Off Balance: A Memoir Page 15

  A number of my teammates and I had qualified for individual finals. I qualified for floor and beam finals; Dawes qualified for vault, uneven bars, floor, and All-Around; Shannon qualified for vault, beam, and All-Around; and Amy qualified for uneven bar finals. Kerri had qualified for events, too, but wasn’t able to compete due to her injury. I was actually able to compete in the All-Around by taking Kerri’s spot when she withdrew from competition. My training resumed the next day, with my teammates each going off with their personal coaches. I dreaded being with the Karolyis by myself, especially since they had barely talked to or acknowledged me after my falls, but the practice turned out to be very low spirited and uneventful, almost as if they had already written me off and were just present as a formality.

  As I went into the All-Around day of competition, I had one thing I wanted to prove—my vault. My goal was to stick my vaults on this day, and this time I nailed it! I executed my vault and stuck the landing. I remember shaking my head a little after my second clean landing, wondering why I wasn’t able to do it like that in the team competition. Having just missed a medal by coming in fourth in floor exercise later that week, and falling on my head during my beam routine in the event final, I didn’t win an individual medal. I felt satisfied, however, that I was able to stick that vault landing at the Olympics and, of course, that as a team we had walked away with gold medals around our necks.

  Heading down to breakfast the morning after the Olympic Gala exhibition, I made sure to first go to Marta and Bela’s dorm room to say good morning, as I’d been taught to routinely do. I knocked on the door, waited, then knocked again. No answer. I knocked yet again. About that time, someone coming down the hallway told me that the Karolyis had left. Left? I thought. Left where? To breakfast? Bela and Marta had actually just packed up and left. No “goodbye,” “farewell,” or even a “good luck in life”?

  I wasn’t able to attend the Olympic Closing Ceremonies, which I was looking forward to since I missed Opening Ceremonies as well. Our coaches had thought our competition was too close to Opening Day and feared we’d get worn out, so we were forced to miss out on that experience. Looking back, I still regret not being able to participate in Opening and Closing Ceremonies, which are such special highlights for most of the athletes.

  Interestingly, when NBC aired the women’s gymnastics competition on television, it was tape delayed, so all of the commentary from Tim Daggett, Elfi Schlegel, and John Tesh was done via voiceover. The results were already in the books. The network played up the drama of Kerri’s vault, which led viewers to believe that Team USA would take gold only if Kerri had stuck her vault. In truth, our team scores following my vault were already high enough to cement Team USA taking the gold medal. Ironically, it was a fan I met during a nationwide post-Olympic tour who pointed this out to me. I never bothered calculating my vault scores because the end result was gold for the Magnificent Seven. Kerri’s heroic landing was certainly an iconic moment that added great drama for all of us, but the guilt I had carried thinking my vaults almost cost us the gold suddenly lifted with this realization.

  This also made me realize that Tata must have known that my vault scores were, in fact, high enough to get us the team gold. Tata was good at math and always calculated the scores in his head before they were posted on the scoreboard. Later, Mama did confirm to me that they both knew my falls didn’t jeopardize the gold, but they never bothered to tell me this.

  I will always be grateful to have played a part in a historical moment in American gymnastics history. I have respect for all of my Magnificent Seven teammates because we each worked tirelessly toward this goal and, although we had different backgrounds and gymnastics clubs, we came together to win. This is something that will bond this team forever. We also had the first ever all-female Team USA coaching staff. Winning the gold medal in 1996 was monumental in US Women’s Gymnastics on multiple levels. We changed the landscape of US gymnastics forever and, for me, reflecting back, it was truly … magnificent!

  Chapter 9

  EMANCIPATION

  After the Olympics, the Magnificent Seven participated in a nationwide Olympic tour, which had been negotiated prior to the Games. The tour turned out to be one of the best experiences of my gymnastics career and my life up to that point. I was able to do what I loved—pure gymnastics—and perform for the public without the pressure of judges and scores and, most important, without the Karolyis barking orders at me and criticizing my every move. The tour was about gymnastics, plain and simple, and I loved that.

