Olympic medals, including the five she won at the 1992 Olympics, and 16 World Championships.  She is a member of the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame and the United States Olympic Hall of Fame.   

Věra Čáslavská was a Czechoslovak artistic gymnast who won 22 international titles, including 11 European Championships, four World Championships, and seven Olympic gold medals. The most decorated gymnast in Czech history, Čáslavská is the only gymnast to have won at least one Olympic gold in each individual event. In 1998, she was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame.

Three-time Olympian Romanian former artistic gymnast Cătălina Ponor has 5 Olympic medals in her kitty, including 3 golds. He has also won a World Cup gold and 8 European Championship gold medals. The sports star started training at age 4 and was scouted by the national selectors during a nationwide talent search.

Apart from being the first Hmong-American to participate in the Olympics, Sunisa Lee has also won a gold, a team silver, and a bronze at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. She was also the 2019 world champion. Named to Time 100 in 2021, she was pepper-sprayed in a racist attack in Los Angeles.

With his mother and stepfather both being national gymnasts from Cuba, Danell Leyva was bound to follow in their footsteps. The Cuban-American gymnast has won 2 silvers and 1 bronze at the Olympics. In 2020, he came out as pansexual and bisexual, hoping it would ease things for other LGBT individuals.

With his 2008 Beijing Olympic bronze medal, Louis Smith became the second Black male gymnast to have won the medal. A pommel horse expert, he later won three more Olympic medals. He had ADHD as a child and later also won a choral scholarship but chose to focus on gymnastics instead.

Known as the Belarusian Swan, Svetlana Boginskaya started off as a figure skater before moving on to gymnastics at age 6. By 14, she was part of the Soviet national gymnastics team. The three-time Olympic champion is now settled in Texas and owns businesses that provide gymnastics camps and apparel.

Retired Belarusian artistic gymnast Vitaly Scherbo became the only male gymnast to win a world title in all 8 events. He has also won 6 gold medals in the Olympics and was the first person to win 4 gold medals in one day. The Scherbo vault has been named after him.

While Romanian gymnast Andreea Răducan began training at age 4. She won the individual all-around gold medal in the 2000 Summer Olympics but had to give it up due to a doping accusation. She, however, retained her team gold and vault silver, which she won at the same Olympic Games.

Ariana Berlin is an artistic gymnast and dancer. She competed for the UCLA Bruins gymnastics team from 2006 to 2009. One of UCLA’s most consistent athletes, she is a four-time All-American. She is also trained in break-dancing and has worked as a stunt performer in several television shows. Currently, she is an associate producer at Fox Sports.  

Jordyn Wieber is a former artistic gymnast who was a member of the gold-medal-winning U.S. Women's Gymnastics team at the 2012 Summer Olympics. She was also a part of the victorious American team at the 2011 World Championships. She became a gymnastics coach after retirement and currently coaches the Arkansas Razorbacks gymnastics team.  

Part of the gold-winning American Final Five at the 2016 Rio Olympics, Madison Kocian had also earned a silver on uneven bars at the same event. She began training in gymnastics at age 5 and retired in 2020, after the COVID-19 pandemic halted her UCLA Bruins final season.

Legendary Chinese gymnast Li Ning not only has 3 Olympic gold medals in his kitty but is now also a billionaire entrepreneur and the owner of a self-titled sports apparel and equipment brand. Starting training at age 8, he later earned the unofficial title of the Prince of Gymnastics in China.

Gymnast Dominique Moceanu was part of the Magnificent Seven, the women’s team that won the gold at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. After retiring, she has studied management and also penned a book. She also sued her father for misusing her earnings as a gymnast and won the case.

American gymnastics legend Bart Conner is the only male gymnast from his country to have won gold medals at all levels of national and international competition. A 2-time Olympic gold medalist, he also has a journalism degree. He now runs a gymnastics academy with his wife and Romanian Olympic champion Nadia Comaneci.

Two-time Commonwealth gold-winning gymnast Nile Wilson is also a World Championship silver medalist and an Olympic bronze medalist. He retired from the sport at age 21. He is also a social-media star, with two popular YouTube channels, where he posts his work-out videos and other life stories.

Daniela Silivaș is a Romanian former artistic gymnast. She is best known for winning six medals (three gold, two silver, and one bronze) at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul. She also earned six individual World Championships titles in her five-year tenure as a Romanian senior national team member. She became a coach after retiring in 1991. 

Romanian artistic gymnast Lavinia Milosovici, also known as Milo, is not just a 2-time Olympic gold medalist but also a 5-time World Champion. She scripted history as the last person to achieve an Olympic perfect 10 and also has 4 European Championship gold medals in her kitty.

Maggie Nichols is a former collegiate artistic gymnast who became the ninth NCAA gymnast to complete a Gym Slam. She represented the United States in the 2015 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, where she captured a gold medal with her team. She received the Arthur Ashe Courage Award for speaking up against sexual abuse in gymnastics. 

Simona Amânar is a Romanian retired artistic gymnast. A ten-time World Championship, 12-time European Championship, and seven-time Olympic medalist, Amânar also helped her country win four successive world team titles between 1994 and 1999. In 2007, Simona Amânar was made an inductee of the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame.

Ragan Smith is a collegiate gymnast who emerged as the 2017 United States national all-around champion. She was a member of the US National Team from 2014 to 2019 and competed at the City of Jesolo Trophy. She competes on vault, balance beam, uneven bars, and floor exercises. She is currently signed with the Oklahoma Sooners women's gymnastics program. 

MyKayla Skinner is a former artistic gymnast who was the 2020 Olympic vault silver medalist. Previously, she was part of the US team that competed at the 2014 World Championships and won a gold medal. She captured a total of 11 medals at the USA National Championships during her senior career. She survived Covid-19 in 2021.

Nina Derwael is a Belgian artistic gymnast who won a gold medal at the 2020 Olympic Games, becoming the first Belgian female gymnast to win an Olympic medal. She has also won gold medals at the World Championships, European Games, and European Championships. Nina Derwael is the first gymnast from Belgium to become a World champion and European champion.

Irish-born gymnasts of Azerbaijani origin, Jennifer Gadirova and her twin, Jessica, have both excelled at artistic gymnastics at the international level. Jennifer has not only won an Olympic bronze for Britain but also became the first British gymnast to earn a Junior World Championship medal, with her silver win in 2019.

Kurt Thomas was a gymnast who became the first American male gymnast to win a gold medal at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in 1978. He won six medals at the world championship in 1979 and was also the James E. Sullivan Award winner that year. He appeared in the 1985 film Gymkata.