Off Balance: A Memoir (12 page)

I was timid and quiet when she spoke to me, but I couldn’t stop smiling and staring at her. It was hard to not be mesmerized—besides being a legend in my sport, Nadia was so beautiful. She had strong European features: big brown eyes, shoulder-length dark hair, and an hourglass figure that left little doubt she was still in great athletic shape.

At the time, I secretly wondered how she’d endured all that she’d gone through in her life to get to the very top of her sport—and to stay at the top. From my parents, I knew that during her era of competition, gymnastics was different and that she trained under a dictatorship in Romania. I wondered how that must have affected her on the inside because she always looked so stoic and calm and carried herself with class and dignity.

Blond-haired, blue-eyed, and still in prime physical shape nearly eight years after he’d won his two gold medals at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, Bart Conner was the happiest and sweetest gentleman I’d ever met. Being around Bart put a smile on my face. I couldn’t believe he took the time to ask me, a little pipsqueak, about my gymnastics, and I could tell he sincerely listened to what I was saying and that he wanted me to do well. With the exception of my first coach, Jeff, most of the men I knew in my life up to that point were not as well mannered or polite, especially not with kids. The two most prominent male role models in my life, Tata and Bela, in fact, both terrified me. Then here was Bart—an Olympic warrior who was genuine, kind, and positive. This stranger was a ray of sunlight that day, and he and Nadia have remained friends ever since, even serving as godparents at my wedding in 2006.

It was at this exhibition that I got my first taste of interacting with the public and the media. After the event, a fan was working his way through the exhibition floor collecting autographs on his white T-shirt with a black Sharpie pen. He approached me and
Jennie and asked us to write “1996 for sure” because he was so sure we’d make it to the 1996 Olympics. I was overwhelmed by the attention and also by this stranger’s confidence in me. In my experience, only Mama and Tata had been so certain about my future. I hesitated to sign the shirt, thinking that it might somehow be against the Karolyis’ rules and also, I was only ten years old. There was a long road ahead of me before the Olympics, and I didn’t want to jinx it by signing this guy’s shirt. I wasn’t sure what to do. I froze. The fan persisted, so I relented and wrote “1996 for sure!” and Jennie and I signed our names. I had butterflies in my tummy because I was afraid of what Bela might say when he saw it, which I knew he eventually would because his signature hadn’t made it onto the man’s shirt yet and I knew this persistent fan wasn’t leaving that exhibition without Bela Karolyi’s signature.

In later years, Bela would tell and retell the story to poke fun at me. By the time he recounted the story in a 1995 segment on NBC, it was so exaggerated, it went something like this:

“… And in an interview she wrote, ‘Dominique Moceanu 1996 Olympic All-Around Champion for sure!’”

Bela laughed and made big hand gestures mimicking how I’d signed the shirt. Bela, like Tata, had a knack for telling stories, and if there was a camera crew or media in the vicinity, watch out! It was always a love fest because reporters and camera people all marveled at Bela’s effortless charm and charisma, and Bela loved having an audience.

“I never said that! I would never sign my signature as the ‘All-Around Champion for sure,’” I cried to Mama after the NBC interview aired. I was so ashamed and embarrassed that Bela had painted me as an overconfident brat. The one thing I was certain of, even very young, was that nothing was ever 100 percent certain in sports. I was raised in a superstitious household where saying things like I’d be the “All-Around Champion for sure” was definitely tempting fate. Later, by the time I’d heard the story a few
more times from Bela on television, I’d grown a thicker skin and it bothered me less and less, even though Bela exaggerated the details more and more.

As I had only been training with the Karolyis for a short time prior to this exhibition, I’d had little time to prepare. Bela and Marta didn’t like the floor routine I had prepared at LaFleur’s gym, so they told me I needed to learn a new routine in time for the exhibition. Team choreographer and fellow Romanian Geza Poszar was to work with me. Geza had been with Marta and Bela since the early days in Romania when they were training Nadia and her teammates. Marta, Bela, and Geza continued to work together after all three fled Romania for the United States in the early 1980s.

