Mohini Bhardwaj

Mohini Bhardwaj
— Gymnast —
Bhardwaj on the balance beam at the 2001 USA Gymnastics National Championships in Philadelphia.
Personal information
Nickname(s)	Mo
Country represented	United States
Born	(1978-09-29) September 29, 1978 (age 38) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Discipline	Women's artistic gymnastics
Level	Senior International Elite
Years on national team	8 (1992–98, 2001–02, 2004)
Club	All Olympia Gymnastics Center, Brown's
College team	UCLA
Former coach(es)	Chris Waller, Galina Marinova, Valorie Kondos Field, Rita Brown
Eponymous skills	Bhardwaj (uneven bars)
Retired	2005
Medal record Olympic Games 2004 Athens Team World Championships 2001 Ghent Team U.S. Senior Nationals 2001 Philadelphia Vault 1996 Knoxville Balance Beam 2001 Philadelphia Balance Beam 2004 Nashville Vault 1997 Denver All-Around 1997 Denver Vault 2001 Philadelphia All-Around

Mohini Bhardwaj (born September 29, 1978) is a retired American artistic gymnast who competed at the 1997 and 2001 World Championships and earned a silver medal with the American team at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. She is the first Indian-American gymnast, and the second Indian-American athlete in any sport, to medal at the Olympics.

Bhardwaj was born in Philadelphia to parents Indu and Kaushal. She has one younger brother, Arun. Her mother, Indu, is a Russian from New York who converted to Hinduism and teaches yoga; her father is from India and is a physician in Cincinnati. Bhardwaj was raised in the Hindu faith and is vegetarian. Her given name, Mohini, means "the one who mesmerizes" in Hindi.

She began taking gymnastics classes at the age of four in her hometown, Cincinnati, where she attended Seven Hills School. At the age of 13, she moved to Orlando to train at Brown's Gymnastics. When she was 16, her coach, Alexander Alexandrov, moved to Houston to open a new facility for Brown's, and Bhardwaj followed without her parents. Living alone in a Texas apartment, she began to party, smoke, and drink, and her gymnastics suffered.

At the 1996 U.S. Olympic Trials, Bhardwaj finished in 10th place, missing a spot on the team by 0.075. She continued training after the Olympics, but at the 1997 U.S. Nationals, NBC commentators noted that she was only competing at her parents' insistence. Still, she finished third in the all-around at Nationals and earned a spot on the 1997 World Championships team. At Worlds, she was the only American besides Kristen Maloney to qualify for an individual event final, the vault, where she placed fifth.