![]() ![]() Do it again." In that moment, all the years of doing one more vault when I was too tired or sick or didn't want to perform another rep paid off.Īs I started running toward the vault, my ankle felt displaced and unstable. It was just a moment of thinking, "You have to do this. It might be disappointing to hear, but there wasn't. I think people want me to say there was a special, magical moment during the vault that came next. After all those years of training and coaching and hard work, that's all he could say? No advice on technique? Just "You can do it." Looking back, I believe he knew I needed to be on automatic pilot. You can do it." But I didn't focus on them. When I set up to take my second vault, I heard the words Bela was saying to me, the words they spoofed on "Saturday Night Live": "You can do it. Is this really happening? My legs were already wrapped prior to competing because I'd been dealing with shin splints and ankle pain, but this was different. When I fell on my first vault, I couldn't believe it. I knew something was wrong with my left leg. But we both opened up too early and sat on our bottoms. We both had enough height and shouldn't have had a problem landing our vaults. I don't know if it was a case of monkey see, monkey do. I knew she would correct it on her next vault. When I looked up at the jumbo screen, I saw that she fell. I wasn't watching when Dominique took her first vault. Did that do something to our psyches? Did it cause us to fall? We'll be fine." But looking back, I wonder. We said to each other, "We've done this a thousand times. ![]() At this level of competition, that should have had no bearing on how we performed. Dominique Moceanu and I were at the end of the lineup, so we didn't get to warm up the vaults we would compete, which we always did. You only get three minutes to warm up, and he wasn't out there, so we didn't get through our normal warm up. He's a big guy who can move the vault and boards and mats quickly. Normally, Bela Karolyi was out on the floor with us. If we held on, we would become the first U.S. So we had five great scores on floor and only one more event to go. We had one little mishap, but back then, six gymnasts competed in each event and you got to drop one score. The crowd was clapping along to our music. Floor was next, and it's a great event to have home-court advantage. If there is an event you are going to falter on in a high-stakes competition environment, it's beam. On our next rotation, we went to the balance beam. The competition only got better from there. There's not much celebration in gymnastics. ![]() As gymnasts, we're taught from an extremely young age that you don't get too excited until the meet is over, and even then, there's always another competition. She stuck her dismount and after that, everyone followed suit. We started out on uneven bars and our first competitor, Jaycie Phelps, had one of her best routines. ![]() I remember marching into the Georgia Dome after the warm-up session and seeing all the American flags and hearing chants of "Go USA!" We were wearing the American flag on our leotards and warm-ups. There was so much energy in that building, right from the start. Twenty years later, we asked her to recount what she remembers best about that day. women would win their first ever Olympic gold medal. Kerri Strug became one of the best-known faces of the Atlanta 1996 Olympics when she landed her vault on an injured ankle, ensuring that the U.S. ![]()
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