Kerri Strug Biography, Age, Family, Husband, Height, Coach, Gymnastics, Vault, Now & Net Wort

Kerri Strug Biography

Kerri Strug is a retired American gymnast from Tucson, Arizona. She was a member of the Magnificent Seven, the victorious all-around women’s gymnastics team that represented the United States at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996.

She is a two-time Olympian and gold medalist. Kerri Strug was the youngest Olympian at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain at age 14. After four more years of hard work and training, she captured America’s spirit at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.

As the team competition neared its end, Kerri was up last on vault. After shocking spectators by falling and injuring her ankle on her first vault, she managed to stick the landing on her second vault before collapsing in pain, helping to secure gold for the American team.

It was a moment that landed Kerri on the front page of newspapers around the world and catapulted her into the spotlight.  She was only eighteen years old.

Kerri Strug Age

Kerri was born with her full name as Kerri Allyson Strug on November 19, 1977, in Tucson, Arizona, United States. Unlike many other gymnasts, who are pushed into the sport by their parents from an early age, Strug chose the hard life of a gymnast herself.

Kerri Strug Family

Kerri is the daughter to her father , Burt Strug and her mother Melanie Strug. She has an older sister, Lisa, as well as an older brother, Kevin.

When she was only a few years old, Strug asked her parents to enrol her in tumbling classes. Strug had attended the meets of her older sister, Lisa, and older brother, Kevin, and decided that she wanted to try it, too.

Strug quickly proved that her interest stemmed from more than just a natural desire to emulate her older siblings—she also had natural talent.

Her parents supported her ambition and enrolled her in gymnastics classes at the age of four. By the age of six, Strug was taking private lessons from Jim Gault, a gymnastics coach at the University of Arizona.

Kerri Strug Husband | Kerri Strug Married

The 1996 Olympic team gold-medalist Kerri Strug is a married woman. She married attorney Robert Fischer on Sunday, April 24 in her hometown of Tucson, Arizona.

The couple currently resides in Washington, D.C., where Strug is a program manager at the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and Fischer is an attorney currently working for a Member of Congress.

They have been blessed with children. On March 1, 2012, Strug gave birth to a son to whom they called, Tyler William Fischer. In 2014, she gave birth to a daughter to whom they named, Alayna Madaleine.

Kerri Strug Height | Kerri Strug Body Stats

• Height: 142 cm | 4 feet, 7 Inches
• Weight: 37 kg | 82 lbs
• Bust Size: (not known)
• Waist Size: (not known)
• Hip Size: (not known)

Kerri Strug Coach

Her coach was Bela Karolyi. Bela resides at Huntsville, Texas, in the United States.

Kerri Strug Gymnastics

When she was seven, Strug visited her sister at a gymnastics summer camp in Texas, run by the famous gymnastics coach, Bela Karolyi, who had trained such past gymnastics champions as Nadia Comaneci, and who was then training America’s star gymnast, Mary Lou Retton.

A member of Karolyi’s coaching staff noticed Kerri’s backflips and encouraged Strug’s parents to enrol her in Karolyi’s school full-time. Strug’s parents refused, however.

They had always stressed the importance of education to their children and worried that gymnastics would take precedence over Kerri’s education.

Strug continued to work hard in school, and even harder in her after-school gymnastics lessons. She also started to compete, entering her first gymnastics competition

At the age of eight. She advanced quickly over the next several years, earning top finishes in local and regional events. At the age of twelve, however, Strug decided that she wanted more—she wanted to make it to the Olympics.

To compete with the best, she knew she needed to train with the best: Karolyi. Strug’s parents reluctantly agreed to send her to Karolyi’s expensive school full-time, on the condition that she not neglect her education.

In January 1991, at the age of thirteen, Strug moved to Houston to begin her new life. From the moment Strug began training with Karolyi, all aspects of her life were monitored by the notoriously demanding coach and his wife, Martha. Karolyi pushed Strug to her physical and mental limits to prepare her for international competition.

Strug worked hard, and her efforts paid off. In 1991, she won first place in the vault at the U.S. Gymnastics Championships, becoming the youngest female ever to win an event at this competition.

The next year, she qualified for the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona and helped the women’s team win a bronze medal. Her Olympic performance was bittersweet, however, because she narrowly missed making the individual all-around finals.

After the Olympics, Karolyi announced his retirement and Strug was left without a coach. Over the next few years, Strug bounced from gym to gym, moving to Florida, Oklahoma, and Colorado, but she was unable to find a coach who could help her the way Karolyi had.

Worse yet, Kerri Strug also experienced several debilitating injuries during this period, including a torn stomach muscle that forced her to move back with her parents for six months to heal.

In 1994, during a small competition, she fell off of the uneven bars and landed on her back, severely pulling her back muscles, which required another six-month break to heal.

Despite these setbacks, Strug hoped to be competitive long enough to make it to the 1996 Olympics. Her ultimate dream was to compete in the Olympics’ all-around finals that she had narrowly missed qualifying for in 1992.

Once again, she recognized that the key to trying to achieve her dreams was Bela Karolyi, who had come out of retirement in 1994. In 1995, she resumed training with Karolyi, who was coaching newcomer Dominique Moceanu—a young gymnast who had attracted attention when she won the all-around competition at the 1995 United States Gymnastics Championships.

