At age 36, Rustam Sharipov has lived enough for three lifetimes. He was born in Dushanbe, Tadjikistan, in what was formerly the Soviet Union, where he began gymnastics at the age of six. There he trained under Anatoly Ryndin, and quickly rose to the highest level of Tadjik gymnastics, earning a spot on the junior Soviet National Team and an invitation to train in Ukraine, his mother’s homeland, and a much more advanced and developed gymnastics training situation.

At the age of 15, Sharipov left Ryndin and his family to live in Kharkov, Ukraine. In 1988, only three years later, he was the Soviet Junior National Champion.

Rustam continued to climb the ranks and by 1991 he was named alternate to the USSR World Championships team.

In 1992, Sharipov earned his first Olympic gold medal as part of the Unified Team in Barcelona, Spain. After those games, Sharipov, along with Grigori Misiutin and Igor Korobchinsky, formed the core of the now independent Ukrainian team. At first, Sharipov was far from confident in his new role as star, and considered premature retirement when his coach relocated to Canada in 1993. But instead, Sharipov went his own way. He left the national training center in Kiev to work out in Kharkov with Sergei Brizha. This unconventional approach paid off. In 1994, he won his first individual world medal, silver, on parallel bars. The next year he won the gold.

In his second Olympic Games, in Atlanta 1996, Sharipov had what he calls his "best-ever" competition, finishing 8^th in the all-around, third with his team, and claiming a second Olympic gold, this time on parallel bars.

But after winning the gold, life proved much harder than Sharipov had expected. A move to Australia lasted less than a year, and his six-year marriage to fellow gymnast Tatiana Riabtseva fell apart soon after their return to Ukraine. Sharipov was separated from his two children, Evgeniy and Dasha. By early 1999, Sharipov was forced into retirement by a back injury. At risk for paralysis, doctors told him that if he wanted to keep walking, he had to stop doing gymnastics.

Financial tolls of failed business ventures and the need to support not only his own family, but also his mother and father, who had moved to Ukraine after 1996 when conditions in Tadjikistan became unsafe, made things even more difficult.

In 2000, following the untimely death of his fiancée, Sharipov hit an all-time low. The only choice seemed to be starting over, and the US seemed the only place to do it. Arriving in the States with little more than his reputation and a few contacts from previous visits, Sharipov set out to rebuild his life.

After six months in Oklahoma, Sharipov accepted a coaching position at the Houston Gymnastics Academy, signing on as Kevin Mazeika’s assistant coach. Sharipov’s personal life also improved. In Oklahoma, Sharipov met, fell in love with and married Amber Adams, an artist, in 2002.The couple had their first child together, daughter Ksenia, in December 2003. Following another tragic loss, the unfortunate and unexpected death of Sharipov’s son, Evgeniy, of meningitis, in the summer of 2005, Rustam and Amber were able to celebrate the birth of their second daughter, Maya, in August of the same year. In fall of 2005, Rustam returned to Oklahoma with his family upon accepting the position as Assistant Coach at the University of Oklahoma. Since then, the family has celebrated the birth of their third daughter, Isabella, in the summer of 2007.