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Boss Ladies of CLE: Olympic gymnast Dominique Moceanu

Moceanu earned gold at just 14 as part of the 1996 team. Today, her mission is to empower a new generation of gymnasts and help bring positive change to the sport.

MEDINA, Ohio — If you watch Dominique Moceanu interact with the gymnasts at the Dominique Moceanu Gymnastics Center in Medina, it's clear her passion for the sport lives on decades after she became a star athlete herself.

But the former Olympian hasn't always looked at gymnastics with love. 

"Nobody cared about us, in our generation. It was like, just do it," she recalled. "That's just not how it needs to be. It can be done with compassion."

After winning a gold medal with the Magnificent Seven in Atlanta in 1996, she left the sport – and started speaking up about the abuses she encountered – mental and physical.

Credit: Dominique Moceanu
Dominique Moceanu and the 1996 US Women's Olympic Gymnastics team.

"I was hurt so much by the people in the sport," she said. "I didn't want to be in the gym. I couldn't even step foot in the gym for many years."

Her husband Michael, a decorated collegiate gymnast, brought her back.

"He's like, 'You belong here. You did so much for the sport. You need to be in the sport,'" Moceanu explained. "And I do credit him for his love bringing me and my passion back and fire back to kind of start a whole movement."

Now, Dominique gives her athletes the support she would have wanted, advocating for a balanced approach - like teaching yoga in a studio named for her daughter Carmen. Here she coaches high-level athletes and runs the business of her gym – now preparing for an Olympic boom. Moceanu says her classes here are filling up, and it's been difficult to keep enough staff on hand.

Already the Tokyo 2020 Games have shown: gymnastics has changed.

"Well, I'm watching these games unfold. I just feel like, wow...there is a lot of pressure. I felt it when I was 14 years old...you had the pressure of doing something that never had been done in history."

She knows what Simone Biles has gone through – and has shared her support privately and publicly – in a post now going viral.

RELATED: Olympic gymnastics champion, Cleveland resident Dominique Moceanu offers insight into Simone Biles' battle

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"She values her worth and self-compassion, and I think that's a good thing," Moceanu said. "And I even sent her a message, you know, just gave her a little heart. And I said, I, I mean, you know, a lot of people are with you, you know that."

Today, Moceanu advises young gymnasts, including her son Vincent, who aims to join Team USA in Los Angeles in 2028: The first games since her own back on American soil.

"When I think about my son, I mean, he's two Olympics away from his very first shot to land an Olympic team...So it'll be quite a full circle moment and it'll feel really good that perhaps God or the universe planted that to happen that way so that he could have a chance to do it the right way. So that whatever harm happened to me can now be given another chance to have done the right way with him."

For gymnasts and boss ladies inspired by her story, Moceanu says, it's important to stay focused on your goal.

"One of the best pieces of advice I would probably give is never give up...you're going to always have something that challenges you before you meet that high level, that goal there's adversity...but your test, if you overcome that will become your testimony."

And when it comes to her legacy, Moceanu hopes she will be remembered for helping to usher in an era of change in her sport.

"I hope the legacy that I leave behind is much larger than the gold medal. I think that that was a stepping stone and that one of my biggest and greatest legacies will be that I stood up to abuse when nobody else really had the courage to," she said.

"And then being able to help my own athletes and children paved the way for a future generation here at DMDC and beyond for them to accomplish their dreams."

You can watch the entire interview between Sara and Dominique below:

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