DANELL LEYVA is a Cuban American born on this date. He is gymnast who competed 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 US national all-around gold medalist and the 2011 world champion on the parallel bars. With a combined total of eight Olympic and World Championships medals, Leyva is the second most decorated American male gymnast after Paul Hamm.

Leyva competed at his first Winter Cup in 2006. He went on to compete in the junior division of the US National Championships, where he came 1st all-around, won gold on floor exercise and horizontal bar, and tied for silver on parallel bars.

In 2009, he became the youngest member of the US senior national team at age 17, and at the National Championships won the gold medal on the horizontal bar and the silver medal on the parallel bars. He was chosen as one of four 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.

At the 2011 US National Championships, Leyva beat reigning national champion and world bronze medalist Jonathan Horton in the all-around, winning his first all-around US National Championship at the senior level. He also won the parallel bars and horizontal bar titles. He was subsequently chosen to be one of the anchors for the US team at the 2011 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Tokyo, which won the bronze medal. This was the first time the US men’s team had won medals at the World Championships since 2003. Leyva qualified to the all-around final, but his chin crashed into the horizontal bar in his last rotation, and he was unable to complete his routine, resulting in a 24th-place finish. He rallied for event finals, where he won gold on parallel bars.

Leyva, originally an alternate, was added to the 2016 US Olympic Team in July 2016, following the withdrawal of Orozco due to an ACL injury. In August 2016, the men’s team qualified for the team final in second place. Leyva qualified individually for individual event finals in both parallel bars and horizontal bar. In the final, Leyva contributed scores on pommel horse, parallel bars, and high bar. He had a fall on high bar, and the team finished 5th once again. On August 16, Danell won silver in the Olympic men’s parallel bar final with a score of 15.900. About an hour and a half later, he won another silver in the horizontal bar final, scoring 15.500. Despite being originally named as an alternate to the team, Leyva is the only member to walk away with two medals, contributing to the US men’s gymnastics team total of three medals, along with Naddour’s bronze on the pommel horse.

His stepfather and coach, Yin Alvarez (famous for his impassioned sideline accompaniment of every element of Danell’s routines) and mother, Maria Gonzalez, were both members of Cuba’s national gymnastics team. Gonzalez and Leyva defected to Miami when Leyva was two years 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’s biological father, Johan Leyva, lives in Spain.

In October 2020, for National Coming Out Day, Leyva revealed via Twitter that he identifies as bisexual and pansexual.