MEDIA REPRINTS
MARCIA FREDERICK WORLD CHAMPION ' RETIIIBD DAN SHAUGHNESSY
The Boston Globe-Boston, Massachusetts
M
ilford, Conn. - She can laugh about it today, but it hurt at the time. Champion gymnast Marcia Frederick- then 17 years old and enjoying all the newness and wonder of her first boyfriend-was tossed out of a public women's rest room by two elderly women who mistook her for a young man. It was the fall of 1980. It was time to retire from gymnastics. "I had just met my boyfriend," she recalled. "I walked into a women's room and some lady grabbed me by the arm. She told me the boys' room was next door. She and her friend threw me out. It was such an assault. I had spent three or four hours trying to look good. I had tried so hard to look like a girl. I cried all the way home. That definitely pushed me past the edge. No one was ever going to call me a boy again." Frederick retired six months later, came back for 18 appearances in the Kurt Thomas pro gymnastics tour last winter and retired permanently in February. "I was tired. I hated driving to the gym. I couldn't make it without people practically picking me up arid making me do a routine .. . I wanted to find out what I could do besides gymnastics and who I was besides a world champion. I thought, 'There's got to be something else." This is a story of the athletic burnout of a child who did what no American woman ever had done. Competing at the World gymnastics championship in Strasbourg, France, in October, 1978, 15-year-old Marcia Frederick won a gold medal in the uneven parallel bars. She beat the best, including Romania's Nadia Comaneci. It remains the only gold medal ever awarded to an American woman in any international gymnastic competition.
"Everything I did was gymnastics. I breathed gymnastics, I dieted gymnastics. I dreamed gymnastics. I looked gymnastics." High Price of Success - The price was great. For nine years, Frederick spent 5 to 10 hours a day perfecting her routines. She left her home to live anf1 train at Muriel Grossfeld's school of elite gymnasts in Milford, Conn., a move that ultimately uprooted her parents and two sisters in 1978. In quest of Olympic gold, Frederick surrendered her independence, her ten years and her femininiry. "Everything I did was gymnastics," she said, "I breathed gymnastics, I dieted gymnastics. I dreamed gymnastics, I looked gymnastics. I had the short hair and the body . .. everything. "The price you pay is hard sweat, tears and paid. Dedication. You have to be totally oblivious to everything else in the world besides gymnastics. Is it worth it? I don't know. If I had to do it over again, I think I would, but maybe I'd go about it differently. " Photographs tell the story of Frederick the competitor vs. Frederick the 19-year-old American girl. The competitor is a muscular, masculine pre-pubescent , bag-ey ed robot - a gymnastic machine worthy of any Communist Bloc nation. Marcia the American girl is a chic, attractive, green-eyed , auburn-haired yo ung woman. She will never again be mistaken for a boy. "I'm 10 pounds thinner, bigger in the chest and have long hair and painted nails," she said proudly. "I just wanted to be like other girls." 10
Marcia Frederick in 19 78 at the World Championships held in Strasbourg, France became America's first and only women's world champion by winning the uneven bars event. Marcia scored a 9.95 in finals over competition from Elena Muckh ina (URS), Emilia Eberle (Rom), Maria Filatova ( URS), Nadia Comaneci (Rom) and Steffi Kraker (GDR)
USGF GYMNASTICS NOV./DEC. '82