Training with Bela and Marta Karolyi took the joy out of the Olympics for me. I look back and feel there was a lot of verbal and physical abuse. For years, I felt it was my problem.

We need to educate our elite coaches more and have a better approach to teaching the athletes about how to be healthy rather than berate them, humiliate them, use tactics that could scar them for life.

Training with Bela and Marta Karolyi took the joy out of the Olympics for me. I look back and feel there was a lot of verbal and physical abuse. For years, I felt it was my problem.

Since my mother is an extremely devoted Christian Orthodox woman, she prayed a great deal and taught me how to pray.

Autographs and pictures do get a little old, but I don't mind if the people want it.

It's human nature to be timid in the face of obstacles, but I have learned to believe that challenges are opportunities for genius to shine. In order to feel alive, we have to accomplish things that we once believed we could not.

In my very first interview, at nine years old, I said I wanted to be an Olympic gold medalist. That was the first time I said it out loud in front of somebody other than my parents.