![]() ![]() ![]() Károlyi carried Strug to the podium, where her teammates helped her stand long enough to receive the gold medal. team had made history by beating the second-place Russians by a margin of just over eight-tenths of a point. She held her pose just long enough to get the judges' recognition before she collapsed. When she landed, another crack could be heard from her ankle. Running the 75 feet leading to the vault, she jumped into a back handspring that was executed without error. Strug later said the sting of the 1992 Games was in her head when she decided to attempt a second jump. As she limped away, Károlyi screamed at her from behind a barricade: “We need it, we need it! Shake it out!” Strug leapt into the air, landing on her back and injuring her ankle. It was also infamous for causing injuries: Sang Lan, a Chinese competitor, suffered a spinal injury during the 1988 Goodwill Games that resulted in paralysis an inadvertently-shortened vault led to a series of accidents at the 2000 Games. The Russians were looking at another victory when Strug’s turn at the vault came up.īefore being revamped in 2000, the apparatus resembled a pommel horse without the handles and provided a platform (with an adjacent springboard) from which a gymnast could propel themselves into a maneuver. Things were looking up early on then Strug’s teammate, Dominique Moceanu, fell twice, evaporating the American lead. The event had been dominated by the Russians since 1948. gymnastics team had ever taken Olympic gold. While Strug was determined not to repeat her subpar performance from four years earlier, the team as a whole was facing an even bigger obstacle: No women’s U.S. Mike Powell/Getty ImagesĪfter qualifying for the 1996 games, Strug and the rest of the women’s squad-dubbed the “ Magnificent Seven” and led by Károlyi's wife, Martha-stayed at an empty fraternity house at Emory University outside of the Olympic Village to avoid distractions. Kerri Strug hurls herself down the runway while competing in the vault on Jat the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, Georgia. Still a young teenager, she had moved away from her parents in Tucson, Arizona to be closer to Béla Károlyi, a renowned gymnastics coach in Houston, Texas. Strug’s determination not to trail the Russians began in 1992, when the then-14-year old gymnast offered what she considered a weak and ineffectual performance in the Barcelona Games, finishing fourth among the American team. She would run another 75 feet and do it again. The 4-foot-9-inch gymnast, who hadn’t even reached puberty yet due to a lack of body fat, nodded her head. It was better to have Strug go a second time to guarantee the gold medal. They had just 30 seconds to decide whether the score discrepancy added up to a narrow margin of victory or a second-place finish. The bone had been moved forward, severing her medial and lateral ligaments.īut what was obvious to the television crew and to many of the spectators that July 23 was not at all apparent to the U.S. After dismounting the vault apparatus, she had landed awkwardly, a loud crack coming from her left ankle. ![]() It was a good thing, too, because Strug’s run had ended badly. deficit on the scoreboard to narrowly edge out the Russian team by less than a point. In the final vault of the women’s gymnastics team finals at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, the 18-year-old gymnast had overcome the U.S. Everyone in the production truck knew Kerri Strug had done it. ![]()
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