![]() “When Lisa told me, it hit me really hard,” Kerri said. She finally spotted her sister in the audience and began shouting, “Did I make it? Did I make it?” Her sister quietly shook her head no. She kept looking up at the board but she couldn’t figure out if she made it. The one caveat is that only three gymnasts from each country can qualify. To qualify, a competitor must finish in the top 36. Kerri also felt confident that she had performed well enough to earn a place in the all-around competition. Her strong performance helped America win a bronze team medal. Finally, on the vault, her best event, the judges awarded Kerri a 9.95. On the floor exercise, she scored a 9.837. “I can do it and I will do it.” On the parallel bars, out of 10 possible points, she scored a 9.862. “I am going to hit everything,” she wrote in her diary. Her goal was to compete for the all-around title. Of the 545 American athletes who made the Olympic team, Kerri was the youngest competitor. Kerri made her first Olympic team in 1992 at the age of 14. She fractured her sternum (age 9) tore her stomach (age 15) fractured the L4 and L5 vertebrae (age 16) ruptured her eardrum (age 17) and tore her ligaments and tendons during the 1996 Olympic Games (age 18). Sprained wrists, twisted ankles and stitches come with the territory. Kerri and the other elite athletes were usually sore and hurting. Imagine how many times a gymnast falls while attempting to do a backflip off of a four-inch-wide beam that extends four feet off the ground. Performing a double handspring in the tuck position at full speed requires a lot of trial and error. “This was something I knew I could do and I wanted it more than anything.” She had her eyes and her heart set on the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. So, why did she stay? She was determined. More than a few times Kerri called her mom begging to come home. She trained 6-8 hours a day, 6 days a week. Kerri lived with a host family and went to a school that worked with her intense training schedule. The Karolyi’s had trained 17 Olympic athletes by 1991. In 1991, at the age of 13, she opted to join Bela and Martha Karolyi at their elite training facility in Houston, Texas. Based on her early success and her body type, coaches from elite gyms began recruiting her to train full-time. ![]() By the time she was eight, she practiced 2 hours a day with a private coach. As Kerri grew older, she started mimicking what she saw. Kerri began attending those practices with her mom and naturally fell in love with the sport. Her older sister, Lisa, was already a promising young gymnast. Kerri’s introduction happened when she was just three years old. There should be no doubt that each gymnast who makes the Olympic team undoubtedly exhibits a great deal of determination to get there. Yet, as the public turns towards more popular sports, gymnasts continue to train and sacrifice, probably more so than any other athletes in the world. For the other three years and 51 weeks in between, gymnastics is largely forgotten. This is particularly true for women’s gymnastics, which dominates the television coverage during the first week of every Olympics. Nothing and no one was going to keep me from reaching my dream.”Įvery four years, Americans fall in love with gymnastics. ![]() “What happened in Barcelona only made me want it more.
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