Many of the most highly decorated U.S. women's Olympic gymnasts became icons at a very young age.
As they've gotten older, they've become a lot harder to recognize. Here are just a few of
the former Olympic gymnasts, what they've been up to, and what they look like now.
During the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, the U.S. Women's Gymnastics Team became known
as the Magnificent Seven for bringing home the U.S. Women's Team's very first team gold medal.
One member of that historic team was Dominique Dawes, who made history herself during the games.
She was the first African American female gymnast to win an Olympic medal for an individual event.
Since her retirement from gymnastics, Dawes has continued to make waves as she works to
change the culture of gymnastics. Discussing the state of gymnastics when she competed,
she said in 2021 that the culture was, quote, "toxic, unhealthy and abusive."
As the coach and owner of the Dominique Dawes Gymnastics Academy,
she's changing that culture from the inside out. As she told Washington DC's WUSA9,
"What gives me the courage today to speak out is thinking that I am standing up and
protecting my own four children and today's and tomorrow's generation of gymnasts."
Shawn Johnson East competed as part of the 2008 U.S. Women's Gymnastics Team and won a
gold medal for the balance beam. But following the Olympics, she struggled to make sense of it all.
In a June 2020 video posted to her family YouTube channel, Johnson East spoke about
dealing with depression, anxiety, and eating disorders following the Olympics.
"I quickly realized I had a self-confidence and self-image issue."
She revealed how the perfectionism that was helpful to her in her sport
also led to some body image issues that ultimately caused her to start using
prescription drugs in an attempt to lose weight to look the way she did during the Olympics.
Becoming a mom changed all that and made her life feel more purposeful, and East told Today,
"I want to share with people that there's light at the end of the tunnel."
In January 2021, East announced she was pregnant with her second child.
In 1984, Mary Lou Retton made history at the Olympic games when she took home five medals,
including gold for individual all-around, a first for the U.S. Women's Gymnastics Team,
and the most of anyone for the 1984 Olympic games. Retton's accomplishments brought her
undeniable fame, including being the first woman on a Wheaties cereal box.
Retton took some time away from the sport to dabble in acting
and travel as a public speaker, but she has stayed involved with the gymnastics community.
She's raising four athletic daughters, two of whom are competitive gymnasts,
and sat on the board of USA Gymnastics for eight years. But recently she's been taking
some time to try new things, like competing in Season 27 of "Dancing with the Stars."
"It's so much fun, it's a challenge, it's exactly where I'm supposed to be right now."
Shannon Miller helped lead the Magnificent Seven to team gold in the 1996 Olympics,
winning her own individual gold for the balance beam. Together with her
five medals from the 1992 Olympics, Miller was the most highly decorated Olympic gymnast at
the time. Nearly 20 years later, Miller found she needed to put her training to the test in
unconventional ways after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She told Sports Illustrated,
"​​I think at that point is when I reverted back
to that competitive mindset that I knew so well through sport."
That competitive spirit helped Miller beat cancer and now she's speaking out to get
other women to take their health seriously. She explained to Survivornet in a 2020 interview,
"I'll go around and talk about my ovaries all day long if it really does make even one person think,
'yep, I'm going to go to the doctor. I'm going to focus on my health.'"
In 2008 at the Beijing Olympics, gymnast Nastia Liukin took home
five medals, bringing her to a total of nine world championship medals
and tying her with Shannon Miller as the most decorated American gymnast in history at the time,
a record since broken by Simone Biles. But Liukin wasn't content to just take
home gold and walk away from gymnastics, as she told Wisconsin radio station WTMJ,
"When I won the Olympics, after that I was always wanting to give back to the next generation."
Not only is Liukin a gymnastics analyst for NBC Sports, she partnered with USA
Gymnastics to create the Nastia Liukin Cup as an opportunity for young gymnasts to compete.
Proceeds from the event go to the Nastia Liukin Fund, a charitable fund whose
goal is to keep young athletes involved in gymnastics, no matter their financial need.
