Kerri Strug

Kerri Strug

Medal record
Representing United States
Women's Artistic Gymnastics
Olympic Games
	1996 Atlanta	Team competition
	1992 Barcelona	Team competition
World Championships
	1995 Sabae	Team

Kerri Allyson Strug (born November 19, 1977) is an American gymnast from Tucson, Arizona.

Career, pre-1996 Olympics

Strug was trained by the legendary coach Bela Karolyi, and joined the United States National Team in 1991. In 1992, at age 14, she won a team bronze medal at the Barcelona Olympics, at which she was the youngest member of the entire U.S. team. Karolyi retired from coaching after the 1992 Games, leaving Strug to decide whether to continue or quit gymnastics. During this time, she switched gyms multiple times. Shortly after Karolyi's retirement, Kerri moved to Dynamo to train under the coaching of Steve Nunno, where she struggled with severe weight loss and a very serious injury to her stomach, as stated in her autobiography, Landing on My Feet: A Diary of Dreams. At the 1993 Nationals, Kerri placed 3rd in the all-around, 2nd on the uneven bars, and 3rd on floor exercise[1]. She completed a soon-to-be-popular vault, the Yurchenko 1/2[2]), however, she had a weak second vault and did not medal in that event. After this competition, Strug left Dynamo to train at Forster Gymnastics in Colorado.

1994 was supposed to be her comeback year, but at the U.S. Classic in Palm Springs, California she had a disaster on the uneven bars. While performing the compulsory uneven bars set (a giant to front giant to low bar catch) she pinged off the bar, subsequently releasing too early to be able to make the transition to low bar. She lost control and flew off the high bar backwards, landing in a twisted position on her side beneath the low bar[3]. She curled up on the mat, gasping and struggling to breathe from the pain, and was carried out of the gym on a stretcher and was taken to Desert Regional Hospital. The injury turned out to be a badly pulled back muscle, which required extensive rehabilitation; amazingly, she recovered in time for the 1994 World Championships. There, she looked better than ever on the floor exercise with a powerful double layout mount and a full twisting double back. At the 1995 Nationals, Strug placed 5th in the AA and came in 3rd on the UB. Kerri gave an impressive display at the 1995 World Team Trials, especially on FX. At the 1995 World Championships, she was a member of the bronze medal-winning U.S. team, and she placed 7th in the AA. Her floor exercise was by far the most improved routine of the four[4].

1996 was the best year for Kerri. Karolyi came out of retirement, and Kerri returned to his gym to prepare for the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Kerri's most impressive moment was arguably her win at the 1996 American Cup. She dominated the competition in the AA by almost 0.5 points, which was a huge margin under the old scoring system. She also placed 1st on FX and BB and 2nd on V and UB in the event finals. At the 1996 U.S. Nationals, Kerri placed 5th in the AA and came in 2nd on both vault and floor. Her momentum was building, and she had finally escaped from the shadow of world-famous gymnasts like Shannon Miller, Kim Zmeskal, and Dominique Moceanu. Kerri's time had come.

1996 Olympics

Her shining moment came during these Games, as a member of the U.S. women's team, often referred to as the Magnificent 7 for their talent and depth. After compulsories, Kerri was ranked 9th overall and had placed high enough to qualify herself for the all-around. She posted the second highest score on floor exercise (second to Lilia Podkopayeva) and 4th highest on vault, and would qualify her for event finals in her two strongest events. In the team competition, an event dominated by the Russians for decades and never won by the United States, the U.S. and Russian teams battled neck and neck. The Russians came into the team competition with a very narrow lead, but the U.S. had the benefit of being on their home turf. The event came down to the final rotation on the final day of the team competition, July 23.

With a record 40,000 spectators packed into the Georgia Dome for an early afternoon meet (held at that hour to comply with requests of the European Broadcast Union), the United States turned in a nearly flawless performance that had the seemingly invincible Russians on the brink of defeat. In the final rotation, with the Russians on Floor Exercise, the U.S. women held a commanding lead over the Russian team. But those on the gymnastics floor, including Bela Karolyi, believed that the U.S. team still needed a good score on the vault to win gold. The Russian women were capable of very high scores on floor exercise and they had two of their strongest athletes yet to compete. At that point it was not impossible for the Russians to take the Gold if the US women collapsed. Strug’s teammate Dominique Moceanu fell on both of her vaults, registering poor scores. Strug, who up to that point in her career had been overshadowed by better-known teammate Shannon Miller, was the last to vault for the United States.

Like Moceanu, Strug fell on her first attempt, and stood up, shaking out her ankle, which she had wrenched in her fall. She limped to the end of the runway for her second attempt. In a moment that would become one of the most famous of those Olympic Games, she landed the vault perfectly on one foot, sealing the women's team gold with a lofty score of 9.712. Strug raised her arms after her vault, saluting the judges, hopped around and raised them again, then collapsed in agony to the mat, grasping her ankle. She was helped off, to thunderous applause from the home crowd. Karolyi carried her onto the podium to join her team for the medal ceremony, after which she was treated at a hospital for a severe laterial sprain and tendon damage (as stated in Strug's autobiography, "Landing on my Feet, a Diary of Dreams"). Due to her injury, she was unable to compete in the individual all-around competition and event finals, despite having qualified for both.

Strug became a national sports hero for her courageous finish, visiting President Bill Clinton, appearing at various television talk shows, Saturday Night Live, making the cover of Sports Illustrated and appearing on a Wheaties cereal box with other team members. ESPN's "This is SportsCenter" ad campaign poked good-natured fun at her injury with two ads featuring various ESPN workers carrying her around.

Following the media uproar over Kerri's fight to win the team gold, there was controversy concerning her need to have vaulted a second time. According to the final team results [5], the U.S. could still have won the team gold if Kerri had not vaulted. Unfortunately, the Russians still had one performance left (Rosa Galieva), but Kerri decided to vault in an effort to clinch the gold for the U.S. team.

What could have been for Strug at the Centennial Olympic Games remains unanswered. Strug qualified first into the floor event final and likely could have medaled in the event. Had Strug not withdrawn from further competition, her teammate Dominique Dawes never would have had the opportunity to replace Strug and win the Olympic bronze on the floor.

Professional career and college

Shortly after her feat, Strug participated in the Ice Capades and Disney's World On Ice, then announced her retirement and enrolled in UCLA where she was a member of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority. As a professional, she could not compete in NCAA gymnastics events, so she worked for a time as team manager instead, a behind the scenes role. She later transferred to Stanford University.

After gymnastics

After graduation, Strug worked as an elementary school teacher in the San Francisco area before moving to Washington, DC in 2003. One of the schools she worked at was Tom Matsumoto Elementary School for a year.

She worked as a staff assistant with the U.S. Office of Presidential Student Correspondence, moved to a job at the Office of the General Counsel in the Treasury Department, and in March 2005, joined the Justice department's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention staff as a presidential appointee. Strug has also been an active marathon runner, having run marathons in Houston, New York, Boston and Chicago.

During the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Strug was a correspondent for Yahoo! in artistic gymnastics. In 2008, she appeared in a televison commercial for the Zaxby's restaurant chain. Also in 2008, her history-making ordeal at the 1996 Olympic games was featured in a commercial, narrated by actor Morgan Freeman for the "Life Takes Visa" campaign.

External links

• Official website
• Kerri's Strug vault as part of the most memorable Olympic moments
• Kerri Strug at the International Gymnastics Federation
• Kerri Strug at IMDb
• Video of famous 1996 vault
• Kerri Strug At Tucson Complete