AMERICAN PRODIGIES
EPSIODE 2
TRANSCRIPT
AMIRA: This episode contains accounts of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, eating disorders, and racism. You’ll also hear some swearing.
AMIRA: Previously on American Prodigies:
SIX-YEAR-OLD 1: I came to see Simone Biles.
G.O.A.T. ATTENDEE 1: Definitely Simone Biles because she’s an amazing gymnast and she’s shown people that Black gymnasts can be great.
JOYCE WILBOURN: Being a Black gymnast in a white gymnasts’ world was one of the hardest and toughest things that I've ever had to accomplish.
JORDAN CHILES: And I found different versions of myself that I wish I found before. And the version I am today is somebody that can speak up - that can defend themselves.
ANGIE DENKINS: It's inevitable. We damn good. So move over. Go sit down and enjoy the show…and embrace us!
Commentator 1 (Archival): Fourteen-year-old Dianne Durham electrifying the audience here in Chicago...
AMIRA: You’re listening to tape from the 1983 National Gymnastics Championships. The championships happened in Chicago, just thirty miles from Dianne Durham’s hometown.
Dianne Durham (Archival): That championship brought me back to my gymnastics roots ‘cause this is really where it all started.
AMIRA: That’s Dianne in 2017, reminiscing about one of the biggest moments of her career. The 1983 Nationals were huge for her. If she won, she’d be the first Black girl to win an all-around National Championship in artistic gymnastics - the absolute best in the country.
Commentator 2 (Archival): Dianne Durham - fourteen-years-old - one routine away from capturing a national championship.
AMIRA: And her coach, the audience, and the CBS commentators also had their minds on the future...and what else Dianne might achieve.
Commentator 2 (Archival): As you watch the performance of Dianne Durham, keep in mind, we are one year away from the Olympic Games. And not in the last fifty years has an American female gymnast won a medal of any kind in the Olympics...
AMIRA: Three years earlier, Luci Collins was the first Black woman to make the women’s Olympic gymnastics team. But the US boycotted those games, and she couldn’t compete. So, it fell to Dianne to pick up the mantle. And by the time Dianne got to floor at Nationals, her final event on the second night, the competition was in the bag. It wasn’t a question of whether she would win – it was how much she’d win by.
ANGIE DENKINS: Oh Lord, let's get it, get it.
AMIRA: Angie Denkins - who would become the 1986 balance beam champion - was competing as a junior in 1983. I asked her to rewatch Dianne’s floor routine with me:
ANGIE DENKINS: That’s my girl!
Commentator 1 (Archival): Dianne only needs an 8.65 to be the first Black to come away with an all-around national championship.
ANGIE DENKINS: She about to tear it up, honey.
Commentator 3 (Archival): Very difficult opening tumbling run. Full twisting double back….
ANGIE DENKINS: Yep! It's a full twisting double back and it was just perfection. See how her legs are tight? Everything is nice.
Commentator 3 (Archival): Excellent.
ANGIE DENKINS: That's my girl.
AMIRA: Wendy Hilliard - the first Black woman to compete for the US in rhythmic gymnastics - she was in Chicago that night, too.
WENDY HILLIARD: I was like, oh my God, this girl’s about to win Nationals! I was like - I called my mother. I was like, “Ma, you have to drive down here tomorrow. It's Dianne Durham.”
AMIRA: Here’s the thing about gymnastics meets... they are painfully long So even though Wendy’s mother was living in Detroit when she got the call...
WENDY HILLIARD: My mother sure did get in the car and drive four-and-half hours just to witness Dianne win. Right. Which was totally amazing.
Commentator 4 (Archival): 9.65. That makes it official, Peter Corman. She is our new national champion....
Dianne Durham (Archival): And to me, it showcased to the entire country that a little Black girl from Gary, Indiana could be the best gymnast in the country.
Commentator 4 (Archival): It is Dianne Durham day here at the pavilion in Chicago! The score a nine...
