“Stop making faces. Stop playing the fool!” Bela barked.
As a ten-year-old, I had no idea what “Stop playing the fool” even meant, but he used that line often in the gym with me and the other girls when he was mad, so I knew it wasn’t good. At first, I never realized I was actually making a “face” when he would yell this at me. I became very self-conscious and tried extra hard not to make any facial expressions at all, happy or sad. I eventually perfected my “gym face,” which showed zero emotion. I’d challenge anyone, even Mama or Tata, to know what I was thinking or feeling when I donned my gym face.
By this time, I had been at Karolyi’s gym for only a couple of months. I felt worse about my skills as a gymnast than ever before. As the weeks passed, I began to feel more inadequate and less confident in my own abilities and capabilities. Self-doubt was taking hold, and it confused me because up until then, the gym was where I had always felt my strongest, my best. I began to dread each new day with the Karolyis more and more. I could never tell anyone this, of course. I didn’t want anyone to think anything less of me, especially Mama and Tata, who had made so many sacrifices for me and had worked their entire lives to get me here. I kept it inside, to myself. I had to endure.
Chapter 6
THE KAROLYIS
Throughout my competitive career I’ve seen my share of coaches, twenty-three last I counted. Each helped me grow as an athlete and as an individual, and I am grateful in one way or another for all of them. Looking over the long list, however, my first coach, Jeff LaFleur, made one of the biggest impressions on me. His coaching style, expertise, and positive attitude helped me flourish as a gymnast at a very young age and led me to believe that I could achieve anything I set my mind to in the gym. He taught me the fundamentals of my sport and developed me into a national contender. Basically, he developed and nurtured me into a legitimate Olympic hopeful and then, per Tata’s grand plan, handed me over to the Karolyis. Even at the end of my career, Jeff remained one of my greatest inspirations.
Most gymnastics fans I meet think the Karolyis coached me for the bulk of my career and are surprised when I tell them that the Karolyis were more like “handlers” or “managers” than gymnastics coaches. During the time I trained with Karolyi’s Gymnastics, from the ages of ten to fourteen, I was actually “coached” by the Karolyis for only very short spurts of time, here and there. I had a string of many different coaches hired and fired by the Karolyis several times each year. I can name ten coaches that I had in that four-year period alone, but I’m sure there were more I’m forgetting. Ten coaches in four years would be more forgivable if I had bounced from gym to gym, but I was at the same gym, Karolyi’s gym, for those years. For a young gymnast in her prime, that revolving door of coaching staff and lack of consistency was very stressful and made life more challenging for me overall. With each new coach came a learning curve—getting to know his or her coaching method and style and getting to know and trust that coach as a partner in my training—however briefly.
I had heard different rumors as to why so many coaches came and went so quickly from Karolyi’s gym. It was said that some left over compensation issues or they didn’t want to put up with the micromanaging Karolyis while others were said to have been fired by either Bela or Marta without explanation. These, of course, were just rumors that rumbled through our locker room. I was never involved or included in any discussions regarding my training, so no one ever explained or gave me a heads up as to when, how, or why one of my coaches would be coming or going. I just knew that it seemed like every time I blinked, there was a new coach to adjust to.
The Karolyis often brought in “experts” to help the gymnasts, most of whom were of Russian descent. For the time I was training at Karolyi’s gym, I feel I really learned the most from my Russian coaches—especially legendary coach Alexander Alexandrov. Second to Jeff LaFleur, Alexander was the biggest influence on my gymnastics. He utilized traditional Soviet philosophies and techniques, and I credit Alexander’s method, in large part, for my win at the Junior National All-Around Championship in 1994 when I was twelve years old, as well as my win the following year at the Senior National Championships in 1995. At thirteen years old, I became the youngest ever to hold the Senior National All-Around title, and it was Alexander’s patient and measured teaching that led me to achieve those goals.
