Olga Strazheva

Who is Olga Strazheva?

Olga Vladimirovna Strazheva is a retired Ukrainian gymnast. She competed at the 1988 Summer Olympics in all artistic gymnastics events and won a gold medal with the Soviet team. Individually she was fifth in the uneven bars and sixth on the vault, but then suffered a serious injury on the balance beam and therefore failed the last two events.

She won another gold with the Soviet team at the 1989 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, along with two individual bronze medals. The same year she collected two more individual medals at the European championships. She is the first female gymnast to perform a double frontal salto on the floor.

She retired in 1990 due to injuries and later joined a circus company in Germany, where she performed together with her daughter Anna, a rhytmic gymnast. She married twice, second time in 2008 to Ivan Vanyuk, a colleague from the university where she teaches physical education.