GRACEFUL FALL

Liukin’s Career Ends with Face Plant

Olympic gymnast calls it “emotional but amazing.”

U.S. gymnast Nastia Liukin has fallen enough times to know how to pick herself up gracefully—and that’s exactly what she did after landing on her face in a career-ending attempt to make it to the Olympics for a second time. Having won the gold medal in 2008, 23-year-old Liukin was trying to be the first gymnastics champion to return to the Games since Nadia Comaneci in 1980. Her face plant wasn’t pretty, but she took the fail in stride and brought 18,000 people in the audience to their feet. “It was an emotional but amazing way to end my career,” she told NBC afterwards and later tweeted, “I will remember this moment for the rest of my life.”