Irina Viner

Irina Aleksandrovna Viner was born on 30 July 1948 in Samarkand, into the family of the painter Aleksandr Viner, later a People’s Painter of Uzbekistan, and the physician Zoya Viner. She took up rhythmic gymnastics at eleven in Tashkent, training under Liliya Petrova and Eleonora Sumarokova, and was three times champion of Uzbekistan.

She finished Tashkent school no. 110 with a silver medal in 1965 and graduated from the Uzbek State Institute of Physical Culture in 1969. She worked at a republican youth sports school for the Olympic reserve in Tashkent and from 1972 to 1992 coached the Tashkent and Uzbekistan rhythmic gymnastics teams.

Since 1992 she has lived and worked in Moscow, first as head coach of the Olympic Training Center and, from 2001 until February 2025, as head coach of the Russian national rhythmic gymnastics team. From 2008 to 2024 she was president of the All-Russian Rhythmic Gymnastics Federation, and she has served as vice-president of the rhythmic gymnastics technical committee of the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG).

Her pupils include Olympic individual all-around champions Yulia Barsukova (Sydney 2000), Alina Kabaeva (Athens 2004), Evgeniya Kanaeva (Beijing 2008 and London 2012) and Margarita Mamun (Rio de Janeiro 2016). Several others of her gymnasts won Olympic silver medals.

She defended her candidate’s (2003) and doctoral (2013) dissertations in pedagogy at the Lesgaft National State University of Physical Education, Sport and Health in Saint Petersburg, and holds the title of professor. In 2015 she was named Hero of Labour of the Russian Federation, and the same year the International Olympic Committee awarded her the Olympic Order in silver. In 2019 the Palace of Gymnastics bearing her name opened at the Luzhniki complex in Moscow.