| Charles Lakes | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Full name | Charles Lakes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Country represented | United States | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Born | August 6, 1964 St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Height | 172 cm (5 ft 8 in) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Weight | 70 kg (154 lb) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Discipline | Men's artistic gymnastics | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| College team | Illinois Fighting Illini | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Medal record
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Charles Lakes (born August 6, 1964) is a retired American gymnast. He was a member of the United States men's national artistic gymnastics team and participated in the 1988 Olympics. [1] [2]
Lakes competed for the Illinois Fighting Illini men's gymnastics in college. He Minored in Spanish. In 1984, he won the NCAA gold medal for high bar. He left college in 1986 to concentrate on making the Olympic team in 1988.
Lakes was a member of the 1985 and 1987 World Gymnastics Championships U.S. teams.
In 1988, Lakes was criticized by some gymnasts, including Kurt Thomas for not training enough. However, Lakes won gold at Nationals on the floor exercise. At Olympic Trials, Lakes finished first overall. In the Olympics he was the highest ranked American gymnast in the All Around finals, where he finished 19th. [1] [2]
Lakes took 1989 off and then returned to competition in 1990. He attempted a comeback in 1992 but placed 18th and claimed the final spot in the US Olympic trials that year. He was inducted into the USA Gymnastics Hall of Fame in 2003. [2] [3]
Lakes is a devoted Scientologist. During his Olympic career, he was quoted as crediting L. Ron Hubbard's system of Dianetics for his immense success and health, stating "I am by far the healthiest person on the team," he said. "They (other team members) are actually resentful of me because I don't have to train as long as they do." [4]
Lakes was the first black American gymnast to compete in the Olympics. (Ron Galimore was the first African-American selected for the Olympics, but because of the 1980 boycott, he never competed.)
In the Olympic runup, Lakes told Deseret News that he grew up around whites and idolized a white gymnast, Mitch Gaylord. He said that he had not had racial problems in the sport and that he was not black "in terms of separating myself or black pride", but that he did embrace being a role model for younger minority athletes. [5]
Lakes spoke to NBC in 1988: [6] [7]
I think of myself as a gymnast first. But I am black, and as a result I am a role model and I, I embrace that position. So if I can help other black kids, other minority kids, whatever, get to a level in something like gymnastics where they can have a quality of life, I think that would be great.
That same year, he told JET magazine, "I think Debi Thomas (Olympic skater) was wrong when she said she was not a role model for blacks. Whether she wanted to or not, she is a role model, and people were looking up to her." [8]
Béla Károlyi is an ethnic Hungarian Romanian-American gymnastics coach. Early in his coaching career he developed the Romanian centralised training system for gymnastics. One of his earliest protégés was Nadia Comăneci, the first Olympic Games gymnast to be awarded a perfect score. Living under the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu, Károlyi frequently clashed with Romanian officials. He and his wife defected to the United States in 1981.
Dominique Margaux Dawes is a retired American artistic gymnast. Known in the gymnastics community as 'Awesome Dawesome', she was a 10-year member of the U.S. national gymnastics team, the 1994 U.S. all-around senior National Champion, a three-time Olympian, a World Championship silver and bronze medalist, and a member of the gold-medal-winning "Magnificent Seven" team at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. She is also the Olympic bronze medalist on floor exercise from the Atlanta games.
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Kurt Bilteaux Thomas was an American Olympic gymnast and part-time actor. He was a member of the United States men's national artistic gymnastics team and in 1978 he became the first American male gymnast to win a gold medal at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships. In 1979, he won six medals at the world championship, setting the record for most medals won at a single world championship by an American gymnast, a feat matched only by Simone Biles in 2018. He competed in the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. Thomas was favored to win a medal at the 1980 Summer Olympics but was unable to compete due to the USA boycott of the 1980 Olympic Games.
Chellsie Marie Memmel is an American artistic gymnast. She is the 2005 world all-around champion and the 2003 world champion on the uneven bars. She was a member of the United States women's gymnastics team at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China.
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Valeri Viktorovich Liukin is a Kazakh-American retired artistic gymnast currently working as a gymnastics coach. Representing the former Soviet Union, Liukin was the 1988 Olympic champion in the team competition and individually on the horizontal bar, and Olympic silver medalist in the all-around and the parallel bars.
George Julius Gulack was an American gymnast and Olympic champion and was involved in gymnastics administration for both the American Athletic Union and the Olympic Committee. He was a member of the United States men's national artistic gymnastics team and competed at the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles where he received a gold medal on the rings.
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Ronald S. Barak is an American gymnast. At the 1961 Maccabiah Games he won eight gold medals, one silver medal, and one bronze medal. At the 1964 NCAA Men's Gymnastics Championships he won the all-around competition, the horizontal bars, and the parallel bars, and at the 1964 Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) National Gymnastics Competition he was the champion in the horizontal bars. He was a member of the United States men's national artistic gymnastics team and competed in eight events at the 1964 Summer Olympics.
Melissa Anne "Missy" Marlowe is an American retired gymnast. She competed at the 1988 Summer Olympics.
| Men's artistic gymnastics athletes |
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| Women's artistic gymnastics athletes |
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| Rhythmic gymnastics athletes | ||||||
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