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The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Dominique Moceanu Quotes

My mom always knew I would be able to take care of myself, but my dad was afraid.

– Dominique Moceanu

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.

– Dominique Moceanu

My parents enrolled me in a gymnastics class when I was three years old, and I just was drawn to gymnastics. I loved it. It was my playground, and I could run around and be free there.

– Dominique Moceanu

I loved gymnastics. I was eager to compete. I was hungry to go out there and be the best in the world, and I had that determination.

– Dominique Moceanu

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.

– Dominique Moceanu

I have a secret sibling that I never knew existed and who was given up for adoption at birth by my parents, and she was born without legs.

– Dominique Moceanu

I had this sister that was born who was given up for adoption, and I never knew it.

– Dominique Moceanu

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.

– Dominique Moceanu

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

– Dominique Moceanu

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

– Dominique Moceanu

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.

– Dominique Moceanu

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.

– Dominique Moceanu

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.

– Dominique Moceanu

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.

– Dominique Moceanu

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.

– Dominique Moceanu

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!

– Dominique Moceanu

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.

– Dominique Moceanu

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.

– Dominique Moceanu

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.

– Dominique Moceanu

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

– Dominique Moceanu

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.

– Dominique Moceanu

Training with Bela and Marta Karolyi took the joy out of the Olympics for me. I look back and feel there was a lot of verbal and physical abuse. For years, I felt it was my problem.

– Dominique Moceanu

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.

– Dominique Moceanu

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.

– Dominique Moceanu

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.

– Dominique Moceanu

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

– Dominique Moceanu