Dominique Moceanu

Dominique, an American champion

Do you know who Dominique Moceanu is? If you don't, this is the right story for you! Dominique Moceanu was born in 1981 in Hollywood, Calif. When Dominique was only six months old her father let her grab on to a clothesline to see how stong she was. Suprisingly, she hung there until the clothesline broke!

When Dominique was only two, her family moved to Highland Park, Ill. where she enrolled in her first gymnastics class. At the age of three, she recevied her first passport and immediately went on a three-month tour to Europe. At four, her father first contacted Bela Karolyi and asked him about enrolling Dominique in his gymnastics classes. But he told the Moceanus to wait until Dominique was nine or ten.

Dominique Moceanu

Then when she was six, her family moved again to Tampa, Fla. She was enrolled at LaFeurs Gymnastics. In 1989, her little sister Christina was born. Then in 1991, at age ten, her family moves to Houston, Texas, so she can train with Bela Karolyi. Her first practice session with Bela occured on December 18, 1991.

She qualified for the Junior National team at age 10, and later won medals, becoming the youngest ever to do so. One year later, she again qualified for the team, but she didn't win a medal and ended up finishing seventh place all round.

Just one year later, she competed on the team again, and this time she finished in first place. One year after that, she became the youngest person in U.S. history to win the senior national title and the only person to go from a junior title to a senior title in one year.

That same year at the World Championships in Sabae, Japan, she won a silver medal on the balance beam and she finished fifth all around. That was the highest finish by an American in that competition. Then in 1996, she competed in the Olympics and even though she recieved no individual medal, she helped the U.S. win its first women's all-around title.