Word: karolyis
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...team has a leader, and that's Elise Ray." With those words, the voluble Bela Karolyi, national women's team coordinator and the man behind the Magnificent Seven gold-medal winners of the 1996 Olympic Games, unofficially crowned America's next darling of the mats. It was the verbal equivalent of one of his trademark bear hugs. "I'm not afraid of taking on that role," Ray said last week after earning her ticket to Sydney by accumulating the highest score in four qualifying meets...
...expect a waiflike Nadia Comaneci, or a baby-faced Dominique Moceanu. At 18, Ray is the new face-and body-of women's gymnastics: older, wiser and, in Karolyi's words, "sturdier." Because gymnasts must now be in their 16th year to be able to compete, they're more likely to be heading to college than high school, and physically, they're better representatives of a women's rather than a girls' sport...
...parents: Your mom, who studiously avoids the spotlight, appears to be a lovely woman. (And that's not coincidental.) Your dad, on the other hand, reminds us all a little bit too much of Bela Karolyi. Whenever old Earl appears on a talk show, praising you to the skies and harping over his overwhelming influence on your game, I half expect him to launch into proud reminiscences of Kerri Strug's bone-crunching, gold-medal-winning vault at the '96 Olympic Games. There's something about your dad that makes me nervous. Nothing I can put my finger on - just...
...months and tumbling in her first gymnastics class at age three. It paid off. Soon after her 10th birthday, they left their jobs in Tampa, Fla.--Camelia worked in a hair salon, Dumitru as a used-car dealer--to follow her to the Houston gym of legendary trainer Bela Karolyi to preside over her vault into the spotlight. In a best-selling autobiography written on the eve of the Atlanta Olympics, Dominique, 14 years old and headed for gold, thanked her parents. "I look in the mirror and see Dominique Moceanu, my parents' daughter," she wrote. "That's good enough...
...change for '96 was that Karolyi, head coach of the '92 team, was replaced by a duo: his wife Martha and Tracy. They were an effective team--Martha Karolyi the experienced technician, Tracy the supportive den mother. The group they assembled for the Olympics was older and more mature than the '92 group: three were competing in their second Olympics, and the average age was 18. Moceanu, the tiny 14-year-old who got the most advance press hype, was an exception that will soon be against the rules; for the 2000 Games, the minimum age for competition has been...