He started gymnastics at age 5, when two coaches - Aleksandr Genkin and Vladimir Shchegolev - came to his kindergarten in Voronezh looking for potential gymnasts. His father (Vyacheslav Nikolayevich) was thrilled but his mother wasn't: "When my parents learned that I'd been accepted into the gymnastics group, my dad was really happy and said, 'That's great! They'll make a man out of him.' But my mother, Tatyana Grigoryevna, was upset. She had dreams that I'd become some sort of 'scholar.' When I was little, I really liked to read books and I'd memorize poems." Now he doesn't have time to read. When he's home in Voronezh, he either goes to school - he's a 3rd-year student at the Institute of Physical Culture - or visits friends. He says he has a lot of friends. :) He has a younger sister (her name isn't given) and she's not involved in sports: "She was invited to do gymnastics, but I talked her out of it. I saw what heavy workloads our girls [the Russian gymnasts] have to bear, and I decided that that wasn't the kind of life for my little sister. She'll be 14 soon..." Nikolai's b-day is November 11.

View of new Code: "They had the right idea, but things turned out as they always do. You look at the programs of athletes from different countries and are amazed to see that everyone's doing exactly the same elements and combinations, as if it's compulsories. As for honest judging, it never existed in gymnastics and probably never will. It's very easy for the judges to raise anyone to great heights and then knock him down. In order to win honestly, a gymnast must be twice as good as everyone else. Only then will there be no doubts that he's the best. But if the gymnast makes a mistake on the next apparatus, the judges begin to be harder and harder on him... [It doesn't matter that I won an Olympic team medal.] Each time out you have to prove to the judges that you're a champion. But that's impossible; we aren't robots after all. We make mistakes." His favorite event is pommel horse. He loved it before Atlanta, but then he "cooled" toward it because he made "a serious mistake." His idol is Valentin Mogilny - he really admires the way he worked on pommel horse.

He's not sure what he wants to do after his competitive career is over. Since he's studying at an Institute of Physical Culture, he'll most likely be involved in some sort of physical education. "But maybe I'll enroll in medical school and become a doctor of sports medicine."

Besides gymnastics, he likes diving.

Answer to question, "Who among your teammates is your best friend?" - "Aleksei Nemov. We share a room. Lyosha is two years older than I am and is more experienced. I try to learn from him and from my other older teammates things that I don't yet know how to do. For example, I'd really like to be more uninhibited and more confident in myself."

Thanks to Beth Squires for the contribution