It is difficult to believe, but Elena Vitrichenko has been at the pinnacle of the sports fame for almost 9 years. In 1991 15-year-old Elena had already become the winner of the junior European Championship. Since that time a plethora of bright stars have emerged from the gymnastics’ firmanent. However, Vitrichenko was still in the cohort of the best till her retirement in 2000.

Perharps, the main reason of Vitrichenko’s longevity in sports is her adjoining with fanaticism love to rhythmic gymnastics. Elena approached her second Olimpic Games at the height of her fame after a triumphant chain of victories and bright achievements on the gymnastics carpet. Even now only a few gymnasts can match her filigree work of body movements, sculptural expressiveness of poses and chiseled images of routines.

Huge experience in competitions of the highest rank allowed Vitrichenko distribute strength, “to take a blow” at some failures, compensating them by the inspired execution of her best routines at the most important moment.

Some achievements of the Ukrainian gymnast can be surely called exceptional. For example, having competed on the 7 World Championships (this statistic is also a record in gymnastics), Vitrichenko earned 9 gold, 6 silver and 6 bronze medals. No gymnast in the world has ever had such a collection. 9 times Elena was standing on the 1^st place of European Championships. There has also been a bronze medal of the Atlanta Olimpics and 14 victories of Grand Prix series. Yes, perharps, the sports gods wanted the star “by the name of Elena Vitrichenko” to come out and to shine over the gymnastics’ horizon for a long-long time...