Dominique Dawes

Dawes is the first female gymnast to be a part of three Olympic-medal-winning teams since Ludmilla Tourischeva won gold in Mexico City (1968), Munich (1972), and Montreal (1976).

It was the first year since 1969 that a gymnast had swept the competition.

She went on to lead the American team to a silver medal at the World Team Championships in Dortmund, Germany posting the third highest all-around score in the process.

Dominique Margaux Dawes (born November 20, 1976) is a retired American artistic gymnast.

Dawes was born in Silver Spring, Maryland, on November 20, 1976, 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.

Dawes was competing as a junior elite by the age of 10.

She placed 17th in the all-around junior division at her first U.S. National Championships in 1988.

In 1989, at the age of 12, she was sent to Australia to compete in her first international meet, the Konica Grand Prix.

By the early 1990s, Dawes was achieving success both nationally and internationally.

She placed 3rd in the all-around in the junior division at the 1990 U.S. National Championships.

Though she was not part of the 1991 World Championship team, Dawes continued to move up on the national and international scene throughout 1991 and 1992.

She is also one of only three female American gymnasts, along with Muriel Grossfeld and Linda Metheny-Mulvihill, to compete in three Olympics and was part of their medal-winning teams: Barcelona 1992 (bronze), Atlanta 1996 (gold), and Sydney 2000 (bronze).

At the 1992 USA vs. Japan dual meet, the 15-year-old Dawes received a standing ovation, after an energetic floor routine in which she revived the back-to-back tumbling revolutionized by Soviet star Oksana Omelianchik.

The judges were equally impressed, and gave her a perfect 10.

She placed 4th at the 1992 Olympic trials and was awarded a place on the United States Olympic team.

Despite battling very painful tendinitis in both ankles and Osgood-Schlatter disease during pre-Olympic training, Dawes performed respectably throughout the competition, even having the boldness to try a brand-new move in her balance beam routine during team competition - back handspring to three layout stepouts.

She also won over the crowd with a solid optional floor exercise routine and, with a mark of 9.925, tied with Kim Zmeskal for the highest score for the American team on the event.

The team won bronze, and Dawes and teammate Betty Okino became the first African American females to win an Olympic medal in gymnastics.

Dawes only competed in the team competition in 1992, not breaking through as an all-around gymnast until 1993.

She is probably best known for her performances at the 1993 and 1994 World Championships.

In 1993, Dawes led the competition after three events, even beating her more famous teammate Shannon Miller.

However, she decided to try her harder vault (1½ twisting layout Yurchenko) worth a 10.00 instead of simply a full-twisting layout Yurchenko, which had been devalued to a 9.8.

She made the first vault, but slipped and fell on the second, immediately bursting into tears.

With the new rule that both vaults were averaged in all-around competition, her fall dropped her to 4th overall while Miller won the title.

Famously, after the vault fall Dawes's coach Kelli Hill exhorted her to be proud of her performance anyway, stating: "When did you ever think you would be in that position? You have to be happy with yourself. Come on. Be happy. Stand up and wave".

Dawes did so and earned a standing ovation from the crowd.

After this disappointment she rebounded in the event finals, winning two silver medals on bars and beam.

Known in the gymnastics community as 'Awesome Dawesome', she was a 10-year member of the U.S. national gymnastics team, the 1994 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 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.

She is also the Olympic bronze medalist on floor exercise from the Atlanta games.

The same fate befell her in at the 1994 Worlds.

Leading after three events, she again came to vault with a chance of winning the title.

This time her mistake came on the first vault where Dawes over-rotated and hurled forward into a somersault.

Her low score dropped her to 5th.

Her mistakes continued throughout the event finals and left the championships without winning a single medal.

Dawes would finish her year on a positive note, however.

She dominated the National Championships placing first in the all-around and all four event finals at the expense of rival Shannon Miller.

Dawes struggled through a difficult 1995 riddled by wrist and ankle injuries.

Since Dawes, Svetlana Khorkina is the only gymnast to accomplish this feat, winning silver in Atlanta (1996) and Sydney (2000), and bronze in Athens (2004).