Fifteen-year-old Russian Yulia Lipnitskaya has become Russia’s youngest athlete ever to win a gold medal at the Winter Olympics after her splendid free skate in the team figure skating event.  She is six days younger than US figure skater Tara Lipinski was when she won a gold medal in Nagano in 1998.

Born 5 June 1998 in the city of Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains, she first stood on the ice at four years old. By the age of 10, she had won every tournament in her city. Throughout the entire 2011– 2012 season, Yulia had no falls on the ice in any her competitions. Lipnitskaya’s success was followed by a silver medal at the senior level of the 2012 Russian Championships and gold at the 2012 Russian Junior Championships. It was there that she set her first record