woman, and she also led the Americans to their third team title and took gold on the floor exercise. Her all-around title at the 2007 world championships was at the time the fourth by a U.S. Chow turned out to be right.Īlong with her gold on balance beam in Beijing, Johnson won silvers in the all-around, team competition and floor exercise. team."īased on the pure moxie of the move, Karolyi couldn't help but take a look. Unsolicited, he sent national team coordinator Martha Karolyi a highlight tape and promised that "this kid will help the U.S. Johnson was once billed as "the next Mary Lou," a fresh-faced kid from West Des Moines, Iowa, who could jump and dream.įamous is the story of Chow trying to get Johnson her first invitation to a national team training camp. It was a humbling experience this time around." But I feel like I succeeded as well," said Johnson, who listed making the Pan Am team after the knee injury as one of her proudest accomplishments. "It's weird, for the first time in my career I came up short. I'm looking at the bigger picture of things." It became more about my future life than this future one moment. "I'd like to be 30 and have kids and run around with them. How can you tell yourself, 'No, I think it's time to say it's finally done?'" said Johnson, 20. She couldn't put in the training she needed, and she was looking at an entire knee reconstruction if she kept going. "That was a hard, hard thing," Chow said of watching Johnson struggle.įinally, Chow sat Johnson down and said they needed to be realistic. She couldn't do the number of repetitions she needed, and there were days she couldn't even work out because the knee would be so swollen. But when she tried to increase her training over the last few months to get ready for London, her knee would not cooperate. She made the team for last year's Pan American Games, where she helped the Americans win the team gold.
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She had torn the ACL, MCL and meniscus, along with her hamstring, and it never returned to full strength. The long layoff would present enough of a challenge, but her knee made it that much more difficult. Her first stop after the doctor's office was her gym, where she and coach Liang Chow began plotting her comeback.
She left the door open to a return for a London, but it wasn't until she blew out her knee in a January 2010 ski accident that she realized she still wanted to compete. She won "Dancing with the Stars" and, with her bubbly personality and girl-next-door looks, became a bona fide celebrity.
"It's just been a fun road with Shawn," USA Gymnastics president Steve Penny said.Īfter winning four medals at the 2008 Games - only Michael Phelps, Natalie Coughlin and Nastia Liukin left Beijing with more - Johnson took the next two years off. gymnastics championships, brings a melancholy close to a career that took her from Iowa to Hollywood, with a few world titles, a trip to Beijing and an Olympic gold medal sprinkled in between. Her announcement, four days before the start of the U.S. Gymnastics has been my entire life, and now it's no more." "My body is to the point where I need time to rest and retire so I can be healthy for the rest of my life. "It just little by little gets worse and worse," Johnson told The Associated Press. The Olympic gold medalist announced her retirement Sunday, saying repeated setbacks with her left knee made contending for a spot at the London Games impossible, and left her fearful she was putting her long-term health at risk.
The knee injury that sparked Shawn Johnson's comeback put an end to it, too.
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