Ray Ready for a Shot at Olympic Gold Medal

Elise Ray remembers the day Dominique Dawes came to the gym carrying something very, very special in her bag.

There, tucked in with her practice leotards, was the bright, shiny gold medal Dawes won at the Atlanta Olympics as part of the Magnificent Seven. Beside it was the bronze medal she won in the floor exercise.

Now, almost four years later, Ray is on her way to the Sydney Olympics, hoping to return with some hardware of her own.

“I hate that ‘could have, should have’ thing. I want to say there’s absolutely nothing I could have done better,” she said. “Our goal is definitely to come home with a medal.”

There was a time not too long ago that the 18-year-old Ray didn’t even like to mention the Olympics, let alone think about winning a medal. Despite being on the senior national team since 1996, her confidence wasn’t as strong as her skills.

She might have been good, but she didn’t always show it.

“She had the talent, but I don’t think she actually believed she was going to go down the path to worlds and the Olympics,” said her coach, Kelli Hill, who also trained Dawes. “I think she wanted to; it was a dream of hers. But I don’t know if she ever thought of it as a reality.”

Then came last year’s national championships. After training so hard for the meet, Ray finished sixth in the all-around.

When she and Hill got back to the gym, the coach sat her down for a talk.

“We said, ‘What are you doing? What are you here for? If you’re going to do this, let’s do it,”’ Hill said.

“It was a turnaround for us.”

At the world team trials the next month, Ray finished first. And when the rest of the U.S. team collapsed at the world championships in China, finishing last in the medals round, Ray stood out.

She was the top American in the all-around, finishing a surprising eighth. It was the best U.S. performance since Dominique Moceanu’s fifth-place finish in 1995.

Ray also finished seventh on the uneven bars, the only American to place in the top eight in the individual event finals.

“I was going through a period of time when I was doubting myself,” Ray said. “Kelli told me that we’re a team and I needed to take some of the pressure off of myself. I just solely focused on what I had to concentrate on.

“Finishing at worlds was definitely a landmark,” she said. “Being able to feel the way I did, confident and focused and strong. I have to keep it in my mind I can be there again.”

The Olympics were the furthest thing from Ray’s parents’ minds when they signed their 6-year-old up for a tumbling class at the local recreation center.

“She doesn’t come from a family of athletes,” her mother, Ellen, said, laughing. “We were never gymnasts and probably never took a gymnastics class in our life.”

But the teacher at the rec center saw talent, and suggested Ray take formal gymnastics class. By the time she was 12, she was climbing the national ranks.

It was right about then, though, that her gymnastics career came to a crossroads. Her two coaches quit, and her new coach moved her into an elite training group with high schoolers.

The move wasn’t working, so the Rays called Hill.

“With Kelli’s experience, she knew the right steps,” Ellen Ray said. “(Elise) and Kelli hit it off. And she and Dominique hit it off REALLY well.”

Despite the 5 1/2-year age difference, Ray and Dawes became -- and remain -- close friends. They hung out together outside the gym, laughing “until our stomachs hurt,” Ray said.

They also trained together everyday, giving the younger gymnast a firsthand look at the effort and dedication required to reach the Olympics.

“Elise learned a lot from Dominique. Dominique was a workhorse,” Hill said. “Dom was never a typical teen-age girl. She was the normal, typical athlete. Gymnastics, eat, sleep, drink, 100 percent, nothing else.”

Though she trains almost seven hours a day, Ray isn’t quite as single-minded as Dawes was. Like everyone else at Hill’s gym, she goes to a regular high school. But because her Columbia, Md., home is about 40 minutes away, she doesn’t go to school with anyone from the gym.

It’s almost like two separate lives, Ray said. At school, she’s a “normal” teen-ager, talking about classes and making plans for the weekend. At the gym, she’s one of America’s top medal hopes, focused on Sydney.

“I’ve been so blessed,” Ray said. “Everything’s worked out so well.”