Nellie Kim — gymnast; sports official with roots in the USSR
Nellie Vladimirovna Kim was born on 29 July 1957 in the village of Shurab, in the Leninabad Region of the Tajik SSR, the daughter of Vladimir Kim, a Sakhalin Korean, and Alfiya Safina, a Tatar. Soon after her birth the family moved to Chimkent, in the southern Kazakh SSR, where her father worked at the slate factory. She later described herself as a person of the world: born in Tajikistan, raised in Kazakhstan, a member of the Soviet national team, and afterwards a resident of Belarus and the United States.
At about nine or ten she joined the children's and youth sports school in Chimkent under the coach Vladimir Baidin, and one of her first successes was a republican competition held in the city in 1969. In 1975 she won the all-around title at the Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR in Leningrad and became European champion on floor.
At the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, aged nineteen and leading the Soviet team, she won gold in the team event, on vault and on floor, and silver in the all-around behind Nadia Comăneci. She scored a perfect 10 for a Tsukahara vault with a full twist, a skill performed for the first time at the Olympics, and another on floor: she was the second woman to score a 10 at the Games and the first to do so on those two apparatus. In 1977 she moved to Minsk, trained under Nikolai Miligulo and represented the Byelorussian SSR within the Soviet team. At the 1980 Olympics in Moscow she won two more gold medals, in the team event and on floor. Her record also includes five world and two European titles, and several skills in the Code of Points bear her name.
After retiring she coached and judged, joined the women's technical committee of the International Gymnastics Federation in 1996, and in October 2004 was elected its president. In that role, with the federation's president Bruno Grandi, she helped design the 2006 revision of the Code of Points that replaced the perfect 10 with open-ended scoring. She holds a doctorate from the Lesgaft University of Physical Education in St Petersburg, became vice-president of the federation in 2016 and has served in the Belarusian gymnastics federation.
"Born in the Tajik SSR, grew up in Chimkent in the Kazakh SSR, moved to Minsk in 1977 and represented the Byelorussian SSR; later lived in Belarus and the United States."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Shurab, Leninabad Region, Tajik SSR (now Tajikistan); raised in Chimkent, Kazakh SSR
Born in 1957 in Shurab, in the Tajik SSR, to a Sakhalin Korean father and a Tatar mother, she grew up in Chimkent in the Kazakh SSR, trained in the Soviet sports system and won five Olympic gold medals for the USSR in 1976 and 1980.
Father Vladimir Kim, a Sakhalin Korean, worked at the Chimkent slate factory; mother Alfiya Safina was Tatar.
Shurab, Leninabad Region, Tajik SSR (now Tajikistan); raised in Chimkent, Kazakh SSR. At the time, this region was one of the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union.