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SHANNON MILLER
Official website: www.shannonmiller.com
Shannon Lee Miller (born March 10, 1977 in Rolla, Missouri) is an artistic gymnast from Edmond, Oklahoma.
She was the 1993 and 1994 all-around World Champion, the 1996 Olympics balance beam gold medalist, the 1995 Pan Am Games
all-around champion, and a member of the gold medal-winning "Magnificent Seven" team at the Atlanta Olympics. The winner of nine
World Championships medals and seven Olympic medals since her elite International debut in 1990, Miller ranks as the most
decorated gymnast, male or female, in U.S. history. Miller was also the most successful athlete, by medal count, at the 1992
Barcelona Games, winning five altogether.
Miller was born in Rolla, Missouri, but she and her family moved to Edmond, Oklahoma, when she was only six months old.
Miller began gymnastics at age five, and four years later, she and her mother traveled to Moscow, Russia, to participate in
a gymnastics camp. The Soviet coaches were astounded by her talent and believed that she had the potential to be a world-class
elite gymnast. She also met Oklahoma-based coach Steve Nunno in Russia, and began training with him upon returning home.
Miller made remarkable progress under Nunno's tutelage. As a 12-year-old, she finished an impressive third at the
1989 Olympic Festival — a competition designed to showcase up-and-coming talent. Over the next two years, she added such
difficulty to her routines that she soon had some of the hardest routines in the world. Yet, no matter what she achieved,
she always seemed to fall short of fellow American, Kim Zmeskal. Miller traveled to
Europe in 1990 and 1991 for international meets and scored two perfect 10.0s on the balance beam at the Swiss Cup and Arthur
Gander Memorial. At the 1991 Arthur Gander, she not only won the All-Around, she amassed the highest all-around total ever
recorded by an American woman under the traditional 10.0 scale: a 39.875. (Kim Zmeskal
had also amassed this same total score at the 1990 USA vs. USSR Challenge).
At her first World Championships in 1991 in Indianapolis, Miller won two silver medals — in the uneven bars
(where she tied Soviet Tatiana Gutsu) and the team competition. The team medal was
a first for the Americans, and teammate Zmeskal became the first American to achieve the World All-Around gold medal.
Miller placed second in the world during the compulsory portion of the competition to Soviet
Svetlana Boguinskaya. In doing so, and in becoming the first American to
qualify to all possible event finals at the World Championships, she also showed that while inconsistent at home in the
United States, she was among the top gymnasts in the world when she competed in major international competitions.
Throughout her career, the trend continued and Miller seemed to shine when the lights were brightest.
In the following months, Miller established herself as a constant rival to National and World Champion Zmeskal.
At the 1992 American Cup, Miller had the chance to finally defeat Zmeskal, but she fell during her final routine on the
floor exercise when she was performing her mount of whipback through to full twisting double back. Then, disaster struck
a few months before the Olympics when she broke and dislocated her elbow in the spring of 1992. It appeared her Olympics were
over. Miller missed the 1992 Individual Apparatus World Championships in Paris, where she had a fantastic shot at winning
both the uneven bars and the balance beam. The two titles went to Lavinia Milosovici
and Kim Zmeskal, respectively.
Miller surprised doctors, coaches, and fans alike by competing in the compulsory portion of the 1992 Nationals, where
she defeated Zmeskal. Not quite back up to speed with her more difficult manuveurs, she pulled out of the Optionals and
petitioned to the Olympic Trials. It was here that her career catapulted itself to the top. Although the result was
controversial, Miller won the Olympic Trials and defeated Zmeskal, who was considered the favorite to win the Olympics.
Although Zmeskal remained the favorite, the 1992 Olympics finally arrived. For better or for worse, the outcome of the
Games has forever seemed to define both Miller and Zmeskal's careers in the public eye. Miller won the compulsory portion
of the Olympic Games, and then won the entire individual portion of the team competition, advancing to the All-Around as
the number one ranked gymnast in the World.
