Tom Forster | |
---|---|
Education | Mitchell High School |
Alma mater | Pennsylvania State University |
Occupation | Gymnastics coach |
Known for | National Team Coach, Master of Sport, High Performance Team co-ordinator for the United States women's national gymnastics team (2018–2021) |
Spouse | Lori Bresciani Forster |
Tom Forster is an American gymnastics coach, entrepreneur, and former gymnast. After Valeri Liukin resigned from the role in February 2018, [1] USA Gymnastics named Forster as the high performance team coordinator for the United States women's national gymnastics team in July 2018 but he later resigned in December 2021. [2] Prior to his position at USA Gymnastics, he found acclaim as a gymnastics coach on the national elite gymnastics circuit after founding and opening the Colorado Aerials Gymnastics facility in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 1983— [3] a club that has spawned many U.S. National team members and two Olympic Trials competitors. After widespread criticism from gymnasts, coaches, and gymnastics fans, he stepped down on December 9, 2021.
Forster graduated from Mitchell High School in Colorado Springs, and later Pennsylvania State University where he was a member of the Penn State Nittany Lions men's gymnastics team. [4]
He is married to Lori Forster, with whom he founded Colorado Aerials in 1983. The facility is run by his family.
Kerri Allyson Strug is a retired American gymnast from Tucson, Arizona. She was a member of the Magnificent Seven, the victorious all-around women's gymnastics team that represented the United States at the 1996 Summer Olympics. Strug performed the vault that clinched the gold for the U.S. team despite having injured her ankle.
Artistic gymnastics is a discipline of gymnastics in which athletes perform short routines on different apparatuses. The sport is governed by the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG), which designs the Code of Points and regulates all aspects of elite international competition. Within individual countries, gymnastics is regulated by national federations like British Gymnastics and USA Gymnastics. Artistic gymnastics is a popular spectator sport at many competitions, including the Summer Olympic Games.
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.
Blaine Carew Wilson is a retired American gymnast. He is a five-time U.S. national champion (1996-2000), a three-time Olympian, and an Olympic silver medalist in the team competition at the 2004 Olympic Games.
Márta Károlyi is a Hungarian-American gymnastics coach and the former national team coordinator for USA Gymnastics. She and her husband, Béla, are ethnic Hungarians from Transylvania, Romania, who trained athletes in Romania before defecting to the United States in 1981. Béla and Márta Károlyi have trained nine Olympic champions, fifteen world champions, sixteen European medalists and many U.S. national champions, including Mary Lou Retton, Betty Okino, Kerri Strug, Teodora Ungureanu, Phoebe Mills, Nadia Comăneci, Kim Zmeskal, and Dominique Moceanu.
United States of America Gymnastics is the national governing body for gymnastics in the United States. Established in 1963 as the U.S. Gymnastics Federation (USGF), USA Gymnastics selects and trains the men's and women's national teams for the Olympic Games and World Championships. USAG sets the rules and policies that govern the sport of gymnastics, promotes the sport at all levels, and serves as a resource center for members, clubs, fans and gymnasts.
Valeri Viktorovich Liukin is a Soviet-born Kazakh-American retired artistic gymnast turned gymnastics coach. As a competitor for 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.
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Alexander Vladimirovich "Sasha" Artemev is a retired American artistic gymnast. Artemev was a member of the bronze medal-winning U.S. team at the 2008 Olympic Games. He is the 2006 all-around U.S. national champion. Known for his ability on pommel horse, he is the 2007 and 2008 U.S. national champion on the pommel horse and won the bronze medal on the event at the 2006 World Championships.
Samantha Nicole Peszek is an American former artistic gymnast. She was a member of the U.S. women's gymnastics team at the 2008 Summer Olympics, which won silver.
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Gabrielle Christina Victoria Douglas is an American artistic gymnast. She is the 2012 Olympic all-around champion and the 2015 World all-around silver medalist. She was a member of the gold-winning teams at both the 2012 and the 2016 Summer Olympics, dubbed the "Fierce Five" and the "Final Five" by the media, respectively. She was also a member of the gold-winning American teams at the 2011 and the 2015 World Championships.
Christopher Brooks is a retired American gymnast who represented the United States at the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. He is now assistant coach of the Arkansas Razorbacks NCAA gymnastics team. He won four gold medals at the 2012 Pacific Rim Championships. He has trained alongside Olympic and World Championships medalist Jonathan Horton as a junior, college and senior elite gymnast. On August 17, 2017, he announced his retirement from artistic gymnastics.
Jamie Natalie is a retired American gymnast. He was a highly decorated college gymnast, achieving the 2001 Nissen-Emery Award and a two-time individual all-around national champion. In 2000, because he had pursued collegiate gymnastics rather than the USOC's program, the USOC elevated two inferior and lower-scoring gymnasts to the Olympic team and named Jamie as the "alternate." The USOC's attempt to send a message was widely derided and became the subject of continuing scrutiny. In fact, the "backroom" dealings and secretive process that resulted in what was widely considered to be punitive action, exposed the US Olympic coaches' biases to nationwide embarrassment and shame.
Lauren Zoe Hernandez is an American artistic gymnast. During her debut year as a senior gymnast, she competed as a member of the U.S. women's gymnastics team dubbed the "Final Five" at the 2016 Summer Olympics; Ultimately, the U.S. won gold in the team event. In the individual events, Hernandez earned the silver medal on the balance beam. She returned to training in late 2018 and expressed interest in making a comeback to earn a spot on the U.S. women's gymnastic team for the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, but she did not qualify for the Olympic Gymnastics Trials.
The USA Gymnastics National Team Training Center at Karolyi Ranch or simply Karolyi Ranch in unincorporated Walker County, Texas, southeast of Huntsville, was a gymnastics camp facility which was the site of the main training center for the United States women's national gymnastics team, located 70 miles (110 km) north of Houston within the Sam Houston National Forest. From 2001 to 2018, it was the USA Gymnastics' national training facility for women's artistic, trampoline, and rhythmic gymnastics disciplines.
Buckeye Gymnastics is an American women's artistic gymnastics academy, with two locations in Westerville and Powell. It was home to Olympic Champion Gabby Douglas during her 2016 Olympic comeback.
Margzetta Bryantina Frazier is an American artistic gymnast. She was a U.S. national team in 2017 and 2018 and was the 2018 Birmingham World Cup silver medalist. She is currently a member of the UCLA Gymnastics team. She is the older sister of Emjae Frazier.
The USA Gymnastics sex abuse scandal relates to the sexual abuse of hundreds of gymnasts—primarily minors at the time of the abuse—over two decades in the United States, starting in the 1990s. More than 500 athletes alleged that they were sexually assaulted "by gym owners, coaches, and staff working for gymnastics programs across the country", including USA Gymnastics (USAG) and Michigan State University (MSU). It is considered the largest sexual abuse scandal in sports history.
Dianne Patrice Durham was an American artistic gymnast. In 1983, she won the all-around senior title at the women's US National Championships, becoming the first African American athlete to do so. She was Béla and Márta Károlyi's first elite athlete in the United States, helping establish their coaching credentials outside of the state-sponsored program of their native Romania, and trained with Mary Lou Retton, who called Durham her "best competition". After injuries and competition stipulations prevented her from competing in the 1984 Summer Olympics, Durham retired from competition in 1985. She later ran the Skyline Gymnastics school in Chicago.