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| Birth Name(s) : Shannon Miller |
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Full Shannon Miller Biography
Shannon Lee Miller (b. March 10, 1977 in Rolla, Missouri) is an artistic gymnast from Edmond, Oklahoma. She was the 1993 and 1994 all-around World Champion, the 1996 Olympics balance beam gold medalist, the 1995 Pan Am Games all-around champion, and a member of the gold medal-winning Magnificent 7 team at the Atlanta Olympics. The winner of 9 World Championships medals and 7 Olympic medals since her elite International debut in 1990, Miller ranks as the most decorated gymnast, male or female, in U.S. history. Miller was also the most successful athlete, by medal count, at the 1992 Barcelona Games, winning 5 altogether.
Miller surprised doctors, coaches, and fans alike by competing in the compulsory portion of the 1992 Nationals, where she defeated Zmeskal. Not quite back up to speed with her more difficult manuveurs, she pulled out of the Optionals and petitioned to the Olympic Trials. It was here that her career catapulted itself to the top. Although the result was controversial, Miller won the Olympic Trials and defeated Zmeskal, who was considered the favorite to win the Olympics.
Her performance at the 1993 world championships in Birmingham was exceptionally dominant. After having easily qualified in first place on every event in the preliminary round, Miller was somewhat underpar on beam in the all-around final but was still able to narrowly beat Gina Gogean of Romania, by an even smaller margin than she herself had lost by to Gutsu. However, this close result did not quite reflect Miller's utter dominance at the time. Following the break-up of the USSR, the athletes from the old Soviet Union had undergone huge upheaval and most were not ready to mount a sustained challenge at the 1993 worlds. Miller, on the other hand, was exceptionally well prepared, with her routines effectively reworked in order to comply better with the new code. The result in the preliminary round where she won by over two tenths (then a large margin) is very telling. She followed her all-around title with golds on bars and floor, but fell three times from the beam. Miller's performance in apparatus finals was made even more impressive by the fact that she was suffering from a stomach bug. Indeed, it was this that forced her to withdraw from vault.
This winning streak was unprecedented and improbable. In a sport where the tiniest mistake proved critical, Miller was continuing to win each and every time out. It was not until the Goodwill Games in late 1994 that her winning streak ended. Dina Kotchetkova, beaten into third place at the world championships, took her competitive revenge.
In 1993, it had all seemed too easy for Miller. Olympian and television commentator Kathy Johnson commented at the 1993 World Championships, where Miller won every single event in preliminaries, that never had she seen a gymnast so dominant since Nadia Comaneci in 1976. Bart Conner concurred, stating that only if Miller faltered could she be beaten. In 1994, however, Miller placed second to Dominique Dawes in the all-around competition at the US National Championships. Dawes also topped Miller in all four of the individual event finals at the same competition and would be Miller's chief rival for the remainder of that year. In 1995 Miller struggled with injuries, fatigue, and a growth spurt. Although she won the 1995 American Classic, she lost the 1995 National Championships to thirteen year-old Dominique Moceanu when she fell off the beam. Coming into the 1995 World Championships, she had a realistic shot of becoming the reigning three-time consecutive World Champion, but disaster struck when Miller injured her ankle. Although she competed in the team competition and qualified to all four event finals once again, she could barely walk and was not up to speed. Although she had won five individual gold medals in the last two World Championships, she walked away from Sabae without a single individual medal.
In the All-Around, Miller was sitting in 2nd place half-way through the competition with another showdown for the gold on the horizon. But her wrist was in poor shape and had only gotten worse since the Nationals, forcing her to have 2 cortisone injections. While numbing the pain, the injections failed to solve the problem and Miller was not at her most powerful. She failed to fully complete a new skill on the floor exercise. Although she and her coach considered a different opening pass, she had not been able to practice her traditional opening run as a hamstring injury had made it difficult for her to pike. Miller left the All-Around despondent. She crashed badly in the vault apparatus finals, another event in which she wasn't at her best, and as the final day of Olympic gymnastics arrived, Miller had only one more shot for individual Olympic gold.
Miller and her teammates went on several post-Olympics tours, drawing sellout crowds for nearly each show. She competed briefly in 1997, but primarily in professional competitions. She made a comeback in 2000 in an attempt to make her third Olympic team but she wasn't selected. She has since dedicated herself to furthering her education. Recently she has spoken out against the controversial new code and the abandonment of the Perfect 10, which has won her much admiration from fans
Miller, along with fellow gymnasts Bart Conner and Nadia Comaneci, appeared on the January 26, 2007 episode of 1 vs. 100 on NBC. |
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