  Bela was on the post-Olympic tour as well, but he rarely paid attention to me. I’m told that Bela watched some of my routines from backstage, but other than that, I felt invisible to him. It was difficult to reconcile that a month prior to the tour the Karolyis and I had been together around the clock, and, now he acted as if he had never even met me, sometimes passing me in the hallway without a word. It was oddly hurtful that to him I had obviously been just a tool, a means to an end. Since I felt like I’d disgraced Bela by falling and then not winning the All-Around gold medal to bring him the honor and credit he thought he deserved, I felt like I was no longer any value to him. I was relieved to be out from under his thumb. It was the first time in a long time that I wasn’t walking around in fear, but it was also very confusing. As a young teen, I couldn’t understand how he and Marta could just erase me out of their lives in a split second.

  On the other hand, the tour itself was my first taste of freedom and boy, was it sweet. I was traveling across the country to connect with fans in each city and perform my heart out. I jokingly refer to this time as my “rock star” period because we lived out of suitcases and a tour bus for several months. It was the first time I was able to actually get to know most of my teammates, bonding with them as we went from city to city, arena to arena, in ways I had not been able to during the Olympics. It was an incredible experience, one I’ll never forget.

  It was also an opportunity to meet the gymnastics fans and I loved it. They shared a true appreciation for our sport and were so welcoming and thankful to Team USA for bringing home the gold. For me, the flowers, teddy bears, letters of encouragement, and enormous collective support I felt from these fans allowed me to temporarily forget some of my personal hardships. The disappointment and feelings of failure I felt from Tata and my coaches at the Olympics were buffered by the acceptance I received from these enthusiastic fans all across America.

  It was also the little extra things—things that would seem trivial to most teenagers, but that to me made the whole touring experience a carefree, happy time. For example, I was trying foods I’d never been allowed to eat. I tried my first soda and peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and I’d order French toast for breakfast from room service in almost every hotel I stayed in. During our breaks, I’d often go shopping with my teammates or tour members. From hearing some of the other girls talk, I knew I was making a good amount of money because the gymnasts were being paid on a per-show basis and there were a lot of shows on this fifty-city tour. As someone who had basically lived in the gym since I could remember, I was content with the per diem allowance I was given by the tour managers and rarely needed more money for everyday things. I liked having some cash for food and shopping and the per diem covered those expenses.

  Like everything else, Tata handled my finances and kept me in the dark about the money as well as all related business matters. He never included or informed me of even the most basic details of the contracts or appearance fees, so I had no idea how much money I was being paid for any of my events, including the tour. I just knew that it was a very successful tour and we were selling out nearly every venue. The team exceeded expectations and, from what I understand, the tour was in such demand that it was extended into spring of 1997. An additional forty cities or so were added. Looking back, I can’t believe how little I knew about the money I was earning, despite my young age. I was fourteen and fifteen at the time of the tour, so I just went where I was t
old to go and did what I was told to do, and didn’t concern myself with asking questions about my finances. I just loved performing for the fans and was ecstatic when I learned I’d be touring additional months.

  After the Olympic tour came to a close, I had to return to real life. The first order of business was to find a new coach and a place to train since I basically felt disowned by the Karolyis. Tata was disappointed by Bela’s complete lack of interest in my training, but he didn’t know where else to take me, so he begged and begged until Bela agreed to train me for a bit. It was a mistake from the beginning; it’s never a good idea to have to “beg” someone to coach you. I ended up having a couple of months of lackluster training with Bela and Marta before we called it quits. Bela didn’t want to be there and neither did I. Tata asked for the Karolyis’ help in finding a new coach for me if they didn’t want me anymore, but they flat-out refused. They apparently kept telling him that my “body won’t be able to keep up the training at this level” and that I “should just stop now.” At this point I was fifteen, coming off my first Olympics, and the most recognized authorities of my sport were telling my parents and me that I was washed up, “finished.” Even though it was clear to me now that Bela didn’t care about me as a person, I still, for some twisted reason, craved his approval.

