Alicia Sacramone, 20
Brown University

by David Tao // Harvard

“You don’t think about them when you’re competing,” she says. “You only think about what you have to do.”

Sacramone is no stranger to pressure. At 20, she’s a veteran in a sport where most athletes are barely old enough to drive. Though she is currently taking time off from Brown to focus on training for the Olympics, Sacramone spent her freshman year balancing a full course load with competing on a college gymnastic team (almost unprecedented in the world of elite women’s gymnastics, where Olympic hopefuls typically put off college to focus exclusively on training) and dominating her international competition.

This dual commitment was a balancing act every bit as complicated and treacherous as the beam she traverses in practice every day. Usually relaxed, Sacramone recalls her time pulling double-duty with an exasperated groan, recounting how she “lived on caffeine.”

Although she hasn’t yet officially qualified for the women’s national team that will compete at the Beijing Summer Olympics, she is expected to make the team once she finishes qualifying rounds this June. There’s already talk of making Sacramone, who is known for her ability to motivate and encourage younger teammates, the U.S. team captain.

“It’s a really big honor to feel that people have enough faith and trust in me to think that I can lead the team as their captain,” says Sacramone.

Success in Beijing would accentuate an already impressive career. Sacramone began training for gymnastics at age 8, shortly after the 1996 Atlanta Summer Games, where the American women’s gymnastics team took home its first-ever gold medal. Gail Sacramone, Alicia’s mother, hoped gymnastics would provide a good outlet for her daughter’s athletic drive, a task where previous sports, including soccer and dance, had failed. “I started her in dance, but this kid had so much energy I needed to channel it somewhere else,” Gail Sacramone says.

Alicia quickly rose through the competitive ranks, placing well in the U.S. Classic junior competition. A bronze medal on the vault at Nationals in 2003 helped her secure a spot on the U.S. National gymnastic team. Sacramone, a perennial crowd favorite, combines an effervescent personality with world-class talent. Known especially for her skill in the floor exercise and vault, Sacramone holds multiple World Cup titles and claimed first in floor at the 2005 World Championships.

The 2007 World Championships in Stuttgart, Germany, perhaps Sacramone’s biggest challenge to date, highlighted her value as both an individual competitor and team leader. Her dynamic floor routine turned heads and secured the title for the U.S. over rival China, a team now eager to claim Olympic gold on home soil.

“We’re still the underdogs, even though we’re current world champions,” Sacramone says. 

So, unlike most other promising college students who will probably reach their career peaks during middle-age, Sacramone’s make-or-break career moment is just weeks away. Countless hours in the gym, thousands of miles traveling to compete: it all comes down to two days at the world’s most famous athletic competition.

While Sacramone says she already has plans to pursue a career in fashion design after her athletic career ends, she’s not sure if she’ll be able to leave the sport entirely.

“I’ll probably still coach,” she says. “Gymnastics has been such a big part of my life that it would be weird to leave it high and dry after I’m done competing.”

For now, though, all Alicia Sacramone can do is train, stay healthy, and keep her eyes focused on the world’s biggest stage in Beijing.

Photo by John Goodman