Expectations were higher than ever, and I wasn’t yet used to the energy of the gym, which was very tense and so different than I’d ever felt before. I was nervous to start on this routine—and the music selected by the Karolyis didn’t make it any easier. The foundation for any floor routine is the music, and the Hungarian folk piece Bela and Marta selected for me sounded strange and foreign, even to me. I felt completely detached from it. But I also knew that it didn’t matter whether I felt it suited me, or whether I liked it. I was to dance to it, period.

I remember the first day Geza and I started working on my routine. After my morning conditioning, circuit training, and regular team practice with Kim, Kerri, Betty, Hilary, and Jennie, I stood in the center of the gym with Geza while everyone looked on. Usually, these sessions were done in private, one-on-one between the gymnast and choreographer. For some reason, it was decided that it would be a good idea to have my first floor routine session in front of the rest of the team.

The gym floor was old and worn under my feet and had very little bounce. It didn’t have that familiar feel of the floors at the competitions or at my old gym. I also felt awkward and self-conscious
standing there with everyone staring. Geza played the Hungarian folk music a few times to get in touch with it and get his creative juices flowing. He had dark black hair with streaks of gray, a salt-and-pepper mustache, and wore a beret and satchel. He looked like a European artist and I liked that. I never knew any other man to carry a satchel, and I have to say that it looked good on Geza. During our private lesson sessions later, he would remove his satchel and beret, but, here with our audience, he stood in full garb. He had a friendlier vibe than the others I’d met at the gym, and I felt comfortable with him. I loved that he had a sense of humor.

Geza started working on the opening pose and initial dance sequence. This first section is typically short and sweet as most gymnasts want to limit the dancing at the beginning in order to be fresh going into the first, and usually most difficult, tumbling pass of the routine. I had always liked the intro dance sequence and had fun with the moves, but that day, as I stood in the far corner of the floor, I wasn’t connecting at all. I had to strain to hear the music, but all I could hear was Bela talking to my teammates. I tried to focus on Geza as he instructed me to do eight long leaps in a circle to the beat of the music, but the music was drowned out by Bela, who was commanding my teammates to do running drills in a large circle around the mat where Geza and I were working. Why the heck did he have to make them run around me?

For the life of me, I couldn’t do the eight elongated steps on beat and the more I tried, the less I could hear the music, the more I got distracted, and the worse it got. I wanted to crawl under the rug and hide. All eyes were on me and felt like they were burning through my skin.

“1 … 2 … 3 … 4 … 5 … 6 … 7 … 8 … JUMP!” Geza began counting out loud in an effort to help. Still, I struggled. He raised his voice and started counting again and demonstrating how I was supposed to jump on the last count and land with legs glued
together, slightly bent, with arms extended in front and behind in a diagonal. I tried it over and over again, but I couldn’t get on beat. Kim and Betty even chimed in with Geza’s counting to help me get on beat, but it didn’t work. It was my first solo display for my new teammates, and I was humiliated and flustered. My eyes welled up as I tried my hardest to fight back the tears.

I couldn’t understand why it was so difficult for me. I’d performed these types of moves countless times and had performed far more challenging sequences in front of crowds and judges for years.

Bela had turned his attention from my running teammates to my mediocre performance. It was the first time he really got frustrated and lost his patience with me. It stung like needles when he shot a look at Geza, snickered, and laughed disdainfully while shaking his head. I felt stupid. I was disappointed with myself and felt horrible for letting people down. I tried to hide my watery eyes from Bela.

Geza ended up changing the first steps of the routine to make it simpler for me, and although I was humiliated, I was also relieved just to be able to move on to the next sequence. I tried to hide my disappointment, but it was all over my face.

“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

T
hroughout 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.