Gymnastics · 1996 · Atlanta, USA
The Magnificent Seven
A seven-woman American team ends decades of Soviet and Russian dominance to win the first Olympic team gold in US women's gymnastics history.
USA 389.225, first team gold
Result
0.897 over Russia
Margin entering final rotation
7 gymnasts, 1 apparatus rotation each
Team
The USSR, and Russia and the Unified Team in its place, had won the Olympic women's team gymnastics title at every Games it entered since 1952. Going into the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, the United States, led by Shannon Miller, Dominique Moceanu, Dominique Dawes, Kerri Strug, Amy Chow, Jaycie Phelps and captain Amanda Borden, had never won it either at the Olympics or the World Championships.
Over the compulsory and optional rounds on 21 and 23 July 1996, the American team built a lead over Russia that held into the final rotation, closing out the competition with a score of 389.225. The team is remembered above all for Kerri Strug's final vault, performed on an injured ankle to help seal the result, but the achievement was the product of seven gymnasts across every apparatus, not one moment alone.
The win, the first Olympic team gold for American women's gymnastics, gave the group its lasting nickname, the Magnificent Seven, and marked a permanent shift in the sport's balance of power away from the countries that had dominated it since the 1950s.
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