AMIRA: In the 80s, Black gymnasts like Joyce Wilborn talked about Dianne the way up and coming gymnasts talk about Simone Biles today.
JOYCE WILBORN: Watching Dianne Durham... I was excited. You know, that was my thing: I’m gonna be just like her. I'm going to be as good as her.
Dianne Durham (Archival): As most of you know, things didn't end up the way I wanted them to.
AMIRA: Dianne wouldn’t make it to the 1984 Olympics. Injury, controversy, coaches’ egos, and systemic racism kept Dianne Durham out. We’ll get into that. Her training partner and fiercest competitor, Mary Lou Retton, would go to the Games instead. Retton became the first American woman to win a gold medal in the all-around competition. She broke that fifty-year medal drought – and it was her name that became synonymous with gymnastics in this country for years. Dianne…. faded quickly from the national conversation and retired from competition in 1985. In 2021, Dianne Durham passed away. Hundreds of people gathered at Westside Leadership Academy, a high school across the street from her childhood home in Gary, to celebrate her life.
ALICE DURHAM WOODS: Good evening, everyone. For those who don't know me, my name is Alice. I'm Dianne's big sister.
AMIRA: Family, friends, teammates…told stories about Dianne for hours.
ALICE DURHAM WOODS: My sister was a trailblazer. A racial barrier breaker as she vaulted and flew through the air with the greatest of ease. She was a ball of energy and a force to be reckoned with. But to me, she was my little sister.
AMIRA: Other elite Black prodigies sent their respects. Like Betty Okino, who won a bronze medal in Barcelona in ‘92.
BETTY OKINO: She was one-of-a-kind. And opened the door for so many young, brown-skinned girls.
GABBY DOUGLAS: Hi, guys, it's Gabby Douglas here. Dianne was a trailblazer and honoring her accomplishments has been long overdue. She paved the way for all of us to follow. And the grace and power that she displayed while faced with unfairness and opposition was truly admirable.
SIMONE BILES: Hi everyone, it's Simone Biles. I just wanted to send a message saying how impressed and inspired I was by Dianne. Dianne really paved the way for Black gymnasts like me.
AMIRA: It’s clear that Dianne was never forgotten by those who gathered to lift up her memory and celebrate her life. And yet, the US Gymnastics Federation, the institution she labored for, opened doors to, and transformed - it all but ignored her. Only in death did they come with flowers and platitudes and headlines and even a Hall of Fame induction.
TRACEE TALAVERA: I think I always thought that Dianne's gymnastics spoke for itself. She won as a junior. She won USA Championships as a senior. In the Hall of Fame, no brainer, of course.
TOM DRAHOZAL: She just knew that they would never do that. I mean, and she said that for years. People’d be like, “Dianne, I thought you were in the Hall of Fame?” And she’d say, “No, I’m not. They’ll never put me in when I’m alive.”
AMIRA: It’s an all-too familiar tale for trailblazing Black women athletes. And here’s the thing about those flowers that only come after death: they rewrite history, masking the struggle and tension between institutions and athletes they dispose of. I’m Amira Rose Davis. On this episode of American Prodigies, the story of Dianne Durham and the rise of modern American gymnastics. We’ll show you Dianne’s life and the flowers that other people gave her along the way. Because she had an impact that can’t be measured in institutional acknowledgements - by Hall of Fame invitations or appearances on Wheaties boxes. You’ll hear from Dianne’s contemporaries: Angie Denkins, Joyce Wilborn, and Wendy Hilliard about the struggles and joys of being a Black gymnast in the 1980s. Because Black girls have always been there – even when they’re left out of the stories we tell about this foundational history.
[AD]
AMIRA: First, let’s take it all the way back. When you ask a gymnast how they got into gymnastics, chances are you’ll get some variation on this answer:
JASMINE SWYNINGAN: I feel like I tumbled out of my mom's womb into the world and I was like, “Here I am!”
ELIZABETH PRICE: I just had too much energy around the house, you know, like bouncing off the walls, flipping off the sofas…
JORDAN CHILES: My dad one day was just like, "I can't control her anymore!" Like, "This is getting too out of hand! We need to do something about it!"
