As we head into the 2021 Olympics, I have often recalled being a 12-year-old watching the American Olympic gymnasts at the 1996 Atlanta Games vault and soar and flip their way to victory. Those girls were just a little older than me, but they were so small. You could see their muscles moving under their skin.
I regarded them with awe. But thinking of them now, I also cringe. They were hurting themselves as America cheered.
Dominique Moceanu later said she was often limited to 900 calories a day during competitions, and she competed in Atlanta on a fractured tibia.