Jaycie phelps timeline movie

When the U.S. women's gymnastics team marches into the arena in Rio to compete at the Olympics in August, all eyes will be on them. This will be due, in part, to the fact that they are the defending world and Olympic gold medalists. But another reason is that they will be decked out in the shiniest leotards of all the competitors. The jewel-toned leotards in deep pink, red, and purple will be adorned with anywhere from 3, to 4, crystals.

Leotards didn't always look this way. Back in the '30s and '40s, during the earliest years of women's gymnastics, leotards looked like something your grandmother might wear to the beach: the leg lines were low and boxy. The lower half offered maximum butt coverage. All that was missing was a little skirt and an Esther Williams-style swimming cap.

But as gymnastics evolved from dance—those very early gymnasts barely did anything more acrobatic than a walkover—to sport, the attire they wore to compete in changed, too. It became stretchier to allow for a greater range of motion and sleeker, to accommodate the gymnasts' increasingly muscular bodies.

Early Days

At the Olympics, Nadia Comaneci competed in a plain white leotard with Adidas-style side-piping in the colors of the Romanian flag—red, yellow, and blue. Her leotard, though not perfectly skin-tight, highlighted the straight edges of her prepubescent year-old body. 

The front was simple: a V-neck adorned with a medallion right below her clavicle. There was no flash.

Her main rival, year-old Nellie Kim of the Soviet Union also competed in simple, relatively unadorned leotards: red with white stripes down the side or a deeply royal purple with a white collar. 

American artistic gymnast

Not to be confused with Dominick Dawes.

Dominique Margaux Dawes (born November 20, ) is a retired American artistic gymnast. Known in the gymnastics community as 'Awesome Dawesome', she was a year member of the U.S. national gymnastics team, the U.S. all-around senior National Champion, a three-time Olympian, a World Championship silver and bronze medalist, and a member of the gold-medal-winning "Magnificent Seven" team at the Summer Olympics in Atlanta. She is also the Olympic bronze medalist on floor exercise from the Atlanta games.

She is also one of only four female American gymnasts, along with Muriel Grossfeld, Linda Metheny-Mulvihill, and Simone Biles, to compete in three Olympics and was part of their medal-winning teams: Barcelona (bronze), Atlanta (gold), and Sydney (bronze). Dawes is the first female gymnast to be a part of three Olympic-medal-winning teams since Ludmilla Tourischeva won gold in Mexico City (), Munich (), and Montreal (). Since Dawes, Svetlana Khorkina and Simone Biles are the only gymnasts to accomplish this feat. Svetlana winning silver in Atlanta () and Sydney (), and bronze in Athens () and Simone winning gold in Rio (), silver in Tokyo () and gold in Paris ().

Early life

Dawes was born in Silver Spring, Maryland, on November 20, , to Don and Loretta Dawes of Takoma Park, Maryland. She enrolled in gymnastics at age 6 with coach Kelli Hill and won her first competition at age 9. In high school, she moved to Gaithersburg, Maryland, to be closer to her coach's gym.

Gymnastics career

Junior career

Dawes was competing as a junior elite by the age of She placed 17th in the all-around junior division at her first U.S. National Championships in In , at the age of 12, she was sent to Australia to compete in her first international meet, the Konica Grand Prix. By the early s, Dawes was achieving success both nationa

03 Aug REPORTER&#;S DAILY BLOG | Tokyo Olympics | Inside Gymnastics

Posted at h in Olympic Games - News & Features, Olympic Games Blog, News & Features by Christy Sandmaier0 Comments

Correspondent Gina Pongetti Angeletti will be sharing a “reporter’s notebook” while in Tokyo, documenting the unique journey that is the ne Olympic Games during these unusual times. We hope to provide a unique perspective of the behind-the-scenes aspect of covering an event of this magnitude. We&#;ll candidly share different aspects of the Games to be your all-access, backstage pass!

For Inside Gymnastics complete coverage of the Olympic Games, Click Here!

Additional Articles by Gina Pongetti Angeletti for Inside Gymnastics:

The Layer of Fear

The Amazing Aging Athlete

Artur and The Achilles

The Physics of Simone

Time Change and the Effects on the Body: Traveling to Tokyo

Making the Team: The Weight of the List

Individual vs. Team Spot: Where is the Reward

The Mental Side of the Mat

Arigato

Kokorokara no  kanshanokimeochi de.

In sincere gratitude.   

Thank you, Japan, for being so much more than a host. 

Thank you, Japan, for allowing lives to grow and souls to be nourished. 

For letting people find themselves when they did not even know they were lost.  

For showing deep-seated and observable respect for your country and welcoming the world with plentiful open arms to enjoy as much of it as possible. 

To the volunteers that painted the town of Tokyo with smiles and goodwill, countless masks and gloves and temperature checks and gowns, we saw your warmth and graciousness through all of these layers.   

Thank you, athletes, for showing us peace and solidarity. For wishing your competitors luck, honoring them when they succeed, and supporting them when they fell. With every observation of the competition floor there were some of the same exchanges of glances &

Jaycie Phelps now owns a sports training facility--baseball, softball, cheering and, yep, gymnastics!--in Greenville, Indiana.

Dominique Dawes

Dominique Dawes, who lives in Maryland, is a motivational speaker and journalist. She's also part of President Obama's Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition.

Kerri Strug

Kerri Strug now lives in Washington, D.C. and works for the Department of Justice.

*Shout-out to the official USA Gymnastics site, which I came across while researching this and which has even more great info on the ladies.

Were you guys as obsessed with this group of amazing athletes as I was? Who was your favorite?

More flashback fun

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