NIA DENNIS: So, they were like, maybe we should put her in gymnastics classes...
AMIRA: Dianne Durham’s uncle, Alex Carter, tells a similar story.
ALEX CARTER: She would be at our house sometime... My father would be watching television and when he's watching TV, you don't talk, you don't joke, you don’t move, you don’t do anything. And while my father’s watching his favorite wrestling, she comes out and turns a flip right in front of the television. [laughs] He said, “Twist! If you don't sit down...!!” I think that was the beginning of her embarking on her gymnastics career because shortly after that, she was enrolled in Wanda’s.
TAMMY TOMASI WYATT: I can still hear her boundless energy - her flipping all over the place.
AMIRA: That’s Tammy Tomasi Wyatt. Her mother was Wanda Tomasi, Dianne’s first coach, dance teacher, and mentor. Dianne started training with Wanda at just three years old.
TAMMY TOMASI WYATT: When Dianne came into our lives in Gary at my mom's first studio…we had never seen such talent like that, such natural awe-inspiring talent.
Dianne Durham (Archival): I spent seven years with Wanda. She told my parents I had Olympic potential. And if I wanted to reach my potential, I would need to go to another gym.
TAMMY TOMASI WYATT: My mom pushed her out of the nest knowing she would succeed. And that she did!
AMIRA: By 1981, at just twelve years old, Dianne was the US Junior all-around national champion. Outgrowing your gym and shopping for a new coach when you live in a small town is pretty common. And it was common back in the 80s, too. But a coach encouraging her star gymnast to leave? Not so much.
Dianne Durham (Archival): My next step was a big one. That's when my family and I decided that I would leave Gary and move to Houston to train with Bela.
AMIRA: Dianne didn’t start the trend of moving away to train, but she was the first elite American gymnast that moved to Texas to train with the now infamous Bela Karolyi.
TV Commentator 1(Archival): A giant in the field of women's gymnastics, Karolyi the former Romanian national coach…
TV Commentator 2 (Archival): ...Of course, who defected to this country in 1981 after a row with the Romanian government. He wanted to control his gymnastics school there. Karolyi, who coached Nadia to a total of nine Olympic medals in '76 and '80.
AMIRA: In the 1970s, Bela made a name for himself as "the Man Who Coached Nadia Comaneci to Olympic victories..." with seven perfect tens in Montreal in 1976. They both became legend. Then he was the head coach of the Romanian national team. A gruff, chaotic personality who didn’t shy away from challenging the judges about the scores they gave his gymnasts. Bela didn’t yet have the public reputation that would come to define his career: the bear of a man who hugged diminutive girls and cheered encouragement...when the TV cameras were watching. But who many gymnasts say hit, starved, and verbally abused them behind closed doors. Bela and his wife, Marta, defected to the United States from Romania in ‘81 -- the same year that Dianne became Junior national champion. They were accomplished and well-known, but they weren’t yet respected by the American system. They’d have to prove that they could mold champions and bring medals to the United States as well. They managed to earn enough to open their own gym in Texas and they started recruiting American prodigies of their own. Enter Dianne Durham.
ALYSSA ROENIGK: When she got this tryout with Bela Karolyi, she packed her bags as if she was moving to Houston. Because she had no intention of not making the team, that's how confident she was.
AMIRA: That’s journalist Alyssa Roenigk.
ALYSSA ROENIGK: And there was a handful of important gymnasts - and none more important than Dianne Durham - in helping the Karolyis to gain legitimacy in the U.S. and then convince other top athletes like Mary Lou to come to their gym.
BONNIE FORD: Once you have a Dianne Durham - who's already viewed as an up-and-coming champion - then it gets easier to recruit others.
AMIRA: That’s Bonnie Ford. She and Alyssa collaborated on ESPN’s 30 For 30 podcast, “Heavy Medals,” about how the Karolyis wielded their influence over American gymnastics. But, as they point out, Bela Karolyi’s future fame hinged on Dianne Durham’s success.
