1984

At the Olympic Games in Los Angeles, Béla Károlyi’s star gymnast, Mary Lou Retton, stuck the landing of her full twisting Tsukahara vault, earning a perfect 10.0 and the individual all-around gold medal. At age four, I loved her teammate, Julianne McNamara. She had strawberry blonde hair like me. My sister and I begged my parents to register us for gymnastics. At my first practice, I studied the older girls and followed every direction. At pick up I asked my mom, “Can I come back tomorrow?” 

Later, my dad got down on all fours on our linoleum floor. I adjusted my hair and leotard like the girls did on TV, rubbed my palms together, took a deep breath, sprinted across the kitchen, and catapulted over my dad’s back. The imaginary crowd erupted in applause. My endorphins surged. I waved to my adoring fans and sauntered back to take my second vault. 

After I saw the Olympic gymnasts in action, I couldn’t unsee it. I was a girl with a dream. I was the main character of my story. I saw girls testing their limits, and I wanted it for me. I could feel the potential energy in my body. My agency felt natural and also like a gift. Pretend becoming reality felt inevitable.

1988

In between Olympic years with limited media coverage, I fueled my dreams paging through issues of International Gymnast magazine, studying the stars, and charting my own path. I hung a double spread of Daniela Silivaș on my bulletin board. She is leaping impossibly high, her muscular legs split well over 180 degrees, her fingers perfectly situated in space. She looks over her left shoulder toward the camera with an eager smile on her face.

When the Seoul Olympics rolled around, I was competing and piling up medals, flipping on the floor, on the beam, off the bar, and over the vault. My days were structured with my school uniform, leotard, and pajamas. Attending practice after school and having a competitive leotard signaled my belonging. I was up to something. I could fly.

Brandy Johnson was my favorite US gymnast that year. With great backcombed bangs and a perfect ponytail, she looked to me like America embodied. At practice, I hiked my leotard fabric high on my hips like Brandy. Alone in the bathroom, I taught myself how to build my bangs into a wall with a curling iron and ample hairspray. Wanting to work with the coaches who led Nadia Comǎneci and Mary Lou Retton to Olympic gold, Brandy had moved from Florida to Houston to train with Béla Károlyi, but maybe not soon enough. Gymnasts from Romania and the Soviet Union claimed the top six spots. Brandy finished tenth.

My limited knowledge of the Cold War was navigated through the lens of gymnastics and mediated through Olympic coverage. After completely missing that the Soviet Union had boycotted the 1984 Olympics, I had only inklings of how gymnasts from Eastern Europe seemed to dominate. After defecting to the US, the Károlyis were trying to change that.

While I pined after the East Germans’ sparkly teal leotards, Romanian Daniela Silivaș and Soviet Russian Yelena Shushunova contended for the all-around title. Shushunova wore a black leotard on her stout and masculine frame. She scowled. Daniela beamed in white, appearing slight, feminine, and angelic. My choice was clear.

In hindsight, the binary doesn’t hold. They both look young, mechanical, and scared. Out of the spotlight, their muscles hang on their skeletons. There are shadows behind their eyes. 

Silivaș lost the duel by 0.025 points. 

Shushunova, the Olympic champion, died at age forty-nine of pneumonia. 

In the origin story montages during the Olympic broadcast, young obedient girls with good genes and no fear were plucked from school playgrounds to live and train with the best gymnastics coaches in Eastern Europe. Whatever was happening behind those warehouse walls in those dusty gyms, I wanted in. I wanted to be noticed. Chosen. I wanted to be plucked.

One sunny day while running errands, my mom asked through the rearview mirror, “What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”

“I’m going to miss you when I move to Texas,” I replied, gazing out the window.

“Why are you moving to Texas?”

“To train with Béla.” 

“Honey, you don’t have to do that.”

“Yes, I do. I want to. I’m just going to miss you.” 

I was tethered to the dream of being a tiny, strong, obedient girl who could control and manipulate her body to do amazing things. I wanted to be molded and trained toward perfection. I believed that Béla could be like my dad, generously situating himself to support me taking flight.

1992

Invariably my coach returned from his annual coaches’ conference brimming with ideas. He’d pop in a VHS tape of vagabond footage from a gym far away. Maybe Chinese girls in splits with their feet in ropes strapped to the ceiling. One year the tape inspired us to start Russian-style conditioning, incorporating high intensity strength work to fatigue our muscles at the beginning of practice so we trained tired. Sixty legs lifts. Twenty-five press handstands. We climbed a thick rope and rang a bell on the ceiling, nine times using our feet or three times without. I wanted the grueling work, the pressure, and the payoff.

