“The Sochi bid for the 2014 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games represents an incredible opportunity to showcase the new Russia and allow the country to embrace the Olympic Movement. Sochi 2014 would be the first time Russia has ever hosted the Winter Games and would benefit enormously from the legacy the Olympics would leave behind. From an athlete’s perspective, Sochi’s plans are very thorough and with just 11 venues in two clusters, aim to make the Games the most compact and efficient in Olympic history.“

Svetlana Khorkina is a two-time Olympic champion and the most successful female gymnast of modern times. Famous for her innovative and difficult moves, she became known as ’the Queen of the Bars’ through her domination of the apparatus.

Khorkina won her first international medals at the 1994 World Championships in Brisbane. After medal success in four categories at the 1995 European Cup, Khorkina won gold in the uneven bars at the Atlanta 1996 Olympic Games and silver in the All-Around category.

She retained her gold medal in the uneven bars at the Sydney 2000 Olympics and won a silver medal in the floor exercise. By this stage she had won five consecutive gold medals at World Championships and two Olympic titles, making her the most accomplished gymnast ever on a single apparatus. From 1995 to 2001, she won every World and Olympic title on the uneven bars.

Despite claiming to 'feel her age' in 2003, Khorkina entered the 2003 World Championships and became World All-Around champion for a third time, a feat that had never before been accomplished by a woman. At the Athens 2004 Olympics, Khorkina took the silver medal in the All-Around competition, becoming only the second female gymnast in history to medal in her third Olympic Games. She retired from gymnastics following the 2004 Olympics, with a record 6 moves named after her in the Artistic Gymnastics Code of Points.

Khorkina was born in Belgorod, Russia. She is married and has a son.

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