NEWSShawn Johnson Reveals Why She 'Didn't Speak' to Teammate and Friend Nastia Liukin for 8 Years
Shawn Johnson revealed why it took eight years for her to reach out to former teammate Nastia Liukin.
Shawn Johnson revealed why she avoided teammate Nastia Luikin for almost a decade.
Shawn Johnson is the host of the podcast 'Shawn & Andrew.'
“Nastia and I were best friends, training, and at the [2008] Olympics we were roommates,” Johnson, 32, recalled, referring to their competition in Beijing, China. “We were 16 and 18 years old, we were kids."
However, the pressures of fame at such a young age strained their friendship.
“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,” she added.
Nastia Liukin won five medals for the USA at the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
After the Olympics, the pair lost contact for nearly eight years — until some nudging from their loved ones brought them back together.
“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. It also was really confusing for both of us because we were really nervous,” she said of their first meeting after Beijing. “We didn’t know how to rekindle that [friendship]. It was truly within, like, two minutes we were back to being best friends.”
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Shawn Johnson and Andrew East have three kids.
Johnson hadn’t expected Liukin, who is the author of Finding My Shine, to feel the same way she did.
“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.”
Liukin, who has been dating Ben Weyand since 2022, earned a gold medal in the all-around, silver in the team competition and balance beam and uneven bars and bronze in the floor exercise at the 2008 Olympics. She also won nine World medals in her career, including four gold.
Nastia Liukin is currently dating Ben Weyand.
Meanwhile, Johnson is known for her success in the same competition, nabbing a gold medal in the balance beam event alongside three silver medals in the team, all-around and floor exercise competitions.
These days, Johnson is married to NFL player Andrew East in April 2016, with whom she shares three kids — Drew, 4, Jett, 3 and Bear, 9 months.
Access Hollywood interviewed Johnson.
