Shannon Miller

At 47 years old, Shannon Miller has this physical status:

Shannon Lee Miller (born March 10, 1977) is an American former gymnast.

She was a member of the 1996 Olympic bronze medal winning Magnificent Seven team in 1993 and 1994, and she was the 1993 and 1994 world all-around champion, the 1996 Olympic balance beam champion, the 1996 Pan American Games all-around champion, and the 1996 Olympic medalist. Miller is currently the most decorated American gymnast, male or female, with a total of seven Olympic medals.

She is the second most decorated gymnast in the United States by her individual Olympic medal total number from 1991 to 1996, behind Simone Biles and the thirteenth most decorated gymnast from any country by her individual Olympic medal number.

She was also the most popular American artist at the 1992 Olympics, winning five gold medals.

Early life

Miller was born in Rolla, Missouri, but she and her family moved to Edmond, Oklahoma, when she was six months old. She started gymnastics at five years old and then travelled to Moscow with her mother at the age of nine to participate in a gymnastics camp.

Miller attended Edmond North High School as a child, exceling in a flexible curriculum that accommodated her study, travel, and competition schedule.

Miller's mother, a bank vice president, and her father, a professor at the University of Central Oklahoma, was a professor.

Personal life

In June 1999, Miller married lawyer and ophthalmologist Christopher B. Phillips. The couple separated in 2004, and their divorce was finalized in 2006. Though Phillips accused Miller of infidelity with a married male celebrity, Miller denied the charge, and it did not factor into the divorce arguments.

Miller revealed her love to John Falconetti, the president of Drummond Press and former chairwoman of the Republican executive committee of Duval County, Florida, in August. They married on August 25, 2008, with two children, John Rocco, born on October 28, 2009, and Sterling Diane, a daughter, born on June 25, 2013.

Miller reported she had been diagnosed with germ cell ovarian cancer in February 2011, a month after doctors removed a baseball-sized cyst from one of her ovaries. She underwent three cycles of chemotherapy from March 7 to May 2, 2011. Her doctor gave her a clean bill of health in September 2011.

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Gymnastics career

Miller was coached by Steve Nunno and Peggy Lidddick, who went on to become Australia's national coach for the Australian women's gymnastics team for the majority of her career.

She placed third at the 1989 Olympic Festival, a competition intended to showcase up-and-coming talent.

She travelled to Europe in 1990 and 1991 for international meetings, winning perfect 10s on the balance beam at the Swiss Cup and the Arthur Gander Memorial. She won the all-around at the 1991 Gander Memorial with the highest total score ever recorded by an American woman under the 10.0 scale: 39.875. (Kim Zmeskal finished at the same amount at the 1990 USA vs. the USSR Challenge, earning the same sum.)

Miller earned two gold medals in 1991 in Indianapolis, including one on the uneven bars (where she tied with Soviet gymnast Tatiana Gutsu) and one in the team competition. During the compulsory portion of the competition, she came in second second to Soviet Svetlana Boginskaya.

Miller missed the 1992 World Championships in Paris due to injuries. She dropped out of the optionality at the National Championships and registered to the Olympic Trials, not quite up to speed with her more complex abilities. Despite the fact that the verdict was tumultuous, Miller prevailed in the Trials over her rival, Zmeskal, who was the 1991 world champion.

Miller won the mandatory portion of the 1992 Olympic Games and placed the highest gymnast in the overall team competition, winning the bronze medal for the US women's team and moving to the all-around final as the world's best-ranked gymnast. She missed out on the gold by the narrowest margin in Olympic history, finishing 0.012 points behind Gutsu in the all-around final. Steve Nunno, her coach, said she was robbed of the gold medal by unfair judging.

She captured three more individual awards in the event finals: a silver on balance beam and bronzes on uneven bars and floor exercise. Her haul of five Olympic medals was more than that of any other American athlete in Barcelona. She was one of only two female gymnasts, as well as Lavinia Miloşovich of Romania, to compete in every event final at the Games, and she was the only female gymnast to qualify, and she was the only female gymnast to do so, and she did not fail in any of her routines. Thirteen of her routines scored a 9.9 or higher, with her lowest score being a 9.837 in the vault final.

Miller holds the most medals at a single Olympic Games without winning gold, with her two silver and three bronze medals at the 1992 Summer Olympics.