  I worked with a number of different coaches, trying to find the right fit. Tata had me hopping from one gym to another all over the map, from Houston to Boston. We had moved to Houston in order to train with the Karolyis, and now that I was no longer with them, I lacked a “gym home.” I felt like an orphan going from gym to gym asking for permission to train. The fame and Olympic credential surely didn’t hurt in terms of getting me into various gyms, but Tata held the instructors to a standard they could never match, at least in his eyes. When I did get to train or work with new coaches, it was for short, irregular periods. I needed stability. Through no fault of their own, the coaches I was working with in these cities weren’t a perfect match. After bouncing from gym to gym several times, I started to lose my motivation.

  Tata came up with the idea of building our own gym, a place where I could train and also run my own gymnastics business as an adult when I retired from competition. I remember one night at the dinner table saying it sounded like a good idea, in an attempt to please Tata as much as anything else, and that was that. When I was fifteen years old, Moceanu Gymnastics Incorporated (MGI) was born. What started out as an admirable plan with good intentions turned into something grandiose. Tata decided he didn’t want the gym to be just any gym; he wanted it to be the best and biggest gym in the country. I do believe now that Tata’s heart was in the right place, but he plunged in headfirst. The gym became his primary focus. He was palpably excited discussing plans for the gym. Upon completion, the gym would be dubbed the “Taj Mahal” of gymnastics by some media outlets and a buzz was created within the gymnastics community because of its state-of-the-art equipment and features. It truly was one of the finest gyms I’d ever seen, but it just seemed too unmanageably big from the start.

  During construction in 1997, Tata spent endless nights at the site on Louetta Road in Spring, Texas. He really threw himself into the project day and night and was proud of how it was shaping up. It was during this time that Tata became friendly with a man named Brian Huggins, who was a salesman for RSC, the national equipment company that helped build the foundation of our gym. Tata rented large equipment, such as tractors, bulldozers, and moving equipment, from Brian. They were both big talkers and would sit for hours shooting the breeze and drinking beer late into the night at the site. Brian stroked Tata’s ego in the right ways, too, and fast became what Tata considered a “buddy.” Mama and I disliked it when Tata would go on and on bragging and exaggerating how much money we had and how much I’d made through my endorsements, appearances, et cetera. Mama would diplomatically try to tell him that it was giving the wrong impression, and she’d try to tone down the exaggerations and late-night stories a bit, but Tata was Tata and there was no stopping him. He had big dreams and felt like he was on top of the world while the gym was being built; he wanted everyone around him to share in the excitement.

  Before I knew it, Tata—who was literally spending every waking moment at the gym site, managing all aspects of construction—had asked Brian to help him out by taking me shopping or to eat when I was really supposed to be doing those things with Tata. Tata approved of Brian, and since he rarely approved of anyone, I figured Brian was harmless and went along with Tata’s wishes. Brian was very confident, charismatic, and charming, though with his crisp Polo shirts, gelled hair, and perfectly tanned skin, he was seen by some (such as Aunt Janice, who never really liked him) as smug. He did seem a bit of a show-off—zipping around town in his flashy red Corvette—but he was polite and fun to be around, often cracking jokes. I knew very little about Brian in the beginning, except that he had a wife and a son, whom he talked about often.

  I was used to being surrounded by adults more than kids my own age, so it didn’t even occur to me that hanging out with Brian could be construed as anything but innocent. What began as small trips to the mall or to get a bite to eat eventually turned into all-day excursions, often on Saturdays or Sundays. It was fun to be taken places I’d never really gotten a chance to see before by this interesting and charismatic friend who seemed to know so many people and constantly made me laugh. I started to view Brian as an older brother who’d let me get away with some fun stuff that most other adults wouldn’t allow. We also spent a fair amount of time at Lake Conroe on Brian’s boat. Brian taught me how to wakeboard and water ski and we’d have a lot of fun being silly and goofing around. Sometimes Christina would come to the lake with us, and occasionally, Tata and Mama would come, too. If anyone enjoyed the water as much as Brian, it was Tata. He loved being on the boat, fishing and soaking in the outdoors, but more often than not, Tata and Mama were too busy with the gym to make it out to the lake.

