Danell Leyva
| Danell Leyva | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| — Gymnast — | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Full name | Danell Johan Leyva | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Country represented |
 United States
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| Born |
October 30, 1991 Matanzas, Cuba |
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| Residence | Miami, Florida | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Height | 5 ft 7 in (1.70 m) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Discipline | Men's artistic gymnastics | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Level | International elite | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Years on national team | 2004 – present | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Club | Universal Gymnastics | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Head coach(es) | Yin Alvarez | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Medal record
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Danell Johan Leyva (born October 30, 1991) is a Cuban-American gymnast who competes for the United States. He is the 2012 Olympic individual all-around bronze medalist and 2016 Olympic parallel bars and horizontal bar silver medalist. He is also the 2011 U.S. national all-around gold medalist and the 2011 world champion on the parallel bars.
Leyva is a specialist on parallel bars and horizontal bar, having his own signature move (jam-dislocate-hop to undergrips) on the latter.
Leyva has a sister, Dayanis Mesa, who is a television host. His stepfather and coach, Yin Alvarez (famous for his sideline theatrics during Danell's routines) and mother, Maria Gonzalez (his biological father, Johann Leyva, lives in Spain), were both members of Cuba's national gymnastics team. Gonzalez and Leyva defected to Miami when Leyva was a year old. Alvarez defected by swimming across the Rio Grande to the United States while his team was competing in Mexico. Together, Alvarez and Gonzalez opened a gym in Miami several years later, and they married in 2001.
Leyva competed at his first Winter Cup in 2006. He went on to compete in the junior division of the U.S. National Championships (known as the Visa Championships), where he came 1st all-around, won gold on floor exercise and horizontal bar, and tied for silver on parallel bars.
In 2008, at the Junior National Championships, Leyva won the all-around, high bar, parallel bars, and pommel horse titles. He was also the horizontal bar champion at the 2008 Pan American Gymnastics Championships in Argentina. He went on to be chosen as part of the 2008 Pacific Rim Championship team and competed in San Jose. The U.S. team won gold, and Leyva won gold in the all-around and bronze on parallel bars in the junior division finals.
In 2009, he became the youngest member of the U.S. senior national team at age 17, and won the gold medal on the horizontal bar and the silver medal on the parallel bars. He was chosen as one of 4 US male gymnasts to compete at the 2009 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in London. He qualified to the horizontal bar final, where he placed 4th.
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