ALYSSA ROENIGK: Without Dianne Durham, was there a Mary Lou? It's hard to say.
AMIRA: Both Dianne and Mary Lou Retton were known as “power gymnasts”. Commentators would remark on their explosiveness, the height of their jumps and leaps. They would reserve words like “graceful” or “elegant” for longer, leaner, balletic gymnasts like the Soviets. Dianne was different. She defied the binary of "power gymnast" versus "graceful gymnast".
BONNIE FORD: She was way, way ahead of her time. She was the total package.
ALYSSA ROENIGK: Because Dianne had been trained in those years leading up to her going to Houston - training with the Karolyis - with a gymnastics coach who was a dance teacher first, she was also incredibly balletic and a beautiful dancer. And so she presented a floor routine in this, you know, in a more traditional way... with the power tumbling on top of it. I don't think anyone had really seen that.
AMIRA: But power looks different when you’re a Black girl. While Mary Lou Retton did power gymnastics, she was still able to be called "cute". As America’s sweetheart, Mary Lou was still allowed to be a "girl" - to have childhood conferred upon her. Dianne on the other hand, like many Black girls, was aged up. Despite being a little younger than Mary Lou, Dianne’s gymnastics body was talked about differently.
Commentator 5 (Archival): Style, music, totally different. This is an explosive gymnast.
Commentator 6 (Archival): 400 horsepower vault, right here.
Commentator 5 (Archival): And looking very, very aggressive.
Commentator 6 (Archival): Look at those legs churn…
Commentator 5 (Archival): As you can see, she’s not considered a weak acrobat or tumbler.
AMIRA: Here’s Angie Denkins again:
ANGIE DENKINS: And you know, like Dianne, you see how she's muscular and in immaculate shape. But it didn't fit the traditional mold: skinny and lean. I called it “hungry” because they was all starving. And especially Dianne, because we had muscles, they would try to blame the curvature of our muscles and our strength to be looking like, you know, we had bent limbs or things of that nature. Honey they were haters. But at the end of the day, they couldn't deny it because, you know, she was so strong…
AMIRA: So was Joyce Wilborn, an up-and-comer from New Jersey.
JOYCE WILBORN: I'm a dynamic gymnast. I'm sharp. I did not do ballet and dance like that. That's not my style. It got so bad one time where I had to travel to New York every day and take ballet lessons. Because they were saying I wasn't soft enough. I wasn't elegant enough. I'm not. That's not who I am. Never been that.
AMIRA: Power gymnastics - with its explosive tumbling and soaring vaults – is fun to watch. But if you want to win, especially on an event like floor, you also need grace. And the definition of grace might as well be whiteness. You see that in 80s and 90s floor choreography. You hear it in the music.
JOYCE WILBORN: I was using a Eubie. You know, from a black play. And I missed Junior Elite by two tenths. And then the next year, when I changed my floor routine to "Ride of the Valkyries," I made the team.
AMRA: Hmm.
JOYCE WILBORN: So, you see the difference.
AMIRA: Why was it important for you to be able to pick the floor music you wanted to pick?
JOYCE WILBORN: Because I knew what type of person I was. And I knew what I wanted to do on the floor and, you know, what type of moves I would want to do. I'm just not the ballerina type.
AMIRA: And when you could compete on your terms with music, you like that moved you and you can move how you naturally want to move…
JOYCE WILBORN: I got tens! [laugh]
AMIRA: During her competitive days, Dianne tried to rise above endless comparisons to Nadia and Mary Lou. She encouraged Angie to do the same.
ANGIE DENKINS: Well, it was a wonderful feeling to see a sister, a beautiful Black queen on the floor at the same time. But I was just so proud to be on the floor with her. And there was a young lady that looked just like me. And our hair was about the same -- we had the same wigadoo. [laughs]
Dianne Durham (Archival): And I just want to let you all know that was not an afro. It was a Jheri curl, OK? So that's what it was. We've moved on.
