Off Balance: A Memoir (21 page)

After the Olympic tour came to a close, I had to return to real life. The first order of business was to find a new coach and a place to train since I basically felt disowned by the Karolyis. Tata was
disappointed by Bela’s complete lack of interest in my training, but he didn’t know where else to take me, so he begged and begged until Bela agreed to train me for a bit. It was a mistake from the beginning; it’s never a good idea to have to “beg” someone to coach you. I ended up having a couple of months of lackluster training with Bela and Marta before we called it quits. Bela didn’t want to be there and neither did I. Tata asked for the Karolyis’ help in finding a new coach for me if they didn’t want me anymore, but they flat-out refused. They apparently kept telling him that my “body won’t be able to keep up the training at this level” and that I “should just stop now.” At this point I was fifteen, coming off my first Olympics, and the most recognized authorities of my sport were telling my parents and me that I was washed up, “finished.” Even though it was clear to me now that Bela didn’t care about me as a person, I still, for some twisted reason, craved his approval.

I worked with a number of different coaches, trying to find the right fit. Tata had me hopping from one gym to another all over the map, from Houston to Boston. We had moved to Houston in order to train with the Karolyis, and now that I was no longer with them, I lacked a “gym home.” I felt like an orphan going from gym to gym asking for permission to train. The fame and Olympic credential surely didn’t hurt in terms of getting me into various gyms, but Tata held the instructors to a standard they could never match, at least in his eyes. When I did get to train or work with new coaches, it was for short, irregular periods. I needed stability. Through no fault of their own, the coaches I was working with in these cities weren’t a perfect match. After bouncing from gym to gym several times, I started to lose my motivation.

Tata came up with the idea of building our own gym, a place where I could train and also run my own gymnastics business as an adult when I retired from competition. I remember one night at the dinner table saying it sounded like a good idea, in an attempt to please Tata as much as anything else, and that was that. When
I was fifteen years old, Moceanu Gymnastics Incorporated (MGI) was born. What started out as an admirable plan with good intentions turned into something grandiose. Tata decided he didn’t want the gym to be just
any
gym; he wanted it to be the best and biggest gym in the country. I do believe now that Tata’s heart was in the right place, but he plunged in headfirst. The gym became his primary focus. He was palpably excited discussing plans for the gym. Upon completion, the gym would be dubbed the “Taj Mahal” of gymnastics by some media outlets and a buzz was created within the gymnastics community because of its state-of-the-art equipment and features. It truly was one of the finest gyms I’d ever seen, but it just seemed too unmanageably big from the start.

During construction in 1997, Tata spent endless nights at the site on Louetta Road in Spring, Texas. He really threw himself into the project day and night and was proud of how it was shaping up. It was during this time that Tata became friendly with a man named Brian Huggins, who was a salesman for RSC, the national equipment company that helped build the foundation of our gym. Tata rented large equipment, such as tractors, bulldozers, and moving equipment, from Brian. They were both big talkers and would sit for hours shooting the breeze and drinking beer late into the night at the site. Brian stroked Tata’s ego in the right ways, too, and fast became what Tata considered a “buddy.” Mama and I disliked it when Tata would go on and on bragging and exaggerating how much money we had and how much I’d made through my endorsements, appearances, et cetera. Mama would diplomatically try to tell him that it was giving the wrong impression, and she’d try to tone down the exaggerations and late-night stories a bit, but Tata was Tata and there was no stopping him. He had big dreams and felt like he was on top of the world while the gym was being built; he wanted everyone around him to share in the excitement.

Before I knew it, Tata—who was literally spending every waking moment at the gym site, managing all aspects of construction—
had asked Brian to help him out by taking me shopping or to eat when I was really supposed to be doing those things with Tata. Tata approved of Brian, and since he rarely approved of anyone, I figured Brian was harmless and went along with Tata’s wishes. Brian was very confident, charismatic, and charming, though with his crisp Polo shirts, gelled hair, and perfectly tanned skin, he was seen by some (such as Aunt Janice, who never really liked him) as smug. He did seem a bit of a show-off—zipping around town in his flashy red Corvette—but he was polite and fun to be around, often cracking jokes. I knew very little about Brian in the beginning, except that he had a wife and a son, whom he talked about often.

