“Stay strong. Stand up. Have a voice.”
“Everything is about your movements and precision and timing, which is what gymnastics is about.”
“I’m trying to stay as calm as possible and focus one day at a time, but when reality sets in, I feel everything: anxiety, excitement, nerves, pressure and joy.”
“I started taking gymnastic classes when I was 3 years old.”
“My knee is almost back to normal. I am back in training.”
“I have a healthy lifestyle, but there’s nothing you can really do to prevent from rolling an ankle or something like that.”
“In some ways the ACL tear was a blessing. I had hesitated to return to elite gymnastics after the 2008 Olympics. I told myself I had already accomplished so much, and the road was just going to get harder if I continued.”
“I always have someone to look up to, and I think it helps me with motivating myself.”
“I don’t feel like a star; I never have. I don’t feel like a star; I never have. I always feel like I’m the young one, I’m the small one. I always have someone to look up to, and I think it helps me with motivating myself.”
“It’s about putting in the hours and going through the paces.”
“I had surgery to repair the ACL in February 2010 and was back in the gym by June, but rushed things too quickly and ended up re-tearing my MCL in September.”
“I’m pleased to say my knee feels a lot better. It’s still not back to normal, and I don’t know if it ever will be, but I’m learning to deal with it instead of expecting it to be like it was before.”
“I was able to do Classics, the U.S. national championships and the Pan American Games and feel like I improved with each meet, but I was still struggling with a lot of residual pain from the two surgeries.”
“Injury taught me I need to learn how to face challenges.”
“Gymnastics taught me everything – life lessons, responsibility and discipline and respect.”
“I get less and less sleep these days, so when I have any down time all I want to do is sleep!”
“My other life keeps me calm and grounded and normal.”
“I still can’t believe I’m an Olympic athlete.”
“To finish off this whole Olympics by finally getting the gold medal, it’s the best feeling in the world.”
“I don’t know where I’m really going to cha cha, but hopefully I can find a place.”
“People only see gymnastics on TV and in the Olympics at such an extreme. So it can be intimidating.”
“A comeback in gymnastics is almost impossible in itself.”
“It might have been easier to retire, to say my knee couldn’t handle it and let that be that. At the same time, the prospect of not being able to compete in gymnastics anymore was heartbreaking.”
“To have any doubt in your body is the biggest weakness an athlete can have. There are times when I physically can’t get myself to go for a skill because I’m thinking, ‘My knee hurts really bad.’”
“After 13 years of hard landings in gymnastics, one ski run had delivered the biggest injury of my career.”
“I have a lot of expectations and a lot of goals I want to fulfill, but the biggest dream is still to make the Olympic team for London.”
“With literature, sometimes a book is presented in the media as being say, a Muslim story or an African story, when essentially it’s a universal story which we can all relate to it, no matter what race or social background we come from.”
“I started from zero and went back to the basics in gymnastics.”
“I had a constant fear, a constant little doubt in my mind: ‘OK, I’m getting ready to do my standing back full on beam and I might re-tear my ACL.’”
“I told myself after 2008 that I was done for good. But they say you can’t keep a gymnast away from her sport.”
“I need to learn how to face challenges.”
“Of course, when you’re training your whole life to get to the Olympics, you train for gold.”
“I know how much more I need to do to be where I want.”
“I always feel like I’m the young one, I’m the small one.”
“I didn’t make it a priority, and as a result my knee didn’t heal to the extent it should have.”
“I’ve never had a teammate competing with me my whole life.”
“I live for Pilates reformer class. I go at least three times a week. It’s a great way to lengthen your muscles, stretch, and kind of relax your mind.”
“The body is an amazing machine… If you eat the right things your body will perform incredibly well!”
“My parents- they’ve been my biggest influences and supporters since day one. They teach me every day that happiness comes from within and not from something outside of your heart.”
“People put too much emphasis on looks.”
“We’re taught at such a young age that you can always be better and that you’re never perfect and that you’re never good enough.”
“I was at the Olympic Games winning medals and I still doubted my image. I doubted what I looked like. That’s sad.”
“My coach, Liang Chow, had one rule while I was training for the 2008 Olympics: no skiing. I could do anything I wanted outside the gym, he said, except ski.”
“When I was younger, my coach, Liang Chow, made all the decisions. I would go to the gym for practice, do exactly what Chow told me to do, go home, come back and start all over again. If Chow told me to do 50 squat jumps, I did 50 squat jumps.”
“It sounds funny, but the 2008 Olympics were something that just kind of happened, and I was lucky they came at a point when I was uninjured and well prepared. As a gymnast, you can’t ask for much more.”
“My approach to gymnastics in Beijing was heavily based on the amount of difficulty I could do.”
“Staying healthy and consistent is paramount.”
“I missed being considered an athlete and having that competitive drive, and missed having something to work for every day. I’d taken two and a half years away from the sport and was out of shape. I wanted to get back to where I was in 2008.”
“I’m doing four hours of gymnastics training a day, six days a week and then an extra two to three hours in a fitness center as well.”
“I don’t want to be all power and muscle.”
“I usually work out 4 hours a day during the week and 5 to 6 hours on Saturday, with Sundays off.”
“A typical practice consists of practicing every event for about an hour. A lot of people assume I have private coaching, but I work out with 13 other girls at the gym!”
“I pay attention to my diet to be a healthier gymnast, but I’m not obsessive over it.”
“When I was 3 my parents put me in gymnastics because I was a bundle of energy and they just didn’t know what to do with me! They put me in a Tots class and I just fell in love with it.”
“Every year I just kept going back to gymnastics, but I didn’t start out training 10 hours a day. When I turned 10 or 11, I got more serious and I focused a lot on making it to the elite level, and from there I just kept going.”
“I think about my goals. There were a lot of times in gymnastics when I really didn’t want to go in and train, but you can’t make it to the Olympics if you don’t train!”
“I have a chaperone everywhere I go – my mom.”
“Gymnastics is so complex.”
“Something my mom taught me when I was little is that everything happens for a reason.”
“Retiring was scary and it was tough to give up gymnastics, but so many great opportunities have come from it that I never expected.”
“I fell in love with running, and I finally have time to do it now.”
“I love lean meats like chicken, turkey. I’m obsessed with sushi and fish in general. I eat a lot of veggies and hummus.”
“It’s been strange and weird watching the other girls at the U.S. Olympic trials just because I was training to be out there myself.”
“I want to go to college, obviously go to London and just kind of figure out the rest of my life.”
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