Off Balance: A Memoir (11 page)

The Senior Elite “1992 hopefuls” included Kim Zmeskal, Betty Okino, Hilary Grivich, and Kerri Strug, with Jennie Thompson and me as the “1996 hopefuls.” I was still pretty nervous and knew I looked a bit lost next to the other gymnasts in my cluster who already knew the drill and exactly what to expect. I could tell that most of the girls knew one another well, especially Betty, Kim, Kerri, and Hilary, who chatted during our free moments. Jennie was the only one who appeared a bit unsure, like me, and I wanted to talk with her, but I didn’t get the chance. The girls were welcoming and kind to me, but I was definitely the newbie, the outsider—something I hadn’t felt inside a gym for a very long time.

I was tagging along, following our leader, Kim. I was at the end of the line bouncing nonstop like a little kangaroo and trying to keep
up with the extensive running drills, which were difficult for me. I was nervous to let them see me huffing and puffing. I had a growing side cramp that was killing me, but I kept my mouth shut and just kept breathing like everyone else. We ran backward, forward, kicked our knees up as high as they would go, jumped from side to side with legs together, and I tried to give every move my best effort.

I wanted to impress Bela. I’d never done this kind of running for such a long period before, so I tried my best to keep up even though every now and then I’d fall behind slightly. Bela didn’t say much to me during the evaluation. He mostly watched both me and Jennie Thompson closely, while barking orders in his deep voice at the group in general. He definitely was serious in the gym, not at all a teddy bear, and that frightened me somewhat because he seemed completely different from the man who gave me the bear hug the day before. I just did my best to follow the other girls like a good little soldier, looking to please and get praise from Bela, so my parents would be proud of me.

After the running and sprinting sessions, which lasted about forty-five minutes, we moved on to conditioning, which lasted another forty-five minutes. All I could think was
When is this going to be over?
The cramp in my side was still aching, and now my legs were starting to cramp and grow tired as well, but I didn’t want to let it show on my face that I was struggling. I was terrified of looking bad, so I kept pushing myself to keep up with the older, more experienced girls. I reached deep and, fortunately, my competitive streak carried me through the rest of the conditioning session. I was 100 percent determined to give a solid impression, as if my life depended on it.

I had been looking forward to doing the uneven bars and was happy when Bela finally signaled that we were moving on to that apparatus. I was worried that I was already a bit worn down from all the running, conditioning, floor drills, and vault before I even had a chance to show Bela what I could do on bars.

I remember prepping for bars during the few minutes after the vaulting session—thinking over and over in my mind which dismount I should demonstrate. I originally thought I’d impress Bela with my full-out dismount (two saltos in a tucked position with a 360-degree twist on the second salto), but I hadn’t perfected it on a hard landing surface yet. I’d always used a soft landing pit at LaFleur’s to cushion my landings in practice. But at Karolyi’s there was no pit in sight. I couldn’t believe it! I’d never been inside any gym that didn’t have a soft pit. I knew from what I’d read and seen on television that the highest-level Elite gymnasts also used soft pits to practice new maneuvers and landings. Where was it?

I took a good look around the gym to see what else was missing. I had been so eager to see where world-class gymnasts trained, yet all I saw was old, worn, beat-up equipment. There wasn’t a single item that appeared new or semi-new. With continual hard training, gym equipment takes a beating and needs to be replaced from time to time in order to provide the support and safety for which it was intended. Even the floor beneath my feet felt fuzzy and a little lumpy, but I sure as heck wasn’t going to complain. I figured maybe that was what helped the Karolyi gymnasts get tougher.

I decided to nix my hardest element on the bars. I was a bit nervous and didn’t feel safe landing without the soft pit, so I didn’t even mention it to Bela. I momentarily reconsidered at the last minute while I was over the chalk tray, but I was ultimately too afraid and thought it better to play it safe for now. I had plenty of difficulty in my routines and figured I should just nail the things I knew instead of trying a riskier maneuver.

