Daiane Dos Santos and Svetlana Klyukina were born on the same day, February 10th, a few years apart, Daiane in 1983 and Svetlana in 1989, so they shared a few competitions including the 2008 Olympic Games.
Daiane made her senior debut at the 1999 Pan-American Games where she won silver on vault and bronze on Floor, but then on the Olympic year, 2000, she would not make any major appearances. In 2001 she was back placing fifth in the World Floor final and two years later in 2003, she would jump into immortalization by becoming Brazil’s first-ever World Champion (Floor) at the age of 20.
Daiane competed at the 2004 Olympic Games placing fifth in the Olympic Floor final. On her part, a 15-year-old Svetlana Kylukina was making giving her first steps in major international competitions taking the vault title at the Junior Europeans.
In 2005, Svetlana’s senior debut year, she didn’t make any major international appearance while Daiane was 7th on Floor at the World Floor Final. In 2006 they competed together at the World Championships, and both countries made the Team Final. For Brazil, Daiane competed everything but beam contributing her country’s highest Floor score a massive 15.025. For Russia, Svetlana only competed bars and beam with her bars score (14.825) being the highest for her team. Russia won team bronze. Individually Daiane was fourth in the Floor final.
At the 2007 World Championships, they again competed together at the World Team final. Daiane contributed only on Floor while Svetlana again competed on bars and beam. Brazil had its best-ever team finish a fifth place, while Russia had a complete nightmare when the bronze medal they basically had in their hands slipped because Ekaterina Kramarenko scored a zero on vault.
Prior to the Olympics, Svetlana competed at the 2008 Europeans where she contributed on bars and beam towards her team’s second-place finish. Her beam score, a 15.325, was the highest for her team.
In the summer, both were part of their respective teams at the Olympics in Beijing, Daiane only competed Floor contributing to Brazil’s 8th place finish while Klyukina only competed vault helping her team to fourth place. Individually Daiane was sixth on Floor.
In 2009 after participating at the Universiade Svetlana retired, Daiane took time off but was back in time for the 2011 Pan-American Games. She finished her career at the 2012 Olympic Games aged 29.
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