Amidst all the instability, Alexander was a godsend and, in retrospect, the best move the Karolyis ever made for my development and career. Alexander worked tirelessly with me one-on-one, trying to help me perfect my form and upgrade my difficulty. His results could not be denied, and I actually got to work with him from the age of twelve to almost fourteen—a relative lifetime compared to the revolving door of short-term coaches I had at Karolyi’s gym prior to Alexander’s arrival. I had grown accustomed to not ever knowing who my coach would be when I arrived each morning, so each new day that I saw Alexander, I was grateful for the stability, the continuity, and to be working with a methodical, knowledgeable coach.
Shortly before I turned fourteen and just prior to the 1995 Senior National Championships, Bela let Alexander go. Apparently, he wasn’t needed anymore. This hit me hard. I felt abandoned by his sudden departure and uneasy about going back to the “revolving door” style of coaching.
Leading up to Alexander’s untimely dismissal, I had been training primarily alongside American World Champion Kim Zmeskal and three-time Olympic gold medalist Svetlana Boguinskaia (the “Belarusian Swan”). The three of us trained and worked hard together every day under Alexander’s watchful eye. It had far and away been my most solid, stable training period since I had joined Karolyi’s gym—great coach, great training partners, and a stable daily routine the four of us muscled through together. As we were leading up the Senior Nationals, sometimes Alexander and I would work one-on-one for three-a-day trainings. I was growing, developing, and improving quickly, and Alexander was helping me focus. Momentum was building. I went to sleep each night believing I was getting better and better. Then the rug was pulled out from under me.
I felt cheated that he was taken away without warning. This was someone who was personally guiding my progress for several hours each day, and then one day he was just gone. He taught me many skills that I’d later compete at the Olympic Games, including a double layout dismount and a double layout full-out dismount off the bars (two flips in a layout position with a 360-degree twist on the second flip). I often joked that the last summer working with Alexander was my “Rocky Balboa” period of training—very focused and serious, working out three times a day, five to six days a week. I can only imagine what could have been had we kept moving down that road.
Bela hadn’t spent a lot of time with me in the gym for most of that year, but in the weeks immediately leading up to Alexander’s surprise firing, Bela started transitioning back into the gym, helping with training a bit more here and there. It was almost as if he was getting his feet wet again after being away from hands-on training for some time.
The day Alexander was fired, Bela walked into the gym for 7:00 a.m. practice as if nothing had happened. He entered alone and walked past us as we stood in our standard lineup for our morning run. No Alexander. I was confused and knew my teammates were, too, but no one dared ask or say anything for fear of getting in trouble by questioning Bela. We had our entire practice without Bela mentioning Alexander once. My coach, who had never missed a day of training, was gone, just like that. I knew it must have come as a surprise to Alexander, too, because the previous evening we had ended our day just as we always did—talking about what we’d do the next morning. It wasn’t just me. My fellow gymnasts were also shocked and sad once we realized that Alexander was never coming back. We didn’t even get to say good-bye.
I was a naïve thirteen-year-old and it took me a while to process why Alexander had been fired when everything had been going so well. I had made tremendous progress with Alexander; it just didn’t make sense for him to be dismissed out of the
blue. Later, however, the reason he was removed from the equation started to crystallize in my mind. I believe that Bela saw I was in top form and my confidence was high. Alexander had trained, instructed, and readied me for the Senior National Championships, and it seemed that Bela was going to capitalize on the moment. Having Alexander at Senior National Championships would only take the spotlight away from Bela. Only one coach was necessary at the big events, and since Alexander had already fully prepared me, he was no longer needed.
Alexander deserves the credit for much of my success in 1994 and 1995 and is responsible for teaching me nearly all of the upgraded elements that I’d compete with at the Olympic Games in 1996. I will forever be grateful to him.
In my adult years, I’d reminisce about our training time with Alexander with my dear friend Svetlana, who was also very close to him. Years later, she told me that after that first day of practice without Alexander, she’d managed to call him to ask what had happened. Alexander said the Karolyis simply told him to leave and never return.