I remember being taken aback at the fact that Jennie Thompson was right up there with me in terms of level of difficulty in her routines. It was the first time I had seen someone my age who could do some of the same skills as me. Jennie was a rock-solid gymnast and immediately had my attention. With her blond hair, blue eyes, and tiny stature, she looked like the all-American gymnast.
She was super light in weight and looked like a feather on the bars, moving from one release to another so gracefully. Her gymnastics skills were much “prettier” and more elegant than mine at the time. I hadn’t developed much finesse to my skills at that point, relying primarily on raw talent and the skills I had learned from Jeff. Jennie was also more flexible than I was and had nicer lines. It was a rude awakening to be working out with another “tiny pixie” who could do what I could do—and in some ways, better. She was a reminder of what I needed to work on. From the very beginning, it was clear that Jennie would be my main competition at Karolyi’s. She was extremely talented, and I knew I had my work cut out for me if I wanted to keep up with her. I clearly wasn’t the best in the group, but I felt that I had the potential to be.

After bars, we moved to the balance beam, and I could feel myself getting nervous, more so than earlier. I had seen Marta arrive toward the end of the bar rotation. I was standing at the chalk bowl and through the glass windows in the lobby, I had a clear shot of her coming. She walked into her office, set down her things, then came out and just stood by the beam—
her
event. I was most nervous about performing on beam to begin with and now, seeing Marta standing there, waiting, made me uneasy as we finished up bars.

I learned later that this was the way Bela and Marta did things. Bela liked to coach solo with the gymnasts during the running drills, conditioning, floor, vault, and bars, and Marta liked to train her event, the balance beam, by herself. They only stayed for each other’s events if extra help was needed to work on something specific. It was better for everyone this way, because when they were there at the same time, they’d usually bicker back and forth, which made the sessions more tense.

I had the last pick as to which of the balance beams I would work on. Kim, Betty, and Hilary had chosen the beams closest to where Marta usually stood, Kerri had the next beam, and the two
end beams that nobody wanted were left for Jennie and me. I was the weakest link at this point and I felt it. I followed the lead of the older gymnasts and jumped straight up onto the beam. We did a short warm-up, and when the older gymnasts headed into their compulsory exercises, Jennie and I were instructed to work on the skills we already knew.

Marta had high expectations on her event. I saw it in the way she watched the older gymnasts with such intensity and scrutiny. If you weren’t strong on beam, she didn’t give you much of her time or attention. She liked those gymnasts who were good on her event, so I knew I had to impress her, and I tried my very hardest—really went all out. I made mistakes, falling every now and then, but I’d jump back up quickly and secretly hoped that she missed those turns, but I’m sure she saw everything. About an hour later, I breathed a sigh of relief that I’d made it through the beam rotation, and practice in general, without any major embarrassments or injuries.

On the drive home, my parents didn’t really discuss my performance or what they had talked about with the Karolyis. I was exhausted physically and emotionally from the evaluation, and I was just happy to be heading back to Florida.

I remember sitting at the dinner table a few weeks after trip number two when Tata asked me about moving to Houston to train with the Karolyis. We were already following Tata’s plan every step of the way, so it was almost silly to even ask what I thought at that point.

“Do you want to go?” Tata asked, but what he really was saying was,
“This is where you want to go.”

All I could say was “Okay.”

Tata was ecstatic at the opportunity to have the most famous gymnastics coaches in the world coach
his
daughter. Mama later described how they were “swollen with pride” that the Karolyis had accepted their daughter to train with them. I figured if my parents truly believed it was the right thing to do, then I had to believe it,
too. I was a kid who had just turned ten, after all. How much of an opinion could I really offer? I knew they wanted me to be an Olympic champion, and in their minds, they believed Bela and Marta Karolyi had the coaching and political power to help make it happen. They had coached the iconic Nadia Comaneci, also a Romanian, so my parents thought they would be a perfect fit for me. Why wouldn’t they? On the surface it appeared to be the perfect move.

It was December 1991, when trip number three came knocking at my door. The call had come from the Karolyis, and before I knew it, my parents packed our things, loaded up the moving truck, and just like that, we were moving—Maia and Papu included. We left in typical Tata style: we never looked back. That’s just how he thought; move forward and that’s it. Done. No long good-byes.

I don’t think Tata ever knew how tough it was on me to leave the one place where I had felt so comfortable and safe. To him, Florida was merely a stepping-stone to bigger things, but to me it had meant so much more. Despite this, I kept quiet as I normally did, never expressing my sadness to anyone. I was dying on the inside having to leave Jeff, Julie, Beth, my teammates, and my friends—the first real friends I had. “Okay” was all I mustered when Tata asked if I wanted to go. I expressed nothing else.

