Dominique Moceanu Quotes

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.

I prayed a lot. That's all I had in the gym; that was the thing I could turn to.

I was 26 years old when I found out that I had a sister who I never knew existed.

In football, you're dealing with grown men. In gymnastics, you're dealing with prepubescent teenage girls. There's a huge difference. At that age, you're not confident enough to have a voice.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

I never, ever objected to hard work.

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.

I realized I was the one doing all the training, earning the money, and my parents were living off of me.

The time leading up to the 1996 Olympics was the most demanding and stressful of my career. The sport I had loved so much was slowly becoming a nightmare as I trained with Bela and Marta Karolyi the summer before the Olympics.

Autographs and pictures do get a little old, but I don't mind if the people want it.

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.

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.

I certainly believe that having my husband be in my life has been a tremendous blessing.

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.

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.

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.

My husband and I believe that if you treat a child well and nurture his talent and physical ability, in a healthy environment, the child will succeed no matter what.

Gymnastics was my calling. I think it chose me in a lot of ways.

I'd challenge myself to see how long I could go without a fall - on beam, I once went three weeks.

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.

I hope that by sharing my story, I inspire others to stand for what they believe in and know that their voice matters, even if change doesn't occur overnight.

I don't think ethical people deal with intimidation as a method to achieve success. Undermining someone's self-esteem isn't a method to achieve success.

Since my mother is an extremely devoted Christian Orthodox woman, she prayed a great deal and taught me how to pray.

I believe you can be young and compete in gymnastics if you have a coach who is looking out for you and if there is a good gym environment where the coaches are taking care of you emotionally and physically.

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.

I got injured at the Olympic Trials in 2000. I could not jump. I could not walk on my leg properly. I couldn't bend my knee. I couldn't straighten it.

I was so afraid to make mistakes and get reprimanded by my coaches that the joy of the sport started slipping away.

I was awkward-looking with huge brown eyes, dark brown, pencil-straight hair styled into an old-school Romanian bowl haircut from the 1980s. And I was very, very small. I was always the tiniest kid on my street and in my classes at school ... The gym was the one place I didn't have to worry about feeling awkward for being so petite.

I don't mind sacrifice. I don't mind discipline. But a good coach allows people to blossom. I've seen that. I didn't have it.

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.