BOGUINSKAIA (USSR-BLR)
Born 1973 in Minsk, Belarus
At age 6, after a period of time in ice skating, began gymnastics with coach Liubov Miromanova, occasionally training at the USSR national training centre in Moscow, Lake Krugloye. Her ambition was boundless. She was determined to train a triple dismount off uneven bars. She wanted to be the first to compete the double twisting Tsukuhara (Boguinskaia’s Tsukuhara).
Soviet national coach of the junior team, Anatoly Kozeev, supported Miromanova and Boguinskaia, and her first major international assignments followed at the age of 12.
By 1987 she was winning medals at the World Championships.
And by 1988 was hanging Olympic gold in her medal cabinet.
Great sadness overcame Svetlana and her loved ones when her coach, Liubov Miromanova, committed suicide in the days immediately following the 1988 Olympics. Svetlana thought of retirement; but gymnastics was her life.
1989 saw Svetlana take European and World AA gold medals.
Svetlana never found a single replacement for Miromanova, who had been like a mother to her. Coaches who helped her along the way include Liudmilla Popcovich from her home gymnasium in Minsk, Alexander Alexandrov, head coach of the USSR WAG team from 1989 (Svetlana named her son Brandon Alexander after him), head coach of the USSR junior team Anatoly Kozeev, Oleg Ostapenko (personal coach to team mates Lysenko and Kalinina and tumbling coach to the national team), Yuri Kozyrev (personal coach to Elena Sazonenkova). Much later, in the second phase of her career in the mid 1990s, she trained again with Alexandrov, and briefly with Bela Karolyi.
1990 - five gold medals at the Europeans in Athens, and a gold on floor with a simply sublime presentation that few television commentators could find the words to describe (to speak over this would be to defile it).
In the 1991 Worlds she took the silver AA and then ruled the BB.