Mama drove the car, and Tata, the large U-Haul van. I don’t remember much of this trip except that I slept a lot, and when I wasn’t napping, I had a pit in my stomach—a mix of sadness to be leaving Tampa and fear of the unknown of Houston. I wondered … Would these amazing gymnasts accept me? Would I be happy there? I knew deep down that the answers to these questions really wouldn’t make a difference. I wouldn’t have a choice one way or another because my parents already had sacrificed so much to get me into that gym. I knew I couldn’t disappoint them.

In Houston, we settled into an itsy-bitsy two-bedroom apartment. It was all we could afford, but it was home to the six of us.
Mama enrolled me in the fourth grade at Ponderosa Elementary School in December 1991, halfway through the school year. Another neighborhood, another school, another gym. I was getting used to it.

I remember one cold morning after we’d arrived in Houston, the windshield of our car had frozen overnight and Mama couldn’t see two inches in front of her. Coming from the balmy winters of Tampa, I found this funny that a windshield could “freeze,” but then panic set in as I realized that a frozen windshield meant I could possibly be late to the gym for training, which was simply unacceptable to the Karolyis. I remember sitting in the passenger seat of the car while Mama ran into the apartment to boil some water. Tata poured the scalding water over the windshield, and I watched as the frost and ice melted away. Mama and Tata had some peculiar methods of doing things, but somehow they always confidently tackled the problem at hand. The windshield was good as new and Mama got me to the gym on time. The Karolyis did not tolerate anyone arriving late for practice. I had seen Bela kick Hilary out of the gym for practice just for being the last one to walk in the gym even though she wasn’t late, just the last one in. From that day forward, I was ready plenty early in case some other crazy Houston roadblock stood in our way.

My official training at the Karolyi gym pretty much took up where I’d left off at my evaluation. I, along with Jennie, jumped into the Senior Elites group with Kim Zmeskal, Betty Okino, Hilary Grivich, and Kerri Strug. It was a very big deal. Very few my age had ever had the privilege, and I wasn’t going to waste this opportunity. I was proud to be training in Gym Number 1 with these 1992 Olympic “hopefuls.” Gym Number 1 was not only separated by status from Gym Number 2 and Gym Number 3, but was physically partitioned off as well. Gym Number 1 was separated by a glass sliding door, and gymnasts from lower groups were never allowed in Gym Number 1—it was reserved only for the Elites in
training. The rules were strict at the Karolyis’ and everyone knew them and obeyed them.

Gym Number 3 was pretty much abandoned at the time. Nobody liked going in there because it had the worst of the worst run-down equipment. I specifically remember an old gray Nissen balance beam that was torn up around the edges. I got shivers at the thought of working out and landing on something so hard and torn up under my feet. I was surprised that the Karolyi gym had such old equipment. It seemed strange to me that a gym with the country’s highest-level gymnasts didn’t have newer equipment for training.

Shortly after I joined the gym, I had my first exhibition with my new teammates at Houston’s Salute to Olympic Gymnastics Hopefuls at Rice University. My team at the exhibition consisted of the 1992 Barcelona Olympic hopefuls Kim Zmeskal, Betty Okino, Hilary Grivich, Kerri Strug, along with 1996 hopefuls Jennie Thompson, myself, and other Karolyi gymnasts from various levels.

I was floored when I saw that
the
Nadia Comaneci and her soon-to-be husband, Bart Conner, were television commentators for the event. Nadia Comaneci was the gold standard for gymnastics, and as a Romanian, she was not only my family’s hero, she was a hero to her entire country. I couldn’t believe I was actually in the same room with her.

When Bela called me and my teammates over to meet Nadia and Bart behind a blue curtain, I did everything I could to appear calm, because on the inside I was exploding. We locked eyes, and I felt an instant connection with her. I wasn’t sure if it was because we shared the same heritage or because we were both selected by the Karolyis to train at such a young age, but I felt like she somehow understood me and what I was going through as a ten-year-old Elite gymnast better than anyone else in that room. I felt as if we had this unspoken understanding of each other. I had dreams, but standing there that day meeting her, who would have guessed that
I’d one day follow in her footsteps to win gold for my country at the age of fourteen, just like she had done for her country.