Mike Celizic

Kerri Strug had a lot of things to think about as she limped down the runway in 1996 at the Atlanta Olympics, and her ankle wasn’t one of them. There was the team, and how everyone was counting on her to give the U.S. women their first ever team gold in gymnastics. But mostly there was herself and her reputation for not coming through under pressure.

As her nation and the world watched, she pounded down the runway, ignoring the searing pain in the ankle she had badly sprained on her previous vault. She launched herself off a spring board, flipped and twisted and pushed herself off the horse and into the air.

“I was just focused on the vault,” she said. “It was automatic pilot.”

She landed it. Perfectly. On one leg.

The hands went up in the air. She hopped around and posed again. The immense crowd in the Georgia Dome went nuts. She collapsed, only to be scooped up by her coach, Bela Karolyi, the great bear of a man who coached Mary Lou Retton, the first American gymnastics queen. He carried her onto the medal stand with her teammates, a group that would be known forever as The Magnificent 7.

It was one of the most iconic moments in American sports, an Olympic moment up there with “Do you believe in miracles?” It lasted just a few seconds — less than half a minute — in real time, but it lives forever.

But at the time, Strug had no idea what it meant. There was joy that the team beat the Russians and won its gold, but she was also fiercely disappointed to know that her wrecked ankle — there was ligament damage — would prevent her from going for an individual gold medal in the floor exercise.

None of her teammates knew that they had vaulted — and leapt and somersaulted and tumbled and swung — into the fabric of American sports culture, either. Not even Shannon Miller, the most decorated American female gymnast ever and the “old lady” of the team, knew what was coming.

All they knew was that Strug had come through and they had won the gold medal and, gosh, but what a thrill it all was, but now there were the individual events to attend to.

That Strug had vaulted on a torn-up ankle wasn’t that big a deal to any of them.

“We all had injuries,” Miller said last week. “Dominique Moceanu had a stress fracture. I had a wrist.”

“Most of the time, by the time the Olympics comes around, there was some nagging injury,” added Moceanu, who, at 14, was the kid of the team. “I had my stress fracture due to overuse. I couldn’t push off my leg anymore going into the Olympic Games. Every athlete had something to deal with and overcome.”

So when Strug missed her first of two vaults — she would be scored on the best one — none of her teammates even considered that she might not do her second. “I knew that no matter what, she was going to go,” Moceanu said.

Call it the great divide between athlete and spectator. No matter what the sport, fans are impressed when their heroes play hurt, as the nation was last week with Tiger Woods won the U.S. Open on an injured leg. And when the injured athlete is a girl so tiny and cute, fans are in awe.

Gymnasts are impressed, but hardly shocked. Bart Connor is in the Olympic Hall of Fame both as an individual and as a member of the great 1984 team that won gold in Los Angeles. He is also employed by Allstate as a spokesman for the Olympic Hall of Fame, a job he attacks with great gusto. Allstate signed on as a sponsor with the U.S. Olympic Committee in 2004 and immediately put its money and its marketing muscle into resurrecting the Hall of Fame, which hadn’t inducted a new class in more than a decade.

Connor called from Korea, where he was part of a group putting on a gymnastics show, to talk about just how incredibly tough those delicate-looking girls who are the centerpiece of the Games are.

“Because they’re such adorable young ladies, you think they should be over-protected,” Connor said. But Karolyi, who came to the United States from Romania, where he had coached Nadia Comenici, the first great pixie champion, knew better. He worked his girls hard. His demands often seemed impossible. But when the spotlights came on, they came through.

“Bela’s philosophy was these are incredibly tough, dedicated athletes. Let’s give them their due,” Connor said.

“Being one of Bela’s girls, you’re used to dealing with a little adversity,” Strug said. He forced his athletes to push themselves, even when they thought they couldn’t do one more exercise.

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