Yep, that’s her. Apparently, putting her up for adoption was entirely her bio father’s decision – he never gave bio mom a choice.

You might want to look into aerial and circus arts. I do aerial silks, hoop, and hammock. It’s a lot of fun and similar to gymnastics, but more performance based than competitive.

That’s horrible. I hate how coaches get away with treating their athletes like that. Especially since the coach becomes a almost a surrogate parental figure to their athletes given they spend so much time training.

Some of the Romanian gymnasts who trained under Bela Karolyi have some pretty terrible stories. Stuff like him hitting or scratching them and strictly limiting their water even though they were training for 8+ hours a day.

Puberty sucks hard for we mere mortals, I can’t imagine what it is like for elite athletes.

I used to be a competitive gymnast until I was 12. It started out as an extracurricular and quickly turned into 30+ hours of training in order to be able to compete. A few things -

Oh, sure, she looked about 8 or 9 years old. Then, like so many gymnasts, when she stopped the hard-core training, puberty came fast and furiously. It really is something; it’s truly as if they grow breasts overnight. It must be rather shocking to them.

I. Love. Her.

I’m 35 and even though we’re only a year apart, she seemed years younger than me then too. Probably her 4'4" height.

Ah, memories. How can she be 34?!!! Lord have mercy.

That Devil Went Down to Georgia routine! Yes, that’s one of those classic sports moments that I’ll definitely remember for a long time.

Gymnasts who trained under the Karolyis (I believe some of the magnificent 7) have said that they were limited to 800 calories a day, which is even scarier when you think how much they had to be burning. They said that the men’s gymnastics team would sneak them food at the olympics. Can't wait until Marta is gone.

She has a crazy story. Her dad sounds like he was The Worst... he forced his wife to give up their disabled daughter at birth and allegedly squandered all of Dominique’s gymnastics earnings, causing her to emancipate herself at 17. Olympics or not it honestly sounds like the other Moceanu sister had a better childhood.

Off topic, but this was an interesting read: Balance beam mounts used to be beautiful and daring. What happened? And it has this great video, showing all the different and creative mounts used over the years.

I heard a horrifying interview with Moceanu recently on NPR where she was talking about her father beating her for not performing well enough or for gaining weight, and one particular incident where he found twizzlers in her room and slapped her across the face in front of the Karolyis, who apparently did nothing.…

If you haven’t seen it, you should all watch/listen to this interview with McKayla Maroney from a great gymnastics podcast called Gymcastic. She talks very frankly about her coaches and their treatment of her throughout her career.

I think an 18 minimum age limit would be nice. However, that would be pretty inconvenient for 17 year olds who would pretty much only get one shot at the Olympics.

This is honestly why watching gymnastics is difficult for me as I get older. Thinking about what condition these young women and men have to do to maintain their training combined with the psychological pressure being placed on them, especially for athletes as young as 16, makes me worried about the athletes to the…

Béla Károlyi! I watched the movie Nadia about gymnast Nadia Comaneci like 900 times when I was a kid. He was an insanely effective coach. It’s too bad he resorted to abuse to get these girls to perform at their peak. It’s forever tarnished his reputation.

I read her memoir a couple of years ago and it definitely didn’t paint the Karolyis or her parents in a good light.