Marta also started coming into the gym on a more regular basis to coach balance beam, alongside our other beam coach, Jackie McCarter. Jackie was brought in to help coach beam at the same time future hopefuls Brittany Smith and April Burkholder joined our group. Jackie was assigned to work with Kim Zmeskal and these new hopefuls, while Marta focused her attention on Svetlana and me. Marta loved a good beam worker and, at the time, I was a force to be reckoned with on balance beam as well as the all-around. Balance beam was the key to being in Marta’s good graces—something I learned immediately. I worked hard to improve on beam from the moment I started at Karolyi’s gym. I had earned her attention and now, as a thirteen-year-old, I was the gymnast with the highest expectations to perform on beam.
The air always seemed different when Marta and Bela were in the gym—colder and more tense. The change from Alexander’s coaching style to Bela’s was sharp, and that feeling of instability returned with a vengeance. I knew I had to keep moving forward even though I felt so unhappy and stressed out. Alexander’s name was never mentioned in that gym again. The skills we had learned from him were “what we taught you,” as if the coach who had actually taught us had never existed. This was so hard for me because I felt like I was unwillingly participating in the betrayal of someone I cared about and who had been so good to me. I had grown to trust and rely on Alexander so much. But I didn’t dare show that I missed him in the presence of Bela or Marta. That would have been the kiss of death for me. Weakness was simply intolerable in the gym, even for a thirteen-year-old. It was never important to Bela how I was mentally or emotionally, as long as I performed on the mat. I was expected to be a warrior. I stuffed my anxiety and sadness way down until I could barely feel anything at all and focused on the Senior National Championships.
Soon after the Karolyis stepped in, my body began to break down. Alexander had a particular style that was very calculated. He was knowledgeable about physiology and in tune with his athletes; he knew how to protect our bodies when we were exhausted. Alexander was no softie—he knew how to push me to my limits when he knew my body could take it. But he didn’t treat me like a little machine; he treated me like a human being with human parts. Through his methods, he got more out of me physically than I ever thought possible and more than any other coach I had, yet he was very mindful of keeping my body healthy and strong and not overtaxed. I never once had a major injury throughout my time with Alexander. Conversely, I had many injuries during the time Marta and Bela served as my coaches.
I can’t count the number of times I watched other gymnasts push through unreasonable and dangerous pain just so they wouldn’t have to admit to the Karolyis they were hurting in the gym. It happened to others time and time again and, for me, it ultimately led to my body breaking down right before the biggest competition of my life, the 1996 Olympic Games, with a stress fracture in my right tibia. The Karolyis knew when I was injured—it was obvious to everyone in the gym—but they also knew I didn’t dare complain about my pain. If I had ever started to talk about my pain or injury, they would immediately cut me off, dismissing it and making comments or gestures that I was becoming weak, faking, or exaggerating injury out of laziness.
These negative mind games were a regular part of their coaching style and confused my psyche. I actually started to buy in to their psychology and believe that, perhaps, I didn’t hurt that much and that the sharp drilling pain in my leg was coming from my head. I remember thinking, Is it my fault that I am in so much pain? After a time, it was difficult to know exactly how I felt because I was constantly working to deny my pain.
Shortly after Alexander was fired, I set out for the 1995 Senior Nationals. I made a splash at my first competition in the Senior division, winning the All-Around title at the age of thirteen. It was a dream competition, and I was hitting everything just perfectly on that summer evening. The meet couldn’t have gone better, closing out the competition with one of my favorite events, the floor exercise to the music “Let’s Twist Again” in my fire-engine red, long-sleeved leotard. I felt unstoppable as everything went right. The crowd roared for me. The final performer of the evening, I nailed my routine to win the title. As I jumped off the podium, Bela gave me a big bear hug, and Marta, too—both all smiles. Excited to win, feeling the energy of the crowd cheering and relieved to see the Karolyis so happy with me, I bought in to their excitement, but inside, I was thanking Alexander, knowing he deserved all of the success in front of the cameras. He was the one behind the scenes who had coached me and worked on my routines right up to that point, and I was sad that he wasn’t there to share any of the glory. In contrast, Bela somehow always managed to plant himself perfectly for those camera-friendly moments—at times forcibly grabbing the spotlight whenever the opportunity beckoned. It was no surprise to me that Bela often would be a bigger star than his gymnasts, and he always charismatically put on a show for the television, acting like he “loved” his gymnasts. Bela exaggerated his affections for us in public, which was perversely rewarding at competitions because we feared him so much and were so desperate for his praise. He was a different person altogether when the cameras weren’t rolling.
