Famous American Gymnasts

Simone Biles is an artistic gymnast. Having won a combined total of 30 World Championship and Olympic medals, Biles is the world's third-most decorated gymnast and the most decorated in America. Regarded as the greatest gymnast of all time by some, Simone Biles continues to inspire several aspiring gymnasts around the world, especially gymnasts from the black community.

Retired artistic gymnast Gabby Douglas became an all-around Olympic champion in 2012, becoming the first African-American to achieve the feat. She is also the first American to win gold in both the individual and team competitions at the same Olympic event. She inspired the biopic The Gabby Douglas Story.

Nastia Liukin made headlines with her 5-medal haul at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Born to an Olympic medalist gymnast father and a world champion gymnast mother, she was destined to make a career in the sport. She is now part of the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame.

Retired gymnast Mary Lou Retton, known for her trademark, The Retton Flip, made history by becoming the first American female gymnast to win an individual Olympic gold medal and was the first gymnast named to the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame. She later became a motivational speaker.

Born to Puerto Rican-American parents, Laurie Hernandez was homeschooled since third grade and began training in gymnastics at age 5. At 16, she was the youngest of the Final Five that won a team gold at the 2016 Rio Olympics. Her wide smile has earned her the nickname The Human Emoji.

Gymnast Dominique Moceanu was part of the Magnificent Seven, the women’s team that won the gold at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. After retiring, she has studied management and also penned a book. She also sued her father for misusing her earnings as a gymnast and won the case.

Shannon Miller is a former artistic gymnast who is one of the most decorated US female gymnasts in Olympics history. She is the winner of seven Olympic medals, including the five she won at the 1992 Olympics, and 16 World Championships.  She is a member of the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame and the United States Olympic Hall of Fame.   

Shawn Johnson is a former artistic gymnast who won the 2008 Olympic balance beam gold medal. She is a five-time Pan American Games gold medalist and a three-time U.S. all-around champion as well. She retired from gymnastics in  2012. She was the winner of season eight of the dance competition show Dancing with the Stars.  

Apart from being the first Hmong-American to participate in the Olympics, Sunisa Lee has also won a gold, a team silver, and a bronze at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. She was also the 2019 world champion. Named to Time 100 in 2021, she was pepper-sprayed in a racist attack in Los Angeles.

Alicia Sacramone is a retired artistic gymnast who won a silver medal with the United States team at the 2008 Summer Olympics. With a total of 11 Olympic and World Championship medals, she is one of the most decorated U.S. female gymnasts. She is also a spokeswoman for a fitness company and has appeared in a few commercials. 

Kerri Strug is a retired gymnast who was a member of the all-around women's gymnastics team that represented USA at the 1996 Summer Olympics and won the gold medal. She began training in gymnastics as a child. She was mentored by coach Béla Károlyi and made her way to the US national team. She became a teacher after retirement. 

Known as Awesome Dawesome, Dominique Dawes is a retired star gymnast from the U.S. who was part of the gold-winning team at the Atlanta Olympics. She also became the first African-American to earn an individual Olympic medal, with her bronze. She is also part of the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame.

Carly Patterson is a former artistic gymnast who was the all-around champion at the 2004 Olympics. She was coached by former Israeli Olympian Yohanan Moyal and started competing internationally in 2000. She is a member of the USA Gymnastics Hall of Fame. She is also a singer-songwriter and a motivational speaker. She has appeared on the TV show Celebrity Duets. 

The youngest member of the US artistic gymnastics team at the 2012 London Olympics, Kyla Ross won the team gold at the event, and became the first female gymnast to win the Olympic, the World, and the NCAA championships. Now a youth gymnastics coach, she has also launched her own line of leotards.

Jordyn Wieber is a former artistic gymnast who was a member of the gold-medal-winning U.S. Women's Gymnastics team at the 2012 Summer Olympics. She was also a part of the victorious American team at the 2011 World Championships. She became a gymnastics coach after retirement and currently coaches the Arkansas Razorbacks gymnastics team.  

