Yulia Raskina

Raskina was a three-time national champion and won her first senior international medal at the 1997 World Championships in Berlin, where she won the team silver. She became the 1999 World Championships all-around silver medalist and was a two-time European all-around silver medalist in 1999 and 2000. Raskina won the gold medal with the ball at the 2000 European Championships in Zaragosa.

Raskina marked a career high by winning the silver in the all-around competition at the 2000 Summer Olympics held in Sydney, Australia, ahead of then Olympic gold favorite Alina Kabaeva, who took the bronze medal. Raskina lost the gold to Yulia Barsukova by 0.084 points. Had her hoop not gone out of bounds by an inch, which was a mandatory 0.1 deduction, she would have won the gold. Raskina competed infrequently following the Sydney Olympics and finally retired from competitive rhythmic gymnastics in 2003.

In 2005 and 2006, Raskina took part in Cirque du Soleil's Corteo alongside former Ukrainian rhythmic gymnast Tamara Yerofeeva. She won the Belarusian TV project "Star Dances" with professional dancer Denis Moryasin and was selected to represent Belarus at the Eurovision Dance Contest.

Raskina currently works as a coach for the German national team in rhythmic gymnastics. Her coaching style includes teaching her students to focus on the music to prevent anxiety and building throughout the season to the World Championships: "I’m not asking them to do clean routines in March, April, May, June, or July. I ask for clean maybe only in the last two weeks before the World Championships. I don’t want to stress them so much."^[1]

In 2022, she and René Spies were named German Coaches of the Year by the German Olympic Sports Confederation.^[2]

Notable trainees include:

• Darja Varfolomeev - Olympic all-around champion (2024), multiple Rhythmic Gymnastics European Championships gold medalist and three-time consecutive World champion^[1]
• Margarita Kolosov- finalist at the World Championships and European Championships, medallist at the World Cups, and 4th place at the 2024 Olympic Games^[3]
• Anastasia Simakova - ball silver medallist in the 2025 European Championships and team gold medalist at the 2025 World Championships^[4]
• Lada Pusch - ball silver medallist in the 2023 Junior World Championships^[5]

• List of select Jewish gymnasts