Perhaps best remembered for her "not impressed face" that made her a meme sensation,
McKayla Maroney was part of the Fierce Five U.S. Women's Gymnastics Team at the 2012 Olympics
where she earned an individual silver medal in the vault event in addition to helping the team bring
home the gold. Though Maroney revealed in 2016 that she was no longer competing in gymnastics,
the former Olympian made headlines again when she spoke openly of the
sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of Larry Nassar while training as a gymnast,
abuse suffered by hundreds of other gymnasts over the years, Vox reported.
These days, Maroney is working to put all of that behind her,
and began a brand new career in music. In March 2020, Maroney released her first
single, "Wake Up Call." Maroney also appeared in a 2021 Geico commercial
doing her equally famous gymnastics moves and "not impressed face" to great success.
Carly Patterson was only the second U.S. female Olympic gymnast to earn the gold medal all-around,
following in Mary Lou Retton's footsteps, when she competed in the 2004 games.
As hard as she worked to win the Olympic gold,
Patterson had to do the same to achieve another goal: motherhood.
Patterson told WFAA in a 2017 interview how much she struggled to get pregnant, after learning she
had polycystic ovary syndrome. Now, Patterson is a mother of three children. She announced
the birth of her third child on Instagram in February 2021, calling her family complete.
Courtney Kupets won two medals during the 2004 Olympics. Just a year later, she joined the
gymnastics team at the University of Georgia where she competed until her retirement in 2009. Shortly
after college, she took a somewhat unlikely path, joining a dance, acrobatics, and synchronized
swimming show called "Le Reve" in Las Vegas in 2014. In an interview with Team USA, she said,
"I figure while I'm still there I can still do it,
and if I wait any longer I probably won't be able to."
But Kupets, now Courtney Kupets Carter, couldn't resist the call of gymnastics in her life.
In 2017, she was named the head gymnastics coach for the University of Georgia.
Part of the Magnificent Seven, Amy Chow has two gymnastics moves named after her,
per the U.S. Gymnastics Hall of Fame. These moves, the Chow I and Chow II, are part of what earned
her the silver medal on the uneven bars in the 1996 Olympics, helping the team toward their first
ever gold medal all-around and helping the U.S. Women's Gymnastics Team earn bronze all-around
in the 2000 Olympics. But training for the Olympics wasn't the only thing on Chow's mind.
Chow graduated from Stanford University with a bachelor's degree in 2002 and from Stanford
Medical School in 2007. These days, she's a pediatrician with two children of her own.
She told the Silicon Valley Business Journal in 2016,
"The reason I went into pediatrics is because I like to work with kids
and I do get to work a lot with kids when I'm in the office."
In the 1984 Olympics, Julianne McNamara was a force to be reckoned with. She won a gold
medal on uneven bars, a silver medal on the floor routine, and placed fourth all-around,
helping lead the U.S. Women's Gymnastics Team to a silver medal. But shortly after the 1984 Olympics,
McNamara retired from gymnastics and started pursuing an acting career. That year she
started appearing on "Charles in Charge" and then appeared in episodes of "True Confessions" and
"Knight Rider" in 1985. She revived her "Charles in Charge" character again in 1987 before
appearing in the films "Saturday the 14th Strikes Back" in 1988 and "Monday Morning" in 1990.
McNamara's acting career all but came to an end when she married Major League Baseball player
Todd Zeile in 1989 and the couple started a family. Though it seems none of the former
couple's four children inherited their parents' athletic prowess, one did inherit McNamara's
acting chops. Daughter Hannah Zeile plays teenage Kate Pearson on the NBC hit drama "This Is Us,"
and McNamara seems content to let her daughter take all the spotlight these days.
Julianne McNamara isn't the only former Olympic gymnast to make a move toward an acting career
after competing. Betty Okino's 13 acting credits all occurred after her appearance
in the 1992 Olympics in which the U.S. Women's Gymnastics Team brought home the bronze medal.
Though she didn't win any other medals at the 1992 Olympics,
Okino did win World Championships medals in multiple events, earning the bronze medal in
the 1991 Indianapolis World Championships for the balance beam, and the silver medal in the 1992
Paris World Championships for the uneven bars, further securing her spot in gymnastics history.
While her acting career may be on hold and her own gymnastics competitions are in the past,
Okino has found another purpose. She now runs gymnastics camps and clinics, teaches dance
choreography, and runs life mastery groups, all under the umbrella of her Betty Okino brand.
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