You try to share like what makes you real, you know, and it's not just those moments, those fairy tale moments of winning a gold medal, but it's the days where you want to quit and you don't want to go to training or it's snowing outside or whatever, you know, whatever it is and you push yourself through those moments and you know, it's worth it. Welcome to the Just Women Sports Podcast where we talk to the biggest athletes in the world

about the untold stories behind their success.

I'm Kelly O'Hara and my guest today is Nastia

Lucan. Nastia Lucan is the definition of a gymnastics legend. At the

2008 Olympics in Beijing she won five Olympic, including gold in the individual all around.

Nastia also won four world championship golds in her career and was a four-time all-around

U.S. national champion, winning twice as a junior and twice as a senior.

Altogether Nastia won 32 international medals including 15 gold in her gymnastics career.

Nastia welcome to the show. Thank you for having me.

Well, I'm stoked because you are our first gymnast to come onto the pod and you have more medals than I can keep track of from Olympics and

world championships and national championships and while I my most advanced move I can do as a gymnast is a round off which I'm pretty proud of

Gymnastics.

Yeah, exactly.

USA gymnastics was like my first intro to female athletes truly from like the 1996 Olympics so I feel like you

were that for so many girls you know because sometimes like for me I didn't even

know I played soccer I wasn't even a gymnast but USA gymnastics is like so freaking cool

So I'm stoked to talk to you about that and then I'm also excited because your first athlete who is

Retired and you've moved on from the sport and you have that perspective of like what happens next and who am I and that sort of thing which I'm really excited and interested to talk to you about today. But before we get to that, we're going to go back to the beginning because your story, your beginning is

crazy. You were born in Moscow, Russia. I was. So yeah, both my parents were gymnasts. So as the only child, gymnastics definitely was just like in my blood and in my genes, but you know, they competed at the Olympics in the world championships so they knew how difficult the sport was in really any professional sport at that level and so for me

We moved to the United States when I was about two and a half years old.

Okay, and how did that move come about because I read your dad was on the 1987 Soviet

stamp? Yeah, is that true? Yeah, which is crazy. I know. So yeah, so he can be at the 88 games the year after they won two gold and two silver medals and and so I was born in a few years after that. And for them, they really, two reasons, basically,

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