Word: medals
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...America's three entrants. Performing separately, they seemed more fragile, both physically and emotionally. Moceanu wobbled on the balance beam and was never in contention. Dawes and Miller, two stoic 19-year-olds, each made a major flub on the floor exercise and walked off sobbing, aware that their medal chances had vanished. That allowed the elfin Ukrainian Lilia Podkopayeva, the reigning world champion, to edge past three tough Romanians to win the gold...
Team spirit propelled the U.S. men temptingly close to a medal as well. Never as highly regarded as the women, they nonetheless performed better than expected, staying in the medal hunt almost to the end and finishing a respectable fifth. (Russia captured the gold.) In the individual competition, national champion John Roethlisberger pumped up the crowd with his intensity but couldn't match the grace of China's Li Xiaoshuang, who nudged out Russia's Alexei Nemov for the gold...
...have more work to do; the women can savor the fruits of a building project four years in the making. Though the U.S. women won a bronze medal in Barcelona, the program was plagued by controversy. The coaches were fractious, the girls looked unhappy and undernourished, and criticism began to emerge that the program drove adolescent girls too hard in service of demanding parents and coaches. Much of the criticism was aimed at Karolyi, the former Romanian coach who brought the world Nadia Comaneci and later trained such U.S. stars as Mary Lou Retton and Kim Zmeskal...
Among the men, Jeff Rouse, 26, a Stanford graduate, struck gold in the 100-m backstroke--a medal that had eluded him in Barcelona--and rejoiced that he could no longer be called a choker. Brad Bridgewater, a 23-year-old Texan, won the 200-m backstroke; and Tom Dolan, the Michigan star whose struggle with asthma has made him one of the Games' heroes, captured a gold in the 400-m individual medley, even as his lungs seized up at the finish. Exhausted, he failed to medal in two other races. "My body just gave out," he said...
...press conferences. At times she would walk about holding tight to a large doll. Asked how she felt about becoming the focus of world adulation, she deadpanned: 'It's nothing special. I feel just the same as before.' Did she ever think she might not win a gold medal? 'No, I knew that I would...