Upon our return from Senior Nationals, we immediately began training for the 1995 World Championships. Winning the National title was not really mentioned after that first night, and it seemed forgotten altogether once we got back to Texas. I learned later from Mama and Tata that the Karolyis had instructed my parents not to celebrate or give me too much praise for winning the All-Around title.
“Don’t tell her she’s doing well, because she’ll get a big head and won’t want to work anymore,” Bela apparently told Tata and Mama.
I know now that my parents were so very proud of my achievements (they told me so years later), and they did show their joy when I saw them briefly after the competition, but they followed Bela’s instruction at the time and we never celebrated. I had to compete the following morning, so I couldn’t stay up later than normal to bask in the win. I had assumed we’d get to celebrate together as a family once we returned to Texas, but I was wrong. I was the youngest in history to take the title, and with the second-highest score recorded up to that point. The newspapers and media made a bigger deal of it than my own coaches and family did. We can never recapture those moments, and that’s something my family and I regret. I completely understood the need to refocus my attention on the next goal but would have benefited tremendously from some acknowledgment of my success for such an enormous and monumental win. I was sad and disappointed that my own parents didn’t appear to share my excitement or tell me how proud they were at the time.
Years later, I’d talk about this with Tata, asking why he didn’t tell me he was proud of me.
“How could you not know we were proud of you?” he’d say.
“Well, Tata, a child has to hear it sometimes, you know?” I’d reply while promising to myself that I’d never make that mistake with my own kids. No matter
how much more I knew they could achieve or how much more they were capable of, I would always remember to acknowledge their hard work and celebrate their milestones along the way.
Matters only got worse when I went to the 1995 World Championships in Sabae, Japan. It was my first competition out of the country with the Karolyis, and it was a big deal to be named to my first World Championship team. I had my fourteenth birthday just before leaving for Japan. It was a big step to compete internationally, and I was anxious and excited.
It was not Marta’s or Bela’s style to do any mental preparation regarding what to expect, and once we arrived, I quickly realized I had to figure things out for myself.
I will never forget opening day of compulsories at Worlds in Japan when Bela made me do my compulsory bar routine over and over and over again during morning warm-ups. It is typical for most gymnasts to do a few run-throughs during morning warm-ups, then stretch and rest to preserve their body and energy for the official meet. After the sixth, then seventh time he instructed me to complete my routine, I was sure he’d say I was done.
Again, he’d gesture.
After the tenth and eleventh time, I started to wonder if there was an end in sight, or if he was trying to get me to break down and beg him to stop. I didn’t. I focused on the task at hand and plowed through it, pushing down and ignoring any pain or exhaustion. It never seemed perfect enough for Bela. In all, he made me do my entire routine sixteen complete times. By then, I was the only gymnast in morning session still working out. All of the other members of the World team were sitting around the gym, stretching and just watching, waiting for Bela to say I was finished. I didn’t understand. I thought maybe Bela wanted to humiliate me in front of the other gymnasts to make sure I didn’t get a big head, having won US Nationals. With almost no rest in between, my hands were on fire, and by the eighth or ninth run-through the physical and mental drain started to accumulate no matter how much I suppressed it, and I began to make silly, uncharacteristic errors on my bar routine, which seemed to infuriate Bela.
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