With lingering weakness in her leg and mounting exhaustion from the gruelling weight loss workouts, Mukhina had great difficulty coming back up to speed on what was to be the new end element of one of her floor exercise tumbling passes, the Thomas salto. Despite Mukhina's warnings that the element was constantly causing minor injuries and was dangerous enough to potentially cause major injuries, she was pushed to keep the element in her floor routine, and she continued to practise it even knowing it was a dangerous element. On July 3, 1980, two weeks before the Moscow Olympics, Mukhina was practising the pass containing the Thomas salto when she under-rotated the salto and crash-landed on her chin, snapping her spine and leaving her quadriplegic. Mukhina was training at the Minsk Palace of Sport when the injury occurred; her coach Klimenko was not present. The Soviet Union awarded her Order of the Badge of Honour in 1980 in response to her injury, and then in 1982 or 1983, Juan Samaranch, the IOC President, awarded her the Silver Medal of the Olympic Order.