“More magnificent women since then”
Thirty years of friendship began with seven gymnasts who knew each other but weren’t necessarily close.
“We had all been together in some capacity at different World Championships or Pan American Games, but the seven of us had never been on a team [together],” Borden said.
She had been inspired by some of them long before she was their teammate.
“Kerri, Shannon, and Dawes, I looked up to. I mean, I was the one going, ‘Wow. These are my heroes’,” Borden said. “And then all of a sudden I’m on a team and I’m friends with them and lived life with them in a way.”
“What makes our bond remarkable is that we were a group of girls from all over the United States, different coaches, different gyms, who came together essentially two weeks before the Olympics,” Miller said. “There were no national training camps at the time. We trained in our own gyms, saw each other at competitions throughout the years, and then were asked to become a team when it mattered most. And we did.
“The competition was fierce, and every single person had to come through if we were going to take home gold,” she added. “And when someone had a hard moment, the others stepped up. Without a word, without hesitation. It wasn’t something we talked about or planned. It was just who we were.”
The friendships came afterward, during a national tour across the United States, when the Olympic pressure had become Olympic fame.
“I think we really bonded during the post-Olympic tour,” Chow said.
“The tour after the Games gave us time to bond as people, not just as gymnasts,” echoed Miller. “To laugh, to breathe, to get to know each other outside of competition. That’s where friendships truly took root.”
Borden opened her gym, Gold Medal Gymnastics, in Arizona in 2004 and brought the other six out for the grand opening. She remembers standing in the middle of it and realizing their nickname had turned into something else.
“We were dubbed the Mag Seven because of our gymnastics, but actually they’re even more magnificent women since then,” Borden said. “Doctors, gym owners, pouring back into our sport, public speaking, all these things that go far beyond a 12-year career [in gymnastics] or the one competition.”
Chow, who became a physician, put it plainly.
“I don’t think I really understood what the gold medal really meant at the time we won. I just knew I was so happy,” she said. “It was not until months later that I realized how it changed our lives. And it was many years later that I realized how much it meant not just for us individually and as a team, but how it affected everyone else who was watching us as well.”
What holds for Strug is a childhood the rest of the world only thinks it understands.
“You have people come up to you all the time, ‘Oh, I trained in swimming’, and yes, I’m sure you did sacrifice a lot and it was difficult,” she told Olympics.com. “But our world was very different at the time.
“I think we just have a special bond, no matter how much time passes, or where our lives go, that still will always bring you back together,” Strug added.
Every 23 July, their phones light up.
“We text each other every year on the anniversary of our win to ‘celebrate’ and wonder how it has been so many years since that time,” Chow said. She added a parenthetical: “I think it is Amanda that almost always remembers first.”
There will be a reunion at August’s U.S. Championships in Phoenix, where the team will be honored.
“I sent a text again yesterday and we’re trying to get all these things kind of organized,” Borden said. “Everybody’s excited to come to Arizona.
“We just want to be with each other.”
