Moceanu Chasing Olympic Dream One More Time

Dominique Moceanu sometimes just wanted to pack it in and run. Get away from the hype, the prying eyes, the people who wanted to know every last detail about her life and the family soap opera.

She could just go, move somewhere and be like any other teen-ager. Go to school, hang out with friends and get on with her life.

But something always pulls her back to the gym, the source of her greatest triumphs and worst despair.

“There’s definitely times I was just like, ‘Why is it always like this for me? Why am I the only one dealing with all this stuff?’ Because it affected me and I’m scarred from some of that stuff,” she said. “But then you reach deep down inside and you remember why you’re doing it.

“For me to go back and be a second-time Olympian--not too many people get to go around the first time,” said Moceanu, the youngest U.S. gymnast to win gold. “If I have the opportunity to go back a second time, I don’t want to look back and say I didn’t at least try.”

Three months before her 19th birthday, Moceanu is what people call an “old soul.” The beaming smile that landed her on the cover of Vanity Fair before the Atlanta Olympics is still there, but there’s a wariness in her eyes now. And no wonder. In four years, she’s gone from media darling to tabloid fodder.

She had just turned 17 when she ran away from home and asked to be declared a legal adult, accusing her parents of squandering her money. A month later, she was back in court asking for a protective order against her father, Dumitru, who allegedly inquired about having two of her friends killed.

Dumitru Moceanu, who denied the accusations, was ordered to stay away from his daughter for a year. The order was lifted five months later.

“That was a chapter that had to be done for my own purposes, but a lot of people really blew it out of proportion,” Moceanu said. “I did not want it to be public at all . . . and all of a sudden you’re in the newspapers and the tabloids. I didn’t want that to happen. I wanted it to be quiet and done.”

Slowly, the family has reconciled. Moceanu’s mother, Camelia, and her 10-year-old sister, Christina, live with Moceanu in Cincinnati, where she’s been training since January with Mary Lee Tracy, assistant coach of the 1996 Olympic squad.

Her father visits when he can, traveling back and forth from the family’s home in Texas. Once intensely involved in his daughter’s career, he’s never even visited the gym or talked to Tracy.

“Things are all right now. Whatever happened happened and we’re moving on,” Moceanu said. “I will always love my parents no matter what happens. The past is let go.”

But the road back hasn’t been easy. In the months after her split with her father, Moceanu bounced around the country so much searching for the right coach that she hardly trained--certainly not at the level elite gymnasts need.

And like all little girls do, Moceanu grew up. She’s no longer the 4-foot-6, 72-pound pixie who could tumble and flip with ease. She’s grown 10 inches and gained weight, a huge adjustment in a sport where a pound or two can affect your balance.

“It was so much work at the beginning just to get her fit,” Tracy said. “Your muscles don’t lose memory of the skills. But when there’s too much stuff around the muscles, they can’t do the work. Once we peeled away the layers, the muscles are doing what they’re supposed to do. Every month, she climbed.”

Moceanu is in the gym every morning at 7:30. She trains for four hours, takes a break and then comes back for another session that lasts about four hours. She also works with a personal trainer.

She is eager to be back to full competition strength, and she and Tracy say she’s getting closer. She’s among the 20 gymnasts invited to this month’s national team training camp, which begins this weekend at Bela Karolyi’s ranch outside Houston.

Her beam routine is set, her floor exercise is almost there and she has to increase the difficulty level of one of her vaults. She just learned several new tricks for her uneven bars routine, and she’s trying to pull that together.

Mostly, though, she needs to improve her endurance so she can do her routines perfectly all the way through.

“I’m not quite sure where I want to be yet, but all I can do is try and hope that every day I get better and better,” she said. “That’s all I really can hope for because there’s not much time left. It’s winding down now.”

Her schedule leaves little time for anything but training, but it doesn’t matter because all of her friends live out of town, anyway. She gets lonely sometimes, but she reminds herself she’s chasing gold and it will disappear soon.

She’ll know in August whether she makes the team for the Sydney Olympics, which begin Sept. 15. By next spring, she’ll be on to the next phase of her life.

“Sometimes I think back and I’m like, ‘Wow, I grew up so fast and so much has happened to me in my life,”’ she said. “At least I know I can handle a lot of things that come toward me. They may try to hit me, but at least they didn’t knock me over quite. I had some downs, but I picked myself back up.”