Gymnast Shawn Johnson has detailed why she refused to speak with her best friend and former Olympics teammate Nastia Liukin for eight years.
Johnson, 32, who won the gold medal for balance beam at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, spoke about her friendship hiatus with Liukin, 35, during a recent interview with Access Hollywood.
“Nastia and I were best friends, training, and at the [2008] Olympics we were roommates,” Johnson recalled. “We were 16 and 18 years old, we were kids.”
Though the pair had worked out a way to be both competitors and friends, the public’s desire for the them to be bitter rivals drove a wedge between the phenoms.
“I felt like we were under the spotlight and scrutiny so much to be each other’s top, biggest competitors,” Johnson explained.
“And we had figured out on the competition floor how to be best friends and competitors. But when the world started kind of interjecting how we should handle it, they said we should also be each other’s worst enemies as well.”
After the Beijing games, Johnson and Liukin didn’t speak for eight years. Only after their significant others intervened did the gymnasts get back in touch and revive their friendship.
“Our boyfriends at the time got so tired of hearing us talk about each other that they said, ‘Enough of this, just go talk to each other again,’ and we did,” Johnson revealed. “And ever since then, it’s just like we haven’t skipped a beat.”
“It was amazing,” Johnson said of her and Liukin’s reunion, but added, “It also was really confusing for both of us because we were really nervous.”
“We didn’t know how to rekindle that [friendship],” the gold medalist confessed, though their nervousness was short-lived. “It was truly within, like, two minutes we were back to being best friends.”
“We both said the same thing, ‘I don’t know what happened but I miss you and I miss us,’” Johnson said of the reconciliation. “And it’s been that way ever since.”
In addition to her gold medal for the balance beam event, Johnson, who married former NFL player Andrew East in April 2016, took home three silver medals at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, for floor exercise, individual all-around and team all-around.
Liukin won the coveted gold medal for individual all-around in women’s gymnastics that year, also nabbing silver medals for the uneven bars, balance beam, and team all-around plus a bronze medal for the floor event.
Johnson retired from gymnastics in 2012, after a long battle to overcome a knee injury that ultimately prevented her from going to the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Liukin retired from the sport that same year after she failed to make the United States’ 2012 Olympic team.