In gym class, in my plaid Catholic school uniform skirt, I scoffed at the teacher who gave girls the option of a bent arm hang. I pummeled the boys in pull ups. 

Meanwhile, my areolas bloomed. I despised them. Should I wear a training bra? You saw either the seam of my bra or my budding nipples through the Lycra leotard. Both signaled defeat. You had to be fifteen to compete in the Olympics, so 1996 were the Games I had dreamed about for years. I practiced my pre-Olympic interviews and drew pictures of myself with the ultimate medal hanging around my neck. The gymnasts I studied in International Gymnast and on television had strong pectoral muscles, but no breasts. Visible pubic bones, but no trace of body hair. They were children. My body entering puberty against my will felt like a betrayal. It felt like failure and an ending.

I sat on the bathroom floor with my mom’s makeup scissors, meticulously cutting off my pubic hair, a pathetic attempt to remain a child. I could almost feel my hips widening, my thighs bulging, and my breasts swelling. More hideous weight to lug around the bar. Deep down, I knew the dream was over. I would never be picked, tolerated at best.

At age twelve, when other athletes start to dream of a career, mine had peaked. I did not know how to create an alternative dream. All I saw was the Olympics. Because I would not be moving to the Károlyi ranch in Texas to train, I missed that I was talented. I was flipping and twisting, leaping and swinging, traveling around the country to compete, but my naïve delusion of Olympic glory washed over me like embarrassment. I missed that my dad was still a solid piece of earth working to support me and that my coach was good and kind.

The Unified Team, consisting of former Soviet Republics, won the team and individual all-around gold in 1992. Béla’s top gymnast going into the Barcelona games was Kim Zmeskal. Her rival, Shannon Miller, coached by Steven Nunno and Peggy Liddick, outshined Kim, winning five medals. I chose Kim in the rivalry because Béla was the anointed one. Gymnasts who trained with other coaches were outsiders. If I couldn’t be one of his gymnasts, I could at least belong via loyal fandom.

The bottom of my TV screen read: Kim Zmeskal. Age 16. 4 feet 7 inches. 80 pounds. Taller and heavier at age twelve, reality set in.   

1996

I wiped my sweaty palms on our paisley sectional couch while watching The Magnificent Seven in a close race with Russia for the Olympic team gold. The American team were finally serious contenders in a non-boycotted competition. During the final apparatus, Dominique Moceanu, Béla’s gymnast perpetually compared to Nadia, fell on both of her vaults in a pivotal moment. Anchor Kerri Strug needed a 9.493 or higher to clinch a team victory. She under-rotated her first vault, aggravating an injury on the landing and taking a fall. Limping to the end of the runway, she asked Béla if she needed to vault again. “You can do it. You better do it,” he said.

Kerri rubbed her palms together, took a deep breath and sprinted toward the vault. She flipped and twisted through the air perfectly. She landed, immediately hopping onto her good foot to salute the judges before cringing and collapsing to her knees. She earned a 9.712. They would have won without it.

Kerri attempted to crawl off the mat, and a young trainer named Larry Nassar yelled, “I got her! I got her!” and carried her off the competitive floor.

Kerri’s vault got played over and over again, casting her as an American hero, Béla’s booming voice looped into the footage. At sixteen years old, I did not yet know Larry Nassar would be convicted of sexually abusing hundreds of young gymnasts. I could not yet see that Kerri was a girl, landing on a shattered limb, because she was trained to please a cruel coach without question. 

I would compete for six more years after watching the Magnificent Seven, having a fulfilling college gymnastics experience in not a girl’s but a young woman’s body. I coached girls and young women toward greatness. I learned more about the girls who were picked by Béla and Larry, what happened in those dusty warehouses and behind closed doors. I felt lucky, retroactively, that I was not plucked and chosen, that I was not a victim and survivor, a vessel for Larry’s pleasure, a means to Béla’s success.

When I was a tiny little girl, my dad taught me that there are men who will help me catapult higher. As I grew toward womanhood, I came to learn that there are also men like Larry and Béla. Decades later, I am still learning how to be disobedient to these men, how to step out of line, how to not jump when they say jump. I am still learning how to appreciate my body, coming back home to my power and agency again and again. There is a piece of me still longing to get picked. I still remember how it feels to fly.

 -Ellie Roscher

Ellie Roscher is the author of Remarkable Rose, The Embodied Path, 12 Tiny Things, Play Like a Girl and How Coffee Saved My Life. Her writing appears in The Baltimore Review, Eunoia Review, Half and One, Mothering Spirit, Inscape Magazine and elsewhere. She teaches yoga and writing in Minneapolis and holds an MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College and an MA in Theology from Luther Seminary. Find out more at ellieroscher.com.