Some are born great...
..some achieve greatness...
..and some have greatness thrust upon them.
And some become great because
their local ballet school closes down.
That is what happened to Larisa Latynina
and it led her, at the tender age of 11,
to pursue a significant career change.
Between 1956 and 1964,
Latynina dominated the sport of gymnastics,
winning 18 medals across three Olympic Games
and becoming the most decorated Olympian of all time.
Born in 1934, Latynina grew up
in the Ukrainian port of Kherson.
Her grounding in ballet was invaluable
and her poise and sense of rhythm
was to help her become the leading gymnast of her era.
Two years after her international debut
came the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne.
Here she was up against the Hungarian Agnes Keleti -
the first in a series of great head-to-head battles
in Olympic gymnastics in the coming years.
Latynina won five medals.
Keleti took gold here, one of three that she managed.
Number 71, Larisa Latynina of Russia.
Here is one of the world's great women gymnasts in action.
Never a falter, every movement timed and precise.
A silver medal in the uneven bars.
A team gold for the Soviet Union.
An individual gold medal in the vault.
And then the floor exercise gold medal
was shared between them both.
Latynina took the most prestigious of them all -
a gold medal for overall individual performance.
Her haul guaranteed stardom back home,
and also meant that the Soviet Union
beat the United States' medal tally
for the first time.
Pressure at Rome 1960 was intense.
There are very few sports where athletes stay at the top
from one Games to the next.
In 1960, the gymnastic events
were held in the ancient ruins of
the baths of Imperial Rome.
The imposing ruins of the Baths of Caracalla provide an ideal
setting for a gymnastic display.
They were a perfect backdrop
for the brilliant Larisa Latynina.
She won two silvers,
in the balance beam and the uneven bars,
a bronze in the vault...
..and then a gold in her best event,
the floor exercise.
The Soviet Union retained their team event gold medal
and, for the second time,
Latynina was judged first
in the individual overall event.
It was her sixth Olympic gold medal.
In Tokyo 1964, Latynina was 30 years old
but still had what it took to compete
with the best in the world.
The new star was Czech gymnast Vera Caslavska,
22 years old and a brilliant performer.
Latynina won the team event
gold medal with the Soviet Union.
Caslavska won a gold medal in the balance beam.
Latynina won a silver in the vault,
with Caslavska winning gold in that event.
Caslavska took another individual medal
in the uneven bars.
Latynina, amazingly,
won a third consecutive gold medal in the floor exercise.
But Caslavska was the winner of the coveted overall title.
If that was a disappointment to Latynina,
she could reflect on yet another
hugely successful Olympic Games,
where she earned two gold medals,
two silvers and two bronze.
That haul took her to 18 Olympic medals,
making her the most successful
Olympic athlete of all time,
in any discipline, male or female.
She was to hold that record
for almost half a century
until American swimmer Michael Phelps finally
beat it at London 2012.
Latynina, 81, was there to watch,
wondering what took them so long.