Shawn Johnson East looks back on the time she didn’t speak to her former Olympic teammate and best friend Nastia Liukin for eight years.
While it is on Access to Hollywood“Behind the Easel,” Johnson East shared the real reason the two lost touch for nearly a decade.
“Nastia and I were best friends, we trained, and we were roommates at the Olympics,” Johnson East (32) said. “We were 16 and 18 years old, we were kids. I felt like we were under so much spotlight and scrutiny that we were each other’s main, biggest competitors. And we figured out how to be best friends and competitors on the competition floor. But when the world started kind of throwing around how we should deal with it, they said we should also be each other’s worst enemies.”
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The rift lasted eight years, Johnson East says — until their important people intervened.
“Our guys at the time got tired of listening to us talk about each other so they said. ‘Enough of this, just go talk to each other again,’ and we did,” she recalled. “And since then, it’s like we haven’t skipped a beat.”
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Still, for the four-time Olympic medalist and Liukin – who won gold in the all-around at the 2008 Beijing Games – butterflies were on the menu at their lunch together.
(Shawn Johnson Gallery) Shawn Johnson and Nastia Liukin. © Elsa / Getty Images Shawn Johnson returns to the Olympics 16 years after winning gold — this time with his three children (Exclusive)
“It was incredible,” recalls the mother who welcomed her third child with husband Andrew East in December 2023. “It was also very confusing for both of us because we were very nervous. We didn’t know how to start it again… and we really became best friends again after two minutes.”
Now, Liukin, 35, and Johnson are a constant in each other’s orbit.
“We both said the same thing, ‘I don’t know what happened, but I miss you and I miss us,'” Johnson recalled of their reconciliation. “And it’s been that way ever since.”
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Source: HIS Education