Gymnast impaled death 2010
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The Unthinkable Happens : Gymnast Gomez, 15, in Coma After Suffering Broken Neck During Warmups
Julissa Gomez, 15, lies in a coma in a Houston Hospital, her neck broken, her body paralyzed.
More than a month ago, the top-ranked American gymnast and Olympic hopeful boarded a plane with her peers for a meet in Tokyo. She returned, unconscious, by U.S. military transport, surrounded by doctors and her parents, Otilia and Ramiro Gomez, who had flown to Japan to be at their daughter’s side.
She suffered a spinal injury May 5 while practicing a vault at the World Sports Fair in Japan. It was a routine maneuver for a world-class gymnast--a round-off onto a springboard, a back handspring onto the vaulting horse--one Julissa had been executing for three years.
But this time, she missed. Her foot slipped on the springboard and she didn’t get the necessary lift, said her coach, Al Fong. She hit the the vaulting horse with her head.
Julissa lost consciousness and stopped breathing momentarily. When she regained consciousness, she couldn’t move. She was taken to a Tokyo University hospita
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Julissa D'anne Gomez (November 4, 1972 – August 8, 1991) was an American gymnast. She was born in San Antonio, Texas.
Gomez was an up-and-coming international elite gymnast in the mid-1980s. She trained with Béla Károlyi in Houston from the age of 10.[1] At the 1986 U.S. Championships, she placed fourth in the all-around in the junior division and won a place on the U.S. National Team.[2] By 1987 she was representing the United States in international meets. Especially strong on the uneven bars and balance beam, Gomez was considered a legitimate contender for the 1988 U.S. Olympic team.
In mid-1987, Gomez left the Károlyis, briefly trained at US Acrosports,[3] and moved to Missouri to train with Al Fong. In the spring of 1988, several months before the Olympics, she traveled to Japan to compete in the World Sports Fair. In an eerie foreshadowing of events to come, during the qualifying rounds of the competition, Gomez reportedly spoke about the Soviet gymnast Elena Mukhina, who had been paralyzed in an accident in 1980 just a few weeks bef
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Women’s artistic gymnastics (WAG) has a long list of tragic names. For many of them, the unfortunate circumstances that brought their career to an end are what defines their legacy, with little attention being paid to who they were as athletes. This article is my attempt to correct that. To remind WAG fans that Julissa Gomez was more than just a gymnast who gave her life to the sport. Before her fateful accident she was a celebrated athlete with accomplishments that were worth remembering.
The 1976 Olympics are best known for being dominated by Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci. The success of Nadia would influence the career of Julissa Gomez in two ways. First, Nadia would serve as the idol for Julissa who was in her kindergarten years when Comaneci was at the height of her fame. Secondly, Nadia’s success is what made her coach Bela Karolyi a highly respected coach for the next three decades.
By the early 1980s Bela Karolyi had defected from Romania, crossed an ocean, and ended up in Houston, Texas which was not too far from Julissa who was from San Antonio, Texas. In
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