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
Standing on the podium at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta and receiving a gold medal was the crowning jewel in a successful gymnastics career and... →
In Romania, of course, gymnastics is among the most popular sports, and my parents had a dream of escaping the Ceausescu regime and giving their... →
My parents didn't know anything about collegiate scholarships, so they had accepted the national team training stipend, the monthly stipend that... →
My parents, Romanian immigrants, struggled to provide me a better life than the ones they had left in their homeland. They worked hard to give me... →
I realized I was the one doing all the training, earning the money, and my parents were living off of me.
I was raised into the Romanian Orthodox culture by my parents, and most notably my mother, who is a profoundly religious and spiritual woman.
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... →
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... →
When you have traveled the world, won Olympic gold, and gone through a very public court battle against your parents all by the age of seventeen... →