Dominique Moceanu Quotes
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I prayed a lot. That's all I had in the gym; that was the thing I could turn to.
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My parents didn't know anything about collegiate scholarships, so they had accepted the national team training stipend, the monthly stipend that I received after making the national team, so I was ineligible for NCAA eligibility anyway.
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I was 26 years old when I found out that I had a sister who I never knew existed.
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My parents enrolled me in a gymnastics class when I was three years old, and I just was drawn to gymnastics. I loved it. It was my playground, and I could run around and be free there.
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I can barely recall a single holiday when my father didn't make a scene or create some kind of chaos. We were always walking on eggshells.
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Since my mother is an extremely devoted Christian Orthodox woman, she prayed a great deal and taught me how to pray.
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In my very first interview, at nine years old, I said I wanted to be an Olympic gold medalist. That was the first time I said it out loud in front of somebody other than my parents.
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Standing on the podium at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta and receiving a gold medal was the crowning jewel in a successful gymnastics career and, most certainly, the confirmation that my parents' sacrifices were not in vain.
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I was able to represent my country and put on the red, white, and blue - how many people in the world get to do that? Standing on the podium with my teammates, and being the first women's gymnastics team to win this gold medal, it was life-changing!
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I loved gymnastics. I was eager to compete. I was hungry to go out there and be the best in the world, and I had that determination.
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In Romania, of course, gymnastics is among the most popular sports, and my parents had a dream of escaping the Ceausescu regime and giving their child a better life. So they came to the United States and put me in gymnastics.
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My father wasn't allowing me control and the financial freedom that I was asking for. I was 17, about to be 18 within a year, so I started asking more questions because I felt that I needed to start learning about those things.
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Training with Bela and Marta Karolyi took the joy out of the Olympics for me. I look back and feel there was a lot of verbal and physical abuse. For years, I felt it was my problem.
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When you have traveled the world, won Olympic gold, and gone through a very public court battle against your parents all by the age of seventeen, surprises don't come easy.
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We need to educate our elite coaches more and have a better approach to teaching the athletes about how to be healthy rather than berate them, humiliate them, use tactics that could scar them for life.
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My parents, Romanian immigrants, struggled to provide me a better life than the ones they had left in their homeland. They worked hard to give me every opportunity in life, and once I showed natural talent as a young gymnast, they spent every last penny on my training.
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Some coaches are not educated at the elite level in health and nutrition. They're not educated in how the body works from anatomy and physiology perspectives.
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I'd challenge myself to see how long I could go without a fall - on beam, I once went three weeks.
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As a competitive gymnast, my life has always been filled with challenges that would ultimately define my future. From day one, I was taught to be prepared at all costs.
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I was very hungry to compete internationally when I was 10 years old, and I was good enough to compete, so that part never made me afraid or worried at all. When I was at my peak, around 12 and 13, I won my junior national and senior national titles back to back.
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Gymnastics is the greatest sport in the world, and one of the hardest, but we have to watch out for domineering male figures who try to belittle and scream at young girls.
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I had this sister that was born who was given up for adoption, and I never knew it.
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I have a secret sibling that I never knew existed and who was given up for adoption at birth by my parents, and she was born without legs.
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For as long as I can remember, my mother went to church every single Sunday. She was born and raised in Romania as a person with limited means, and faith was something she could rely on - something that was free.