I was used to being surrounded by adults more than kids my own age, so it didn’t even occur to me that hanging out with Brian could be construed as anything but innocent. What began as small trips to the mall or to get a bite to eat eventually turned into all-day excursions, often on Saturdays or Sundays. It was fun to be taken places I’d never really gotten a chance to see before by this interesting and charismatic friend who seemed to know so many people and constantly made me laugh. I started to view Brian as an older brother who’d let me get away with some fun stuff that most other adults wouldn’t allow. We also spent a fair amount of time at Lake Conroe on Brian’s boat. Brian taught me how to wakeboard and water ski and we’d have a lot of fun being silly and goofing around. Sometimes Christina would come to the lake with us, and occasionally, Tata and Mama would come, too. If anyone enjoyed the water as much as Brian, it was Tata. He loved being on the boat, fishing and soaking in the outdoors, but more often than not, Tata and Mama were too busy with the gym to make it out to the lake.

Many times I wished that Tata had known how to spend more time with me and talk to me the way Brian did. Tata always thought he had to be so tough on the surface, even though we all knew deep down he had plenty of his own insecurities. I know that spending some quality time together could have changed our entire
relationship, and I believe would have helped us avoid many problems we ended up facing. Tata asking Brian to spend time with me in place of himself was wrong on so many levels.

Aunt Janice’s initial distaste for Brian had grown. As someone who loved me as if I were her own child, she was getting more and more frustrated with Tata and Mama for letting me run around town with Brian. She didn’t like the idea of a grown, married man in his thirties and with a wife and child hanging out with a sixteen-or seventeen-year-old girl. She wondered on many occasions why he didn’t go home to his wife and child more often. She was suspicious of Brian’s intentions from the start.

Aunt Janice was the only person who had been there for my family from the beginning and for the right reasons. She made a commitment to look out for me early on and has always been true to that promise. She, in fact, stuck with all of us Moceanus through good and bad and was there for Tata, Mama, Christina, and me in ways we could not be for one another—a shoulder to cry on, a nurturing, compassionate friend, and a straight-shooting provider of doses of reality whether we wanted to hear them or not. She was the only one I was ever completely open and honest with about
everything
. I’d tell Aunt Janice how I felt—with no filter—and she never backed away, loving me whether I was exceeding my goals or falling flat and struggling. I’m so thankful she came into our lives when we moved to Houston. She was the one who told me, and still does to this day, how much Tata genuinely loved me, and shares with me the conversations she and Tata had. She is one of the very few who knew Tata’s sensitive side.

“Why don’t you just tell Dominique that you love her?” she’d often ask Tata.

“She knows” was always his reply. “It is something that doesn’t have to be said.”

“I don’t think Dominique truly knows,” she’d tell Tata, and she was right. For most of my gymnastics career, I felt that the quality
of my performance would be the barometer of my father’s mood. Unconditional love was not even a consideration to me. To hear those words from him then would have meant the world to me. Sadly, I’d have to wait until my twenty-first birthday for my father to finally say, “I love you.” Through everything, Aunt Janice stayed a loyal friend to Tata and listened to all of his business schemes and cockamamie ideas because she truly believed his heart was in the right place. She was also a sounding board for Mama, who would privately reveal to Janice just how trapped and unhappy she felt in the marriage at times. We are so fortunate to have had this confidante. Aunt Janice smiles and shakes her head today when she tells me that each of the four Moceanus would confide in her things we never spoke of to one another. She always tried to get us to open up, but we were all stubborn that way—and, heck, we had Aunt Janice if we needed to get something off our collective chests.

“The first time someone meets your daddy, they love him,” Aunt Janice used to tell me in her warm Southern drawl. “The second time, they hate him. I’m one of the only people I know of that actually knows your daddy
and
likes him.” She was so right. Tata didn’t have many genuine friends. Most of the people he knew were either business associates or people who outright feared him. But not Aunt Janice. She thought of Tata like a brother and wasn’t afraid to stand up to him. She was at our house often, offering to take Christina or me places or helping Tata out with the gym. Sometimes they’d fight like siblings, especially when she was defending me tooth and nail when he was being unreasonable, which was often. I remember times when he’d be revving up for one of his scary rages and feeling so relieved that Aunt Janice was present to stand in his path and shout right back at him—cursing up a blue streak, but always in an attempt to stick up for me. When push came to shove, though, Tata still ruled the roost.

