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Nastia Liukin was a teenager when she was a part of the United States women’s gymnastics team and won gold in the all-around competition during the 2008 Olympics.
She picked up silver medals in the team, uneven bars and balance beam competitions and a bronze medal in the floor exercise. In 2005, she won gold in the uneven bars and the balance beam at the World Championships in Melbourne.
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Nastia Liukin at the 58th Academy of Country Music Awards from Ford Center at The Star on May 11, 2023, in Frisco, Texas. (Gilbert Flores/Penske Media via Getty Images)
Liukin, who is now retired from the sport, always knew that talent and hard work were keys to her success, but was it also something genetic?
Liukin was among the 15 world-class athletes who partnered with Ancestry to take the AncestryDNA test to see whether their genetics may have influenced their athleticism. Some of the key findings included that Liukin is more flexible, more agile, more motivated by others and more determined because of her genetics.
"For me, knowing that I had ‘good genes,’ we’re now being able to look at all the other traits you can have as a human. Not just for athletes, but for everyday," Liukin told Fox News Digital. "Not only are you able to compare it to other athletes, but just to know about it yourself, I feel like is really cool.
"For instance, I always known that I was flexible. I just didn’t know for sure if I was born with that or just something that I just had to work on. But turns out, I was born just naturally gifted with flexibility."
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United States' Nastia Liukin (C), her compatriot Shawn Johnson (R) and China's Yilin Yang (L) pose after the women's individual all-around final of the artistic gymnastics event of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing on August 15, 2008. (Lluis Gene/AFP via Getty Images)
Liukin also pointed to not being born with natural strength and how she had to work harder in the gym to achieve some of those goals over the course of her career.
The results also determined that Liukin was unlikely to be an optimist, which was one of the things that surprised her about the results."
"I was like, wait a second. That’s not right," she said. "I kind of like got defensive but then what I realized was that as an athlete, too, there are some things that you’re born with and there’s other things that you have to work and train so hard for. . . . Now, looking back, I had to really almost like muscle memory, I had to train myself in my brain to become an optimist."
Sports fans can also use AncestryDNA to compete their own DNA results to more than 15 athletes, which begins Thursday.
Nastia Liukin attends Variety + Sportico's Sports and Entertainment Summit, presented by City National Bank, at The Beverly Hilton on July 12, 2024, in Beverly Hills, California. (Alberto Rodriguez/Variety via Getty Images)
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"At Ancestry, we're all about pushing the boundaries of DNA science and innovation to spark personal discoveries," Brian Donnelly, Ancestry’s chief commercial officer, said in a news release. "By enabling customers to compare their DNA traits with these world champion athletes, we're taking this to a whole new level. While the spirit of competition and achievement is being celebrated this summer, we hope to inspire everyone across the globe to explore their DNA to discover their unique potential and understand what makes them truly exceptional."
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