ANGIE DENKINS: Yep, we all had a curl. I didn't have a juicy one. I didn’t believe in that juiciness. [laughs] So, we just always got along. And when we were in the meets, my coach and I, we would encourage her. She would do the same on my part. We showed that love - unconditionally and always. And Dianne was like... shit, that was my girl, that was my sister.
AMIRA: It is so interesting to me to hear you talk, you know, so generously about Dianne. And it just- it was so sincere. But it also felt so different from so many of the ways that I've watched other gymnasts from your era think about competitors. And I was reading through one of your national teammates’ retrospective book...
ANGIE DENKINS: You're talking about Jennifer Sey?
AMIRA: Girl...
AMIRA: Quick pause here. Jennifer Sey was an elite gymnast - a white girl that came up with Angie at a gym called Will-Moor. In her autobiography, Jennifer writes about her own fierce competitiveness. And how she was specifically spurred by her desire to triumph over Angie. In her book, Jennifer calls Angie her best friend, but also seethed with jealousy any time Angie succeeded. Jennifer accused Will-Moor coaches of favoritism. She referred to Angie as strong but stupid and compared the shape of her own butt too -and I quote directly here - “Angie’s horse-like hindquarters.” Why are we talking about this? Because this is part of the experience of being a Black girl in this sport in the 80s and beyond – whether you were a National Champion like Dianne, a balance beam champion like Angie, or an elite gymnast that never medaled. OK, that should catch you up. Back to it...
ANGIE DENKINS: You're talking about Jennifer Sey?
AMIRA: Girl...
ANGIE DENKINS: You know, she worked out with me, honey, so I grew up with her.
AMIRA: Mm-hmm.
ANGIE DENKINS: Child, guess what? That troll didn’t bother me. Not one bit. Not one bit. And I just let her do her thing and do all her crying, I was like, “I'm not here for the Hollywood. I'm here for the fun.”
AMIRA: Mmmm.
ANGIE DENKINS: Most of the gymnasts, they respected me. It was usually the coaches that were in their feelings, and they wanted to have their status up there and be the one who had the most amount of athletes at that level. So, it was almost like it was a competition within the coaching staff - or the coaches. They were a mess. [laughs] And they wouldn't have been able to handle me because I was not that one that you were going to, you know, pretty much try to break me and mistreat me. They didn't want none of this smoke, honey. I’m telling you. They don’t want none of that smoke.
AMIRA: [laugh]
AMIRA: Angie’s talking about Bela. But also, Bill and Donna Strauss of Parkettes in Allentown, PA - where Joyce Wilborn trained.
JOYCE WILBORN: Yeah... it was... It was a lot. It was a lot. I had to sacrifice a lot. Because being in the Olympics was my ultimate goal since I was little. That's all I lived for - was I was going to be in '88 Olympics. And I worked hard. I wasn't flexible, so I had to lay on the floor with my legs open with roller skates and weights. I had to be pushed down. I had to work hard. I mean harder than these other gymnasts. And that's one of the things with being a Black gymnast, we have to work twice as hard, then everybody else to prove we belong to be there. And it shouldn't be like that. But I just adapted because I was focused on being in the Olympics regardless, so I didn't care how hard it was going to be. I was going to do the work.
AMIRA: There was also SCATS Gymnastics in California, owned by Don Peters. He’d be the head coach of the ‘84 Olympic team – that Dianne was vying for. And, he has since been banned from the sport for life after sexual assault allegations. These were the adults in charge of the top three gyms in the country in the 1980s, the adults that were on the competition floor with kids like Dianne and Angie, and who stayed on the floor for decades after.
ANGIE DENKINS: We were actually at training camp in Colorado Springs and we had a national meet there. And so, it was around the time when Bela and Marta were just, you know, gettin' on American soil... and had the girls there... You know, you could tell when they were mistreated because they'd be cryin'. And they were stern with their coaching. And there's a difference between being stern and just damn dirty -- down and dirty and mean with it.
