Jennifer Sey, Goodwill Games, 1984
The elite and highly-decorated American gymnast, Jennifer Sey, was born in 1969. She won the 1986 National Gymnastics Championship and was considered the U.S. hopeful for gold in the 1988 Olympics, Seoul. Despite talent and years of training, she retired before those games even began. Later, she wrote a controversial book about her experiences in the sport. It’s called Chalked Up: Inside Elite Gymnastics’ Merciless Coaching, Overzealous Parents, Eating Disorders, and Elusive Olympic Dreams.
Until I read Sey’s story, I didn’t connect that the original Magnificent Seven were all Gen Xers. They were the first U.S. Women’s Gymnastics Team to win gold. (Atlanta, 1996)
Jennifer Sey’s story reminds me how much the years in which we come of age influences our lives. Also, I wonder what her gymnastics career would have looked like if there hadn’t been a Cold War and if female gymnasts had been more protected.
1985 World Gymnastics Championship
This video features Jennifer Sey’s parallel bars routine at the 1985 World Gymnastics Championship. She fell during her routine and broke her femur. Less than a year later, she won the USA Nationals.
Sey on Biles + Athlete A
Sey recently took to Twitter to affirm Simone Biles’ decision to withdraw from the Olympics in Tokyo. Click here to read her initial tweet followed by several more in the comments section. In addition, Sey was the producer of Athlete A, the Netflix documentary that focuses on the USAG abuse scandal.
I originally published this post in 2013. I updated it to include new information.
[…] walked away from her job as a senior executive at Levi’s in February. Although the former championship gymnast was being considered for the chief executive job at the company, she quit when management pressured […]