“They’re telling to stay and ‘We’ll help you where you are.’ That’s what Martha told me-they want to build a lot of clubs,” said Kelly Manjak, a Canadian who coaches several top NCAA gymnasts and Canadian national team members. Unlike in the bad old days, when coaches were worried about losing their athletes to more established programs and instructors, the current system encourages gymnasts to stay put. As far as the media and sponsors are concerned, the previous coaches are unimportant. If possession is 9/10 of the law, then the coach who walks into the Olympic arena with a gymnast owns more than 9/10 of the credit. During Bruce’s career, “gym hopping” was rampant, and coaches tried desperately to hold on to the gymnasts they had spent years developing. Part of the reluctance to bring someone in to help had to do with the very reasonable fear that this new coach might take the athlete with him or her. They didn’t have a lot of help, nor did they ask for a lot of help, nor did they bring anyone in.” “Before, it was all up to the individual coach to get the kid where they need to go,” Wendy Bruce, a 1992 Olympic bronze medalist, pointed out. And everyone is more welcoming.”īack then, it fell to just one or two coaches to figure out everything a talented gymnast needed to compete on the world stage-from drills to progressions to training plans to competition schedules. “You had to search and beg for information. “When I was in their position at their age, it wasn’t like this,” she said. Mary Lee Tracy, assistant coach of the 1996 Olympic team and personal coach to gold medalists Amanda Borden and Jaycie Phelps, spoke about how much easier it is to learn today than when she was coming up. This squad could have made its mark at the Olympics in Moscow had President Jimmy Carter not boycotted those games in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.Įvery month, when a select number of gymnasts-national team members and some other promising gymnasts-are invited to the Karolyi Ranch, their coaches accompany them to Texas, where they are able to exchange information with other, often more experienced, instructors. And in 1980, the United States fielded a wildly talented team featuring Johnson, Frederick, and newcomers such as Talavera, McNamara, and Beth Kline. In 1981, Tracee Talavera won a bronze on the balance beam in the most hostile territory-Moscow. In 1978, Marcia Frederick won the world title on the uneven bars, while Kathy Johnson picked up a bronze medal on floor exercise at the World Championships in Strasbourg, France, with a lyrical style that rivaled the balletic Soviets. By the late 1970s, however, American male and female gymnasts were starting to gain international attention. American gymnasts were routinely discriminated against by panels of Eastern bloc judges allied against the United States in the 1960s and early 1970s. First, the Americans were getting better at gymnastics before the Karolyis defected, even if their results internationally didn’t always bear that out.
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