Miller won every event in preliminaries at the 1993 World Championships in Birmingham, and television commentator Kathy Johnson, a 1984 Olympian, said she had not seen a gymnast so dominant since Nadia Comténeci in 1976. Bart Conner agreed that if Miller faltered, she would only be defeated. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union's sports system had undergone significant reforms, and the majority of former Soviet gymnasts were not able to face a consistent challenge in 1993. Miller, on the other hand, had reworked her routines to ensure that she was in accordance with the new Code of Points. She captured the all-around championship, followed by gold medals in bars and floor. However, she crashed three times in the beam final and was barred from the vault final due to sickness.

Miller took the all-around title at the 1994 World Championships in Brisbane, defeating Miloşovici and becoming the first American gymnast to win back-to-back world all-around titles. She also won the beam title, which had eluded her the previous year, with a near-perfect workout.

Dina Kochetkova of Russia, who had finished in third place at the World Championships, defeated her by a slim margin, 39.325 to 39.268. Miller recovered by winning gold medals on beam and floor, as well as silver medals on vault and bars. Both she and the mixed team competition failed to place medals in the team competition and the mixed team tournament, both of which resulted in fourth-place finishes for the United States.

Miller won five silver medals at the 1994 National Championships, finishing second to Dominique Dawes each time.

Despite winning the 1995 American Classic, Miller lost the 1995 National Championships to Dominique Moceanu. She posted the highest total score of the American team at the 1995 World Championships in Sabae, Japan, but left without a single medal. She was seventh on the uneven bars and fourth on the balance beam, and she was forced to withdraw from the vault and floor finals due to injury.

Miller won the 1996 National Championships despite being plagued with severe tendinitis in her left wrist and a pulled hamstring. She was then forced to miss the World Championships in the Olympic year due to injury, but later the Olympic Trials followed. She was able to join the American team as the top performer at Nationals, and her injury was deemedable by July to allow her to compete in her second Olympics.

Miller, a member of the Magnificent Seven, earned the gold medal over the Russian team. After landing her second vault on an injured foot, she prompted her to pull out of the all-around and event finals, Kerri Strug captured the majority of the media's attention. But Miller, the team's highest scorer, finished second in the team's second Olympic all-around final after competing Lilia Podkopayeva.

Miller came in second place in the all-around tournament halfway through the series. She came in eighth, but she was not the highest-ranked American in the final, but she wasn't the highest-ranking American in the tournament. She was also the first American woman to win the balance beam final at the Olympics, as well as the first American woman to win an individual gold medal in a fully attended Olympics. She won seven Olympic medals in her career.

Miller and her allies participated in a 100-city tour and several exhibitions after the Olympics. She appeared in her last international meet in 1997, when she captured the All-around title at the World University Games.

Miller made a brief comeback attempt for the Sydney Olympics in 2000. She participated in the Olympic Trials but after a fall on the vault, she decided to pull out of the competition despite being told by a doctor to resume, she dropped out of the competition.

Miller is a member of the USA Gymnastics Hall of Fame, the United States Olympic Hall of Fame, and the Women's International Sports Hall of Fame. She is the first woman to be inducted into the United States Olympic Hall of Fame twice, both as an individual and as a member.

Miller is one of the most decorated American gymnasts, male or female, with seven Olympic and nine World Championship medals. She is tied for third most World Championship medals won by an American gymnast, behind Simone Biles (25) and Alicia Sacramone (10).

In 1998, the Oklahoma Legislature named a portion of Interstate 35 in Edmond, Oklahoma, named Shannon Miller Parkway in her honor.

Post-gymnastics career

Miller earned a B.B.A. degree from the University of Houston in 2003. Marketing and entrepreneurship are two branches of marketing. She began Boston College Law School later this year and graduated in 2007. She did not take the bar exam later on, but she did not go back to take the exam. She migrated to Florida, where she appeared at gyms, conducted beam clinics, and appeared in fitness DVDs.

Miller formed Juice Plus, a branded dietary supplement brand, on October 21, 2015. St. Martin's Press published her book It's Not About Perfect: Competing for My Country and Fighting for My Life in 2015.

Shannon Miller Lifestyle and the Shannon Miller Foundation, which are dedicated to combating childhood obesity, are currently president.

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