Ariana Berlin is an artistic gymnast and dancer. She competed for the UCLA Bruins gymnastics team from 2006 to 2009. One of UCLA’s most consistent athletes, she is a four-time All-American. She is also trained in break-dancing and has worked as a stunt performer in several television shows. Currently, she is an associate producer at Fox Sports.  

Part of the gold-winning American Final Five at the 2016 Rio Olympics, Madison Kocian had also earned a silver on uneven bars at the same event. She began training in gymnastics at age 5 and retired in 2020, after the COVID-19 pandemic halted her UCLA Bruins final season.

Though Jade Carey signed with the Oregon State University gymnastics team in 2017, she deferred her enrollment, to train for the Olympics. The Phoenix-based artistic gymnast eventually won a gold medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Born to a gymnastics trainer father, she showed an interest in the sport at age 4.

MyKayla Skinner is a former artistic gymnast who was the 2020 Olympic vault silver medalist. Previously, she was part of the US team that competed at the 2014 World Championships and won a gold medal. She captured a total of 11 medals at the USA National Championships during her senior career. She survived Covid-19 in 2021.

Maggie Nichols is a former collegiate artistic gymnast who became the ninth NCAA gymnast to complete a Gym Slam. She represented the United States in the 2015 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, where she captured a gold medal with her team. She received the Arthur Ashe Courage Award for speaking up against sexual abuse in gymnastics. 

Ragan Smith is a collegiate gymnast who emerged as the 2017 United States national all-around champion. She was a member of the US National Team from 2014 to 2019 and competed at the City of Jesolo Trophy. She competes on vault, balance beam, uneven bars, and floor exercises. She is currently signed with the Oklahoma Sooners women's gymnastics program. 

Márta Károlyi is a Hungarian-born Romanian-American gymnastics coach. She was the former national team coordinator for USA Gymnastics. Her husband, Bela, is also a prominent gymnastics coach, and between them, the couple has trained nine Olympic champions, fifteen world champions, sixteen European medalists, and many US national champions. She retired from coaching in 2016. 

Kurt Thomas was a gymnast who became the first American male gymnast to win a gold medal at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in 1978. He won six medals at the world championship in 1979 and was also the James E. Sullivan Award winner that year. He appeared in the 1985 film Gymkata. 

With his mother and stepfather both being national gymnasts from Cuba, Danell Leyva was bound to follow in their footsteps. The Cuban-American gymnast has won 2 silvers and 1 bronze at the Olympics. In 2020, he came out as pansexual and bisexual, hoping it would ease things for other LGBT individuals.

Isidora Goreshter is an American actress best known for her portrayal of Svetlana on the popular comedy-drama TV series, Shameless. Goreshter competed in gymnastics prior to her acting career. In 1992, she took part in the California State Cup Championship and the Central Pacific Championships, earning second place overall in the latter.

After winning the team silver at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Grace McCallum now plans to complete a program at the University of Utah. She is also a 2-time World champion. At 13, she broke her left elbow after a mistimed backflip and almost lost her chance at competing again.

American gymnastics legend Bart Conner is the only male gymnast from his country to have won gold medals at all levels of national and international competition. A 2-time Olympic gold medalist, he also has a journalism degree. He now runs a gymnastics academy with his wife and Romanian Olympic champion Nadia Comaneci.

Best known for her iconic portrayal of Peter Pan on Broadway, actor Cathy Rigby was initially a talented gymnast, too. A 2-time Olympian, she became the first female athlete from the US to win a world gymnastics medal. She also struggled with eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia.

Jamie Dantzscher is a former artistic gymnast who was a member of the  American team that won a bronze medal at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. She made her international debut at the 1996 City of Pope's competition in France and achieved All-American honors 15 times. She is a member of the UCLA Athletics Hall of Fame. 

Ashton Locklear is a retired artistic gymnast who was a member of the United States team that bagged the gold at the 2014 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships. She is also a two-time national champion on the uneven bars. She began her gymnastics career in trampolining and later switched to artistic gymnastics. She announced her retirement in 2019. 

