Of course, it's always in the back of everyone's mind,
you know, the Olympic Games, that's huge, you know?!
I do it just because I love it
and I want to be one of the best.
Artistic gymnastics champion Nastia Liukin
was always destined for greatness.
Her father, Valeri, was an Olympic champion in the sport
and her mother, Anna,
was a world champion rhythmic gymnast.
Both competed for the former Soviet Union.
Nastia was born in Moscow
but moved to the United States
with her parents when she was young.
I think I was about three
when we first moved to the US from Russia
and both my mom and dad,
they were coaches at a gym in New Orleans.
I was always in the gym with them just playing around.
And I guess those are pretty much
my first memories in gymnastics.
After that, we moved to Texas,
and they started to build a gym here.
She was with us in the gym all the time
doing somersaults and playing around on the apparatus.
She'd copy the children we were training
and we noticed that she was better than those older kids.
My wife and I had a chat
and decided to include Nastia in a small gymnastics group
and that's how it all started.
At 16, Nastia was spending most of her time at her parents' gym
on the outskirts of Dallas.
Having swept all before her on the junior stage,
Nastia was recognised
as a rising star of the gymnastics world
and it was being widely predicted
that she would dominate the sport
in the years to come.
And she knew exactly what it was going to take.
A lot of hard work.
You know, that's pretty much all... That's pretty much it.
A bunch of hard work and a lot of hours and repetition
and turns put into it and a lot of dedication.
Waking up at seven o'clock every morning,
to tell you the truth,
it's not easy, especially those days
where you just want to stay in bed and sleep in.
But it's those days that you do wake up
and those are the days that you actually get better.
Nastia makes so many sacrifices for her sport
and wants to be the best.
She wants to win, just like I did.
It's never been very difficult for me to enforce her to train.
Well, not enforce, that's the wrong word.
I should say it's always been easy for me
to inspire her to train.
I think my biggest strength, being a gymnast,
obviously it's not my physical strength.
I guess it's more my dance and my technique.
We work a lot, me and my dad work a lot on technique,
just nailing those skills perfectly,
trying to get them done as best as I can
because that's kind of where
I think that I step apart from the other gymnasts
is my technique and my form.
So I guess that's kind of where my strength is.
Also, we work a lot on dance too.
And try to get my beam routines
and my floor routines really graceful and unique.
More of the other gymnasts,
they do a kind of a different style than I do.
I know I do gymnastics for myself,
and I want to be one of the best gymnasts in the world,
and neither of my parents,
they've never pushed me into gymnastics.
They kind of pushed me the opposite way
when I was little, just starting gymnastics.
They knew how hard it was, going through all the injuries,
it's a really hard sport
and I know they kind of didn't want me to do it,
but then when I started and they saw how much I love it,
they just want the best for me
and they wanted me to do what I really love.
So I don't feel pressure at all
because I know they're not putting pressure on me,
or pushing me to do it.
I just think I do it just because I love it
and I want to be one of the best.
As part of her training programme,
her dad encouraged her to deal with her aches and pains
by going to visit an acupuncturist.
I guess I've been doing it
for about four or five years and, before me,
my dad and my mom, they both did it back in Russia
to help their little injuries,
so I guess it just kind of carried over
and they thought I should try it.
More pain in here, less pain in the gym!
I go pretty much once a week on a regular basis
and I think it helps a lot
just for those little nagging injuries.
Nastia grew up as an only child.
In March 2006,
the Liukin family had just moved into a new house
and they'd also just bought two dogs, Lexi and Rex.
Come on, Lexi. Lexi, come on. Go!
We never really talk about gym at home.
Sometimes we'll bring it up,
or we'll watch one of my competitions,
but it's never like every day we come home
and think about how that day went
or what went wrong or what went right,
what I did good.
So really we just keep the gym at the gym,
and at home he's my dad.
Of course, medals are great
and it's lovely to see a smile on your child's face,
but it's not the most important thing.
Being a mum, I want my daughter to be a good person.
I'm just as happy when she does well at school,
or if she overcomes a difficult situation in life.
Right now, there's other things more than the Olympics.
There's World Championships this year again
and then the next year.
So, everyone always thinks about the Olympics,
and I think about it too,
I'm not going to say I don't,
but right now I'm just trying to think of one day at a time,
one step at a time, and the next few meets coming up
and then hopefully, at the end of the year, Worlds again.
To be honest, I don't think that Nastia has reached
anywhere near her potential yet.
The really big competitions are still to come.
It's her dream to make it to the Olympics
and my wife and I will be with her every step of the way.