Training Camp

The U.S. women’s gymnastics program was reborn here, amid rustic cabins, a corral that’s home to a camel and her spindly-legged newborn, and 2,000 acres of pine trees and lakes.

Camp Karolyi, also known as the national team training center, sits at the end of a gravel road 50 miles north of Houston, beyond the range of cellphones and meddlesome parents. In that unlikely setting, Martha Karolyi turns pixies into paragons of grace, gathering the top U.S. female gymnasts for a week’s intense training every month or so as she seeks the next Mary Lou or Nadia.

If a girl heaps too many potatoes on her dinner plate, Karolyi impales her with a glare. And although Karolyi never misses a slip in the gym, she’s quick to reward a good effort with praise or a hug.

“You have a higher authority here,” said Courtney McCool, who jumped into contention for an Olympic berth by winning the all-around title at a recent test event in Athens. “She’s very intense, but she’s striving to pick whoever’s best. It’s not what you did before, it’s what you do at that moment.”

When Karolyi succeeded her boisterous husband Bela as women’s national team coordinator in 2001, her priority was to end the feuds that had splintered the 2000 Olympic team -- differences largely created by Bela after he was lured out of retirement to run the program less than a year before the Games.

Instead of bringing gymnasts to a central place to train year-round, as many countries do, he thought the U.S. should have a semi-centralized system. Gymnasts would train in their home gyms, then periodically visit his ranch to demonstrate their skills and bond as a team. He’d offer their coaches advice, giving competitors a common philosophy even if they didn’t train together full-time.

In theory, it was fine. In practice, it fell apart when he began to coach instead of coordinate. Organizational details were left undone. Coaches and athletes were unhappy and the women won no medals at Sydney, a disappointment after the 1996 team’s gold-medal performance.

“In 2000, it was more of a dictatorship, and this is one [system] that everybody works together,” said Kelli Hill, who was the women’s coach at Sydney. “I hated it, and I’m shocked that it’s worked as well as it has and thrilled that it has.”

The reason it’s working now, Hill says, is Martha Karolyi -- “Night and day.”

Martha (pronounced MAR-ta) doesn’t tell the athletes’ personal coaches how to run their training sessions. Unlike Bela, she’s organized and diplomatic, more an advisor than a coach.

“I don’t want to say anything against him, but it just didn’t work under him,” Hill said. “With Martha, she has respect for all the athletes. She understands when they’re up and when they’re down. She respects the coaches and their opinions and asks our opinions and we come up with a plan together instead of, ‘We must do this regardless.’ ”

The benefits of her leadership were obvious at the last three World Championships. The women won a team bronze medal in 2001, team gold in 2003 at Anaheim, four individual event gold medals and two individual bronze medals. No U.S. women’s delegation has lost a team competition since Sydney.

“Our country has come a long way,” said Tasha Schwikert, the only Sydney Olympian vying for a spot in Athens. “The whole camp system has really helped.”

Bela, renowned for his bear hugs and gold-medal successes with Nadia Comaneci and Mary Lou Retton, remains a huge presence at the ranch. He tends his animals, raises money for facilities and improvements, and leads cheers. Martha, though, coordinates who competes where, who visits the ranch and when, and what they’ll do. The six competitors and three alternates for Athens will be determined after a session at Camp Karolyi in July.

“They’re both great people in their own ways,” Schwikert said. “He’s a very good motivator. She’s a great motivator, too, but more in a realistic, calm way.... “Everyone has to get up for the camps, and I think in the past we lacked that. We had only a couple of training camps a year. Everyone is pretty much on the same page, and that’s good too. I don’t think that was there before.”

Martha Karolyi said her coaching style wasn’t so different from her husband’s.

“We work so many years together, we completed each other,” said Martha, who married Bela 41 years ago and defected from Romania with him in 1981.

“We both expect our girls to put out their best, honest effort. He is more direct and maybe I have a little bit more patience, which is more characteristic for me. We have the same expectations but I am doing it a little smoother.”

Although averse to the spotlight, she has worked alongside her husband in Romania and in the U.S., where he coached 1984 gold medalist Retton, and Kim Zmeskal, Kerri Strug and the victorious Magnificent Seven at the Atlanta Games.

He’s loud, commanding attention when he enters a room. She’s subtle and earns attention by what she does in the room, and by what she has done in streamlining a program that has produced perhaps 20 potential Olympians.

“I wanted to be able to raise the level of U.S. gymnastics to the highest level, with other nations in the world,” she said. “We certainly have that opportunity.”