AMIRA: And though Bela might not have hit his American gymnasts outright, he directly imported most of his other coaching techniques. Dianne’s husband, Tom Drahozal, remembers her telling stories about Bela’s training philosophy decades later.
TOM DRAHOZAL: Bela's gym sat like on a floodplain in Texas. So, they did have a tropical storm that went through there. And so, she said, they were all thinking like, “Oh, it's going to be great. You know, there won't be practice today because there was water in the gym.” And then lo and behold, Bela was like, “No, we'll do practice today. We'll just do beam and bars with no dismounts.”
AMIRA: And don’t forget these are prodigies. They’re kids. Dianne was fourteen when she was at the top of her game. She might not have pushed back against Bela for his training techniques, but kids will find ways to rebel! Once, when Tracee Talavera and Dianne were representing the US National Team at a competition in Japan...
TRACEE TALAVERA: Dianne said, “Let's go shopping.” And I thought, “OK..." It was right when Walkman hit Japan and they weren't in the US yet. We had to go do it.
AMIRA: Dianne was in her element. They shopped for three hours. When they got back to the hotel and got in the elevator, the girls breathed a sigh of relief. They thought they’d snuck through.
TRACEE TALAVERA: Elevator opens... We come out... Who do we see walking down the hall? Bela. Dianne said, “Oh boy.” Of course, “Oh” was one of the words. Other one started with an “S,” but you get it. So, Bela came up to us and he said, “What are you girls doing? You're going to tire your legs out! We have workout! Another competition!” He yelled at us for a while...
AMIRA: That Walkman must have been worth it, because Dianne convinced Tracee to sneak out again to go shopping on a trip in New York. They got away with it that time. Someone saw them coming and distracted Bela so they could slip back into their hotel rooms.
TOM DRAHOZAL: She always said with him, like, he was definitely a taskmaster. But you knew what you were getting into when you went to train with him.
Dianne Durham (Archival): We knew that he was Nadia Comaneci’s coach and he could help me get to the next level.
AMIRA: Dianne didn’t train with the Karolyis for very long. She was with them for less than two years leading up to her National title in 1983. Maybe that’s why she eventually emerged from elite gymnastics relatively intact.
TRACEE TALAVERA: On that fateful shopping trip in Japan, I don't recall if my legs or her legs were sore the next day. After our trip in New York, I don't recall what places Julianne, myself and Dianne got in the all-around or events - what have you. What I do recall is enjoying and experiencing life with Dianne outside of gymnastics. And I hope somewhere she understands how revered and respected she was by all of us. Thank you. [Applause]
[AD]
AMIRA: Dianne Durham was fiercely loyal to her roots and proud to say she was from Gary, Indiana. And Gary was proud of her. Because the 1983 Nationals were in Chicago, happening so close to home, hundreds of people from Gary poured into the arena.
Dianne Durham (Archival): I will always remember how my family and several busloads of supporters from my church and Gary made the trip to Chicago…
AMIRA: They waved massive banners and wore custom t-shirts.
Dianne Durham (Archival): And they all had on T-shirts - which I did not know - that said “I love Dianne Durham.”
AMIRA: During the height of steel production in the 1920s and 30s, Gary boomed -- attracting job seekers from across the globe. But in the 1970s, just after Dianne was born, that boom burst. The once bustling town started to board up. And when the resources left town, so did the white people, turning Gary into a predominantly Black city. But Black folks in Gary did what Black folks do in most places. What they lacked in resources they made up for with resiliency, strength, and community. And that’s the thing about Gary, they’re going to put on for their city, their people - like the Jackson Five or even Dianne Durham.
REV. KEITH CURTIS: I remember one time we were in the backyard playing and I said, “Dianne, why you gone and got that big piece of wood over there?” She said, “That's a balance beam!” We didn't have a clue.
AMIRA: That’s Reverend Keith Curtis, who had been Dianne’s friend since kindergarten. Having this community to come home to after winning national and international recognition, it kept Dianne humble. It kept her safe and surrounded by love.
