Nastia Liukin was a youngster when she was part of the United States girls’s gymnastics crew and gained gold within the all-around competitors in the course of the 2008 Olympics.
She picked up silver medals within the crew, uneven bars and steadiness beam competitions and a bronze medal within the ground train. In 2005, she gained gold within the uneven bars and the steadiness beam on the World Championships in Melbourne.
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Liukin, who’s now retired from the game, all the time knew that expertise and arduous work had been keys to her success, however was it additionally one thing genetic?
Liukin was among the many 15 world-class athletes who partnered with Ancestry to take the AncestryDNA test to see whether or not their genetics might have influenced their athleticism. Some of the important thing findings included that Liukin is extra versatile, extra agile, extra motivated by others and extra decided due to her genetics.
“For me, understanding that I had ‘good genes,’ we’re now having the ability to have a look at all the opposite traits you may have as a human. Not only for athletes, however for on a regular basis,” Liukin informed Fox News Digital. “Not solely can you evaluate it to different athletes, however simply to find out about it your self, I really feel like is admittedly cool.
“For occasion, I all the time recognized that I used to be versatile. I simply didn’t know for certain if I used to be born with that or simply one thing that I simply needed to work on. But seems, I used to be born simply naturally gifted with flexibility.”
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United States’ Nastia Liukin (C), her compatriot Shawn Johnson (R) and China’s Yilin Yang (L) pose after the ladies’s particular person all-around remaining of the creative gymnastics occasion of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing on August 15, 2008. (Lluis Gene/AFP by way of Getty Images)
Liukin additionally pointed to not being born with pure power and the way she needed to work more durable within the gymnasium to realize a few of these targets over the course of her profession.
The outcomes additionally decided that Liukin was unlikely to be an optimist, which was one of many issues that shocked her concerning the outcomes.”
“I used to be like, wait a second. That’s not proper,” she stated. “I type of like acquired defensive however then what I spotted was that as an athlete, too, there are some issues that you just’re born with and there’s different issues that it’s a must to work and practice so arduous for. . . . Now, trying again, I needed to actually virtually like muscle reminiscence, I needed to practice myself in my mind to turn into an optimist.”
Sports followers may use AncestryDNA to compete their very own DNA outcomes to greater than 15 athletes, which begins Thursday.
Nastia Liukin attends Variety + Sportico’s Sports and Entertainment Summit, introduced by City National Bank, at The Beverly Hilton on July 12, 2024, in Beverly Hills, California. (Alberto Rodriguez/Variety by way of Getty Images)
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“At Ancestry, we’re all about pushing the boundaries of DNA science and innovation to spark private discoveries,” Brian Donnelly, Ancestry’s chief business officer, stated in a information launch. “By enabling clients to match their DNA traits with these world champion athletes, we’re taking this to a complete new stage. While the spirit of competitors and achievement is being celebrated this summer time, we hope to encourage everybody throughout the globe to discover their DNA to find their distinctive potential and perceive what makes them really distinctive.”
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