Miller is probably best remembered for her performance in the Individual All-around at the 1992 Olympic Games. In a dramatic
duel with the Unified Team's Tatiana Gutsu, Miller missed out on the gold by the closest
margin in Olympic history — 12 thousanths of a point. The result was controversial because Gutsu had originally finished
4th on her team. Though she had qualified well within the top 36 who advance to the all-around, only three athletes from each
country could then advance. In order to get round this rule, Gutsu's teammate
Rozalia Galiyeva, who finished 3rd, was said to have a knee injury and was removed
by the Unified Team coaches from the All-Around final. Galieva later said she was not injured, so perhaps Miller was unlucky to
have had to compete against Gutsu in the first place. Nevertheless, she performed very strongly on all four events and by the
end of the evening had accomplished the highest All-Around placement by an American in a non-boycotted Olympics. This record
would stand until Carly Patterson won the title in 2004. She is perhaps best remembered
for her superb full twisting Yurchenko vault that, many experts feel, should have received a perfect score of 10.0 instead
of the 9.975 that she was awarded. During NBC's broadcast of the event finals, Tim Daggett
described Shannon's vault as "the most perfect piece of gymnastics that I have ever seen," and it still remains a stunning
example of gymnastics purity at its very best. Miller continued her strong showing in event finals, when she went on to
capture three more individual medals: a silver on balance beam and bronzes on floor and bars. This haul of five Olympic
medals in one Games was more than that of any Americans in any sport. Along with Lavinia Milosovici,
Miller was the only female gymnast to compete in every single event at the Games (team, all-around, all four finals) and she alone
performed all sixteen routines without serious error. Thirteen of her sixteen routines scored a 9.9 or higher, with her lowest score
being a 9.837 on the vault in the apparatus finals. Few other gymnasts have accomplished such a remarkable feat.
Miller dominated world competition for the next two years, becoming the first and only American back-to-back World All-Around
Champion in 1993 and 1994 (It should be noted that her consecutive wins occurred when the World Championships changed its format
to an annual event. Prior to 1991, the World Championships were only held every other year). In fact, for the two years following
the Games, she went completely undefeated world-wide.
Her performance at the 1993 world championships in Birmingham was exceptionally dominant. After having easily qualified in first
place on every event in the preliminary round, Miller was somewhat underpar on beam in the all-around final but was still able to
narrowly beat Gina Gogean of Romania, by an even smaller margin than she herself had lost by to
Gutsu. However, this close result did not quite reflect Miller's utter dominance at the time. Following the break-up of the USSR,
the athletes from the old Soviet Union had undergone huge upheaval and most were not ready to mount a sustained challenge at the
1993 worlds. Miller, on the other hand, was exceptionally well prepared, with her routines effectively reworked in order to comply
better with the new code. The result in the preliminary round where she won by over two tenths (then a large margin) is very telling.
She followed her all-around title with golds on bars and floor, but fell three times from the beam. Miller's performance in apparatus
finals was made even more impressive by the fact that she was suffering from a stomach bug. Indeed, it was this that forced her to
withdraw from vault.
At the 1994 world championships in Brisbane, Miller again took the all-around title. She beat another Romanian into second place,
Lavinia Milosovici, and once again there was an ex-Soviet in third. As in 1993 her
performance was not perfect — this time there were errors on floor- but it was still strong enough for the gold. She also won
the title that had eluded her the previous year, the beam, with a near perfect exercise. Many feel as though Miller's balance beam
performance in the apparatus finals at the 1994 world championships was the best beam routine of her career.
This winning streak was unprecedented and improbable. In a sport where the tiniest mistake proved critical, Miller was continuing
to win each and every time out. It was not until the Goodwill Games in late 1994 that her winning streak ended.
Dina Kotchetkova, beaten into third place at the world championships, took her competitive
revenge by narrowly defeating Shannon Miller 39.325 to 39.268. Miller rebounded very impressively by earning silver medals on the
vault and the uneven bars, and gold medals on the balance beam and floor exercise. She narrowly missed winning medals in the women's
team competition and the mixed team competition, where she, along with her teammates, placed 4th in both categories. Two weeks later,
she would compete at the 1994 U.S. National Championships, were she would win all five silver medals, each time placing second to a
very strong Dominique Dawes.
In 1993, it had all seemed too easy for Miller. Olympian and television commentator Kathy Johnson commented at the 1993 World
Championships, where Miller won every single event in preliminaries, that never had she seen a gymnast so dominant since
Nadia Comaneci in 1976. Bart Conner concurred,
stating that only if Miller faltered could she be beaten. In 1994, however, Miller placed second to Dominique Dawes in the all-around
competition at the US National Championships. Dawes also topped Miller in all four of the individual event finals at the same
competition and would be Miller's chief rival for the remainder of that year. In 1995 Miller struggled with injuries, fatigue,
and a growth spurt. Although she won the 1995 American Classic, she lost the 1995 National Championships to thirteen year-old
Dominique Moceanu when she fell off the beam. Coming into the 1995 World Championships,
she had a realistic shot of becoming the reigning three-time consecutive World Champion, but disaster struck when Miller injured
her ankle. Although she competed in the team competition and qualified to all four event finals once again, she could barely walk
and was not up to speed. Despite performing under par, she still amassed the highest total of the entire American team. Although
she had won five individual gold medals in the last two World Championships, she walked away from Sabae without a single individual
medal. Here she would take seventh place on the uneven bars, and a very respectable fourth place on the balance beam, after having
to withdraw from both the vault and the floor exercise due to her injury.