REV. KEITH CURTHIS: I remember one meet... After the meet, Dianne came over and we were laughing and stuff... “Dianne, why those people asking you for your autograph? You ain't nobody!” We didn't know! We were her safe haven. We were that sense of normalcy for her. And it was... awesome.
AMIRA: It was something she had in common with rhythmic gymnast Wendy Hilliard.
WENDY HILLIARD: People always ask how I managed. And it was because I always came back to Detroit. I keep telling people, I really think that’s how I got through it. So, when I left, even if I was only Black in training camp or internationally, I always came home to a Black city and an environment...in my church and my school...
AMIRA: Institutions that held space for you, even when you were in a space where that wasn’t the case, you could bring it with you.
WENDY HILLIARD: Right. And that makes a difference. I think it really does.
AMIRA: One of the biggest challenges of Wendy’s career also came in 1983, when she was trying to make the US Team for the World Championships of rhythmic gymnastics. She was at the top of her game during the training camp for team selection. Like Dianne, everyone knew Wendy was good enough to be a lock for the rhythmic team.
WENDY HILLIARD: But when they bring everybody together to say, “We’re announcing the team going to the World Championships,” they read off everybody's name...except mine. You know, I asked her, I just asked the head coach, I'm like, how come I'm not on? She said, “Oh, Vendy, you stand out too much.” I was like... I was like, really? But, you know, I'm cryin'. I call my parents and they were like, “Oh, baby, no. We're not going put up with this!" You know they had just been through it. Any Black person in the 70s, 80s has been through it. And they were just like not having it. I did not grow up in some crazy place where people didn't fight for their rights. I'm from Detroit. So, they, you know, probably faxed or sent a telegram - whatever it was in the 80s - to USA gymnastics and told them what happened.
AMIRA: Wendy petitioned for a spot on the team based on her training and performances. And it worked. The US gymnastics federation overruled the decision and put Wendy on the team! She correctly calculated that the head coach’s bad call was part egotistical corruption, part blatant racism.
WENDY HILLIARD: But it was like kind of a power thing also. Everybody was establishing themselves... who's going to be the national team coach? The world championship coach? Things like that. So, there's all those dynamics in it. But she just said no to the wrong girl! [laughs]
AMIRA: The following year, in 1984, Dianne Durham would face similar challenges. It was an Olympic year and the Games were gonna be held in LA. For the first time in fifty years, the nation was hoping for glory, eager to crown hometown heroes. Artistic gymnastics coaches battled each other for power on the Olympic stage. They all wanted to be the one to break the medal drought and control the future of American gymnastics. Heading into the Games, Dianne was dealing with some lingering injuries. She hadn’t competed at Worlds that year in order to rest. But she dominated in a meet against China:
Commentator 7 (Archival): So, Dianne is somebody you really have to look for winning a medal at the Olympic games.
Commentator 8 (Archival): A ten! Dianne Durham. A perfect score in floor exercise. And the Americans have won.
AMIRA: Bela Karolyi was bursting with confidence in his prodigy.
Bela Karolyi (Archival): If the Olympic Games would be tomorrow for sure we would have medalist.
AMIRA: At the 1984 Olympic Trials, Dianne hit her beam and floor routines. ABC commentators seemed certain she’d become one of the eight members of the Olympic team.
Commentator 9 (Archival): For those of you who've joined us late, this is the Diane Durham story as it happened tonight. She was well situated with a strong performance tonight to make the final eight… And then tragedy struck on the vault.
AMIRA: Dianne landed short on her vault. Her ankles collapsed. She was injured.
Commentator 9 (Archival): You can see the tears, not of pain as much as they are of sadness and heartbreak.
AMIRA: And that’s when things got complicated. Because Dianne still had one more event left in order to get the score she needed to make it onto the Olympic team.
BONNIE FORD: Alyssa and I devoted countless hours to trying to piece together an accurate blow-by-blow version - or narrative - of what actually happened. And we got close, but I still think there's areas of dispute or controversy about what happened. Who told who what...
AMIRA: Someone told Dianne she would be better off skipping bars