With the occasion of her birthday, on the 27th of July, we are revisiting some of the milestones of Dina Kochetkova’s competitive life:
- A strong tumbler, Dina could do a floor exercise with only double layouts as tumbling passes:
- … and in her competitive routine she had a full in as her last pass. Dina became a World champion on this event at the 1994 Worlds in Brisbane.
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- A “Kochetckova” on beam is a back handspring with a full twist, and was named after Dina, of course.
- Her innovative and difficult work on the balance beam brought her a world title on this event, in San Juan in 1996. She was followed on that podium by Romania’s Alexandra Marinescu and China’s Liu Xuan.
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- If the 1996 Olympic all around final had finished after three events Dina would have been on the podium! Actually she was tied for 1st place with Mo Huilan, but then performed this vault:
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(which reminded me of this vault)
- Kochetkova has a medal at World Championships on every event… except for vault. To be fair, she did qualify for vault finals.
Here, performing at the 1994 Worlds Event Finals:
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- She was a floor champion despite the fact that her choice of music didn’t help her much, at times it even seemed to make things harder:
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- Some say she was robbed of a medal on balance beam at 1996 Olympics. It’s not fun finishing 4th :
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Medalists of that competition were: Shannon Miller – Gold, Lilia Podkopayeva – Silver and Gina Gogean – bronze.
- She was an all around champion at the 1994 Goodwill Games. The other Goodwill Games AA champions were: Vera Kolesnikova (1986), Natalia Kalinina (1990), Dominique Moceanu (1998) and Sabina Cojocar (2000).
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- Dina’s last competitive year was 1996 and the last major competition, the Olympic Games. She struggled to come back during 1997 and 1998 but back to back knee surgeries made it extremely difficult. Here’s a summary of Dina’s career in her own words:
“I started gymnastics at the Locomotive club and when I turned eight I was transferred to TsSKA1 to train with Irina and Viktor Razumovskiys. Oh, what a strong group I trained with! I remember I looked at Olga Bicherova and Yelena Shevchenko as the “stars,” but little by little I improved to advance to Krugloye. When the Razumovskiys moved to Japan, I started training with Leonid Yakovlevich Arkayev – he got me to the Olympics. Here, at Stars of the World I said, “Hi” to him and he replied, “I miss you.” I too miss the team and Krugloye very much. It is nice to be at home but gymnastics is our life! If I had a personal coach I could probably recuperate and prepare a program. After all, every athlete should be approached individually.” [Link]
Happy Birthday, Dina Kochetkova!
Article by: Bea Gheorghisor