Although struggling with severe tendinitis in her left wrist, Miller won the 1996 National Championships and once again established
herself as the top American entering the Olympics. Here she unvailed her new Yurchenko 1-1/2 twisting vault, and her double layout
on the floor exercise. Many feel as though Shannon's performance on the floor at these nationals championships was her finest floor
routine ever. Once again though, she was forced to sit out the Individual Apparatus World Championship in the Olympic year due to injury,
and later the Olympic trials. Still, thanks to her superb performance at the US Nationals, she was able to petition onto the American
team as the top performer, and the injury was sufficiently recovered by July to allow Miller to compete in her second Olympics. Her
fellow teammates were
Dominique Dawes,
Jaycie Phelps,
Amy Chow,
Dominique Moceanu,
Kerri Strug and
Amanda Borden, and they entered the Olympics hotly tipped for success.
In an epic team competition, Miller led the American team to history as the "Magnificent Seven" — the 1996 Olympic Gold
medal winning American team — finally defeated the Russians for the first time ever. Kerri Strug
garnered the lion's share of the media attention following her famous vault, but actually it was Miller who was the team's
highest scorer, individually placing 2nd during the compulsories and 2nd after the entire team competition behind the eventual
Olympic All-Around Champion, Lilia Podkopayeva. This performance qualified her for her
second Olympic all-around competition.
In the All-Around, Miller was sitting in 2nd place half-way through the competition with another showdown for the gold on
the horizon. But her wrist was in poor shape and had only gotten worse since the Nationals, forcing her to have two cortisone
injections. While numbing the pain, the injections failed to solve the problem and Miller was not at her most powerful. She
failed to fully complete a new skill on the floor exercise, a double layout somersault, that needed a big lunge forward.
Although she and her coach considered a different opening pass, she had not been able to practice her traditional opening
run of a whipback through to a full twisting double pike as a hamstring injury had made it difficult for her to pike.
Obviously disappointed, and in tears, she finished the night with a superb performance on the vault. Miller left the All-Around
despondent, but still managed a very respectable 8th place finish, making her the highest ranking female gymnast of the 1996 Games.
She crashed badly in the vault apparatus finals, another event in which she wasn't at her best, and as the final day of Olympic
gymnastics arrived, Miller had only one more shot for individual Olympic gold.
With what was without a doubt one of the best performances of her career, Miller finally won the elusive individual Olympic
gold medal on beam. This magnificent performance was her thirtieth and final routine in Olympic competition. She once again
made history by becoming the first American to win the balance beam at the Olympics. In doing so, she also became the first
American woman to win an individual gold medal at a non-boycotted Olympics, and the first American woman to win any individual
apparatus in a non-boycotted Olympics. This historic result also makes Shannon the only female American gymnast to have won
individual gold medals at both the Olympics and the World Championships. (Only two male American gymnasts,
Bart Conner and Paul Hamm, share this honor).
Miller concluded her career with an astounding seven Olympic medals and sits as one of the most accomplished American
athletes in any sport. She went on to win the All-Around title at the 1997 World University Games against an extremely
competitive field.
Miller established an unforgettable legacy in American gymnastics. She was the U.S. national gymnastics champion in 1993
and 1996; she has been world champion in every event except the vault, where she has made the finals four times (1991,
1993, 1994 and 1995), and an Olympic medalist in every event but the vault, where she was twice an Olympic finalist (1992 and 1996).
Due to her accomplishments, she has been named to USA Gymnastics Hall of Fame, the USA Olympic Hall of Fame, and the
International Gymnastics Hall of Fame.
Miller and her teammates went on several post-Olympics tours, drawing sellout crowds for nearly each show. She competed
briefly in 1997, but primarily in professional competitions. She made a comeback in 2000 in an attempt to make her third
Olympic team but she wasn't selected. She has since dedicated herself to furthering her education. Recently she has spoken
out against the controversial new code and the abandonment of the "Perfect 10," which has won her much admiration from fans.
For more information, visit her visit her biography at www.usa-gymnastics.org or her
profile page on the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique website.
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