Birthdate: December 18th, 1980
Birthplace: Saint Petersburg, Russia
Coach: Leonid Arkaev, Kirishov
Club: Dinamo
Began Gymnastics: 1986
Hobbies: reading
Yevgeniya Kuznetsova was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia in mid-December. Six years after her birth, she started gymnastics, and rose rapidly up the Russian ranks.
Yevgeniya first got major international exposure at the 1994 Goodwill Games where she competed on the beam as an exhibition competitor, a representative of local gymnastics. Even though she fell on her mount, she still showed a great and difficult routine.
In 1995, Yevgeniya dominated the Junior circuit, winning most of the major junior titles. She and her Russian teammates, Yulia Korostelieva, Oksana Liapina, Yelena Zamolodchikova, Yelena Produnova, and Svetlana Bakhtina, captured the gold medal at the 1995 Junior Team Europeans. Yevgeniya also won the Junior Internation and the European Olympic Youth Days that year, as well as picking up a bucketfull of individual titles at those competitions.
Yevgeniya competed at the 1996 Olympic, going up first on many events. She won a team silver there with her teammates Svetlana Khorkina, Dina Kochetkova, Roza Galieva, Yelena Grosheva, Yelena Dolgopolova, and Oksana Liapina.
At this year's Russian Nationals, Yevgeniya didn't do too well. She placed 10th AA, yet because many of her Russian training partners are too young to compete in Lausanne, Yevgeniya received a chance to compete at the 1997 World Championships. She competed on all four events, winning a team silver with her teammates Svetlana Khorkina, Yelena Grosheva, Yelena Dolgopolova, Yelena Produnova, and Svetlana Bakhtina. Going into the AA, Yevgeniya was in 6th place, but mistakes on beam (she had to improvise some of her routine) and little mistakes here and there dropped her to sixth place. She also qualified 7th into uneven bars finals, and 2nd into floor exercise finals. In UB finals, she finished 8th place with a score of 9.462 (9.8 start value). Unfortunately for Yevgeniya, Leonid Arkaev, the head coach, decided to take her and Svetlana Bakhtina out of FX finals and put in Svetlana Khorkina and Yelena Produnova instead. Svetlana won a silver, and Yelena, a bronze.
Yevgeniya seems to have many years ahead of her, and I look forward to seeing her lead the Russians to Sydney, Australia.
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