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Yelena Davydova

The Olympic Games, or Olympics, is an international multi-sport event taking place every four years which comprises of summer and winter games. Though the first ancient games were held in 776 B.C, the modern games started from 1896.The unity of the 5 continents is shown on the Olympic flag by five colorful intertwined rings of red, blue, green, yellow, and black, created by Baron Pierre de Coubertin to represent atleast one color of the participating country’s national flag.

Yelena Victorovna Davydova was born on August 7, 1961 in Voronezh, 400 miles south of Moscow, is a Russian gymnast, winner of the Olympic all around title in Gymnastics at the 1980 Summer Olympics. Davydova became interested in gymnastics at age six after seeing on television the famous Soviet Olympic gold medallists Larissa Petrik and Natalia Kuchinskaya. She attempted alone to be enrolled in Voronezh's famous Spartak Gymnastics school, yet was turned away, as she was very small, and considered at the time to have the wrong physique for the sport.

In 1973 Yelena Davydova won her first International Tournament. In 1974 she became a member of the USSR, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics junior squad. At the 1975 USSR junior Championships Davydova finished 3rd and won golds on vault and bars. In August Davydova won the Antibes tournament in France by 0.6 points. In addition, she won gold on the vault, and silvers on the events beam, bars, and floor. She finished 2nd in event finals at the Riga International with golds on beam, bars, and the vault, with a bronze on floor. In December of '76, Davydova finished 3rd at the Chunichi Cup in Japan, and won a gold on vault and a bronze on floor at the Tokyo Cup.

Davydova also participated in the 1981 World Championships, her last major international event. She finished third in the all-around final after an improper landing in the balance beam event. She won silver on floor and bronze on bars. She would have won gold on vault but was unable to stand the incredibly difficult vault of her own invention, full twist on front tuck off. Davydova is the only one who has done a vault that a male gymnast has not. She remains the only IOC, International Olympic Committee Olympic champion, since 1980, to have competed in a World Championships.

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