Jennifer Bricker is an acrobat and aerialist who became a featured performer on Britney Spears' Circus Tour. Born without legs, she was the first disabled high school tumbling champion in the state of Illinois. She received the U.S. Tumbling Association’s Inspiration Award in 1998. Her memoir Everything Is Possible became a New York Times bestseller. 

Kim Zmeskal is a retired artistic gymnast. She was the 1991 World All-Around champion and a member of the US team that competed in the 1991 World Championships and won a silver medal. She is also a three-time United States national all-around champion. She is currently a gymnastics coach and co-owns Texas Dreams Gymnastics with her husband, Chris. 

Once a US national champion, gymnast Paul Hunt also made use of his sense of humor, often performing comic-relief routines, dressed in skirts, using pseudonyms such as Paulina and Pauletta. A talented coach, he was forced to shut down his gymnastics academy in Salt Lake City due to COVID-19.

Dreaming to participate in the Olympics since age 11, Morgan Hurd, unfortunately, failed to qualify for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. A 2-time World champion, she was adopted from China at 11 months and began training in gymnastics at age 3. She is known for her signature spectacles, which she wears while competing.

At 13, Candace Bailey was a Junior Olympic gymnast. Later, stepping into acting, she gained fame with her role of Skylar Stevens in the series Jericho. She has also hosted the Nickelodeon show U-Pick Live and the G4 show Attack of the Show! and has appeared in a Maroon 5 video.

Dianne Durham was an artistic gymnast who won the all-around senior title at the women's US National Championships in 1983, becoming the first African American athlete to do so. She suffered from injuries that put a premature end to her brilliant career, and she had to retire in 1985. Later on, she ran the Skyline Gymnastics school in Chicago. 

Apart from being an Olympic gold medalist, US gymnast Mitch Gaylord also experimented with acting. He scripted history by becoming the first gymnast from the US to score a perfect 10 in the Olympics. He later starred in American Anthem and worked as a stunt double in Batman Forever.

Known as Olympic champion Russian-American gymnast Nastia Lukin’s father, Soviet gymnast Valeri Liukin has himself won 2 gold and 2 silver medals at the Olympics. Part of the USA Gymnastics Hall of Fame, he became a successful gymnastics coach in the US and also coached the Brazilian national women's gymnastics team.

Chellsie Memmel was not just a 3-time world champion in her teen years, but she also won a silver team medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Now a mother of two, she is back to gymnastics, after a hiatus, competing at the U.S. Championships at age 32.

Riley McCusker wasn’t just the 2018 World champion but had also won 2 Pan American gold medals. She stunned her fans by not qualifying for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. In 2020, she sued her former coach Maggie Haney for using abusive coaching tactics, such as making her train while injured.

Born in South Korea, Yul Moldauer was born prematurely and had medical issues. Adopted before turning 1, he grew up on a Colorado farm. Starting his gymnastics training at 10, he later became a star athlete of the University of Oklahoma gymnastics team. He grew to win a World Championship bronze.

A US National Championship silver medalist, gymnast Christy Henrich was once told by an event judge that she was fat and was required to lose weight. This reportedly pushed her into an irreversible downward spiral of anorexia nervosa, which eventually caused her death at 22 and later triggered major gymnastics reforms.

Though born to working-class parents, Julissa Gomez was encouraged by them to train for gymnastics at an early age. An Olympic hopeful, Gomez suffered a devastating head injury at an event in Japan, rendering her paralyzed and in a coma for days. She eventually died, prompting safety reforms in gymnastics.

American trampoline gymnast David Jacobs first gained attention after winning the synchronized trampoline title at the 1966 Trampoline World Championships. He later won 2 more World Championship golds and a silver. He is also known for an impromptu appearance on the hidden-camera reality show Impractical Jokers.

Amy Chow is an American former artistic gymnast best known for winning the gold medal in the women's team all-around competition at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. She also won two other Olympic medals before retiring and establishing a career as a pediatric surgeon. In 2008, she was inducted into the United States Olympic Hall of Fame.

Part of the Magnificent Seven that won the US its first Olympic gold in the women’s team gymnastics competition, at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, Jaycie Phelps had started training at age 4. She now runs the Jaycie Phelps Athletic Center in Indiana, training the kids of her hometown.