  Many times I wished that Tata had known how to spend more time with me and talk to me the way Brian did. Tata always thought he had to be so tough on the surface, even though we all knew deep down he had plenty of his own insecurities. I know that spending some quality time together could have changed our entire relationship, and I believe would have helped us avoid many problems we ended up facing. Tata asking Brian to spend time with me in place of himself was wrong on so many levels.

  Aunt Janice’s initial distaste for Brian had grown. As someone who loved me as if I were her own child, she was getting more and more frustrated with Tata and Mama for letting me run around town with Brian. She didn’t like the idea of a grown, married man in his thirties and with a wife and child hanging out with a sixteen-or seventeen-year-old girl. She wondered on many occasions why he didn’t go home to his wife and child more often. She was suspicious of Brian’s intentions from the start.

  Aunt Janice was the only person who had been there for my family from the beginning and for the right reasons. She made a commitment to look out for me early on and has always been true to that promise. She, in fact, stuck with all of us Moceanus through good and bad and was there for Tata, Mama, Christina, and me in ways we could not be for one another—a shoulder to cry on, a nurturing, compassionate friend, and a straight-shooting provider of doses of reality whether we wanted to hear them or not. She was the only one I was ever completely open and honest with about everything. I’d tell Aunt Janice how I felt—with no filter—and she never backed away, loving me whether I was exceeding my goals or falling flat and struggling. I’m so thankful she came into our lives when we moved to Houston. She was the one who told me, and still does to this day, how much Tata genuinely loved me, and shares with me the conversations she and Tata had. She is one of the very few who knew Tata’s sensitive side.

  “Why don’t you just tell Dominique that you love her?” she’d often ask Tata.

  “She knows” was always his reply. “It is something that doesn’t have to be said.”

 
“I don’t think Dominique truly knows,” she’d tell Tata, and she was right. For most of my gymnastics career, I felt that the quality of my performance would be the barometer of my father’s mood. Unconditional love was not even a consideration to me. To hear those words from him then would have meant the world to me. Sadly, I’d have to wait until my twenty-first birthday for my father to finally say, “I love you.” Through everything, Aunt Janice stayed a loyal friend to Tata and listened to all of his business schemes and cockamamie ideas because she truly believed his heart was in the right place. She was also a sounding board for Mama, who would privately reveal to Janice just how trapped and unhappy she felt in the marriage at times. We are so fortunate to have had this confidante. Aunt Janice smiles and shakes her head today when she tells me that each of the four Moceanus would confide in her things we never spoke of to one another. She always tried to get us to open up, but we were all stubborn that way—and, heck, we had Aunt Janice if we needed to get something off our collective chests.

  “The first time someone meets your daddy, they love him,” Aunt Janice used to tell me in her warm Southern drawl. “The second time, they hate him. I’m one of the only people I know of that actually knows your daddy and likes him.” She was so right. Tata didn’t have many genuine friends. Most of the people he knew were either business associates or people who outright feared him. But not Aunt Janice. She thought of Tata like a brother and wasn’t afraid to stand up to him. She was at our house often, offering to take Christina or me places or helping Tata out with the gym. Sometimes they’d fight like siblings, especially when she was defending me tooth and nail when he was being unreasonable, which was often. I remember times when he’d be revving up for one of his scary rages and feeling so relieved that Aunt Janice was present to stand in his path and shout right back at him—cursing up a blue streak, but always in an attempt to stick up for me. When push came to shove, though, Tata still ruled the roost.