Lina Cheryazova

Lina Cheryazova was born on 1 November 1968 in Tashkent; her parents, natives of Novosibirsk, came to Tashkent in 1966 to help rebuild the city after the earthquake. From 1976 she did gymnastics (coach Tamara Yerofeyeva) and later moved to freestyle skiing (coach Dmitry Kavunov). She graduated from the Uzbek Institute of Physical Culture in 1994.

She first took part in a World Cup event in December 1989 for the Soviet team (9th), and was USSR champion in 1990 and 1991. After her first World Cup win in February 1992 she won 13 of the 18 events she entered over the next two years. She was fifth in the demonstration event at the 1992 Albertville Games, world champion in 1993 in Austria and World Cup winner in 1993 and 1994.

At the 1994 Lillehammer Games she won the aerials, the first women's Olympic champion in the discipline: ranked 12th in qualifying, she jumped first in the final and beat Sweden's Marie Lindgren by less than a point. In July 1994 she suffered a serious head injury in training at Lake Placid and spent two weeks in a coma, but returned to the sport, competing at the 1996 Asian Games in Harbin and finishing 13th at the 1998 Nagano Olympics before retiring.

In 1999 she moved to Novosibirsk, her parents' home city, where she died on 23 March 2019 after a long illness. She was an Honoured Athlete of Uzbekistan (1994), received the Uzbekiston iftixori title (1998) and the Mehnat shuhrati order, and was named an Honoured Master of Sport of Russia in 2006.