Tata’s inability to listen to others and compromise was probably his downfall in a lot of ways, and eventually it was the demise of
the gym. Managing a gym and all its staff of coaches and employees requires diplomatic skills, something Tata certainly lacked. He had a heart of gold at times, but he also had a heart of coal when his temper flared and he made rash decisions in anger. When someone rubbed Tata the wrong way, he’d act out of raw emotion without thinking twice about who he was hurting in the process. Words of venom would just spew out of him. It was only a matter of time until that temper would flare at the wrong time and start to destroy the gym.

Meanwhile, Mama and Tata were still searching to find me a new coach. I’d been through a long list of coaches, trying to find the right fit, and nothing seemed to work. I began to feel like my gymnastics skills might be slipping a bit and was concerned that we’d never find anyone. Bela’s warnings that I wouldn’t “be able to keep up the training” and that I was “done” kept flashing through my mind.

Then, like a godsend, Luminita Miscenco arrived in January 1998. She apparently had been coaching the junior national team in Romania and eagerly accepted my parents’ offer to come to the United States to coach me. Tata had met with her during a trip to Romania and managed to obtain a work visa for her. She was a sight for sore eyes in the coaching department—she had a light, positive air about her, and it didn’t hurt that she was youthful (only nine years older than me), with shoulder-length dark brown hair, fair skin, and brown eyes. You could tell she’d been a gymnast herself by her fit, petite physique.

I loved her right away. I had gotten out of shape and knew that I had my work cut out for me, but my motivation and enthusiasm returned under Luminita. Luminita was serious, focused, and demanding, but she also trained with compassion and care. I was shocked that she actually asked for my input in training and would read my body language to gauge my energy or exhaustion. As a gymnast herself, she understood the physical demands of our sport.
There is an unspoken understanding between most gymnasts, and this aspect of our relationship brought us closer. I responded to her training style and felt alive again in the gym. It was also the first time I was coached entirely in Romanian; Luminita didn’t speak English. It was almost like a new start and I was invigorated.

Training went relatively smoothly the first eight months. Luminita worked me back into top gymnastics shape with one-on-one training sessions from January to July 1998. I had my heart set on competing at the Goodwill Games in New York in July of that year. The support of Luminita, my family, friends, and fans motivated me to keep pressing forward to reach that goal. There certainly were low points, when I was full of tears and doubted myself in the gym, but as months passed, I kept pushing myself. Luminita taught me new skills that I’d never attempted before, increasing my difficulty and helping me gain a new confidence. At the Goodwill Games, I planned to debut a new vault—a front handspring on the vaulting horse into a front layout position with a 180-degree twist. I’d also perform new routines on bars, beam, and floor exercise highlighting my newer, more mature style of gymnastics. The hunger to win the Goodwill Games grew more with each passing month.

“I foresee the competition ending with you in first place, standing between two Romanians,” Luminita said to me weeks before the Goodwill Games. The fact that she had so much confidence in me and the fact that she was
telling
me how good she thought I was, even at times applauding my practice sessions, was something new to me and a tremendous breath of fresh air. It also meant that Luminita believed I was good enough to beat those “two Romanians,” who happened to be two of the most accomplished gymnasts in the world at that time. Olympic and World champion Simona Amânar, who’d go on to have an impressive career, being a seven-time Olympic medalist and a ten-time World medalist, was target number one. She was a fierce competitor with outstanding
difficulty and consistency. Obstacle number two was then-current European champion, Maria Olaru, who’d go on to become the World champion in 1999 and Olympic champion in 2000. The roster for competition also included Russian gymnastics legend Svetlana Khorkina. To have the chance to compete—and win—against this incredible group would prove to myself that I could do anything I set my mind to.