Most had high hopes for Moceanu, while Strug received little media attention. This trend remained true even after Strug won her first international competition at the McDonald’s American Cup in March 1996. Likewise, when she earned a spot on the 1996 Olympics women’s gymnastics team—by finishing second in the all-around competition at the United States Olympic trials—the press still favoured Strug’s teammates.

This might have happened at the Atlanta Olympics, too. Normally, Karolyi, like many coaches, place the gymnasts who they think will perform the best in the coveted anchor position for each event.

This time, however, Karolyi changed his coaching strategy and decided to determine the individual positions based only on the gymnasts’ performance at the Olympic trials. Since Strug had placed so high in the trials, she earned the anchor position on both the floor exercise and vault events.

Throughout the team competition, the United States performed well, and by the end of the second night, they were in the first place, ahead of the second-place Russian team. The race was still close, however, as the American team entered its final event, the vault.

Kerri Strug Vault

Although Strug’s teammates did well at the beginning of the competition, Moceanu fell on both of her vault attempts. Gymnasts are generally taught to focus on their performances, not their scores, so by the time Strug prepared to vault, the American team had not been averaging their posted scores neither did not know how close they were to the Russians.

By Karolyi’s calculations, Strug, the final competitor in the final team event, needed to earn at least a 9.6 on the vault to secure the gold medal for the American team.

On the first of her two vaults, Strug also fell, landing wrong on her ankle and limping back to the starting line, visibly injured. When her 9.162 scores were posted, Strug believed that she would have to complete the second vault for her team to win, and she was urged by Karolyi and her teammates to shake off her injury.

Although Strug had heard something snap in her ankle on her first vault, and her leg was numb, she decided to complete her second vault.

She sprinted down the runway, executed a clean vault, and landed solidly on both of her feet, the grimace on her face revealing the obvious pain that she was feeling standing on her injured ankle.

After the few seconds necessary to stick her vault and give the customary acknowledgement to the judges, Strug collapsed to the mat and cried for help. Her courageous vault earned Strug a 9.712 score, more than enough to secure the gold medal for the American team. Unfortunately, in the process, Strug sprained her ankle and tore two ligaments.

As in the bittersweet 1992 Olympics, when she helped her team win a bronze medal but did not qualify to compete in the all-around singles event, Strug was prevented from achieving this ultimate Olympic dream once again. This time, she had earned a spot in the singles competition, but the severity of her ankle injury prevented her from competing.

Kerri Strug Injury

Former gymnast Kerri Strug’s 1996 Olympic feat – landing on an injured ankle to clinch the first-ever team gold medal for the US women’s team — has gone down as one of the most memorable moments in the history of the games.

Her bold move came in the final rotation of team competition in the Atlanta Games. The Americans were on the vault, with a commanding lead over the Russians.

That’s when things started to fall apart. The first four American vaulters had sloppy landings. Then, teammate Dominique Moceanu fell twice in a row.

Strug was up last. On her first vault, she fell too, tearing two ligaments in her ankle. She limped back to speak with her coach, Béla Károlyi. According to ESPN, he told her, “Kerri, we need you to go one more time. We need you one more time for the gold.”

Strug sprinted down the runway and made her second jump -landing on both feet. She even managed to salute the judges before she collapsed and had to be carried off. During the medal ceremony, Károlyi famously carried her to the podium.

Later on, it turned out that the Russians’ performance on the floor exercise would have led to an American win anyway. Still, Strug’s jump was what the Americans needed to clinch the gold for certain.

The gut-wrenching vault catapulted Strug to sports stardom, as The Washington Post reported — Strug met with then-President Bill Clinton, appeared on a Wheaties box, graced a Sports Illustrated cover, and landed plenty of sponsorship deals.

Strug didn’t rest on her Olympic laurels, though. Here’s more about Strug’s life leading up to that unforgettable Olympic moment — and what she’s been up to since.

Kerri Strug Now | Where Is Kerri Strug She Now

Strug’s ankle injury in the Olympics got worse after she performed on it for various publicity tours and promotional stunts without giving it time to heal properly, which ultimately meant that her competition days were over. She turned her focus to education instead.

After graduating from Stanford University with a bachelor’s and master’s degrees, Strug began a career in elementary education. She currently lives in Palo Alto California and works as a second-grade teacher in the San Francisco Bay area.

Since the 1996 Olympics, she has endorsed several charities, including DARE, Pediatric AIDS, Make-a-Wish Foundation, Childhelp, and NO-ADDiction.

As part of these and other promotions, Strug has sometimes performed in gymnastics events, although she avoids high-impact gymnastics moves to minimize the strain on her ankle. Partially as an attempt to strengthen her weak ankle, Strug took up running. In 1999, she completed her first marathon.

Her heroic vault and the American team’s gold medal created a media blitz that had several effects, both positive and negative. It was revealed that Karolyi’s calculations were incorrect, and Strug did not even have to vault for the women’s team to win the gold medal.

While some chose not to focus on this fact, and instead catapulted Strug to instant fame as a symbol of Olympic bravery and strength, others used her vault to add fuel to the idea that the particular rigours associated with women’s gymnastics were destructive to young girls.

Kerri Strug herself was outspoken about this issue, giving her support to Karolyi and saying that she decided to vault. In highly publicized interviews she noted the double standard, where people try to protect female athletes from injuring themselves, while male athletes injure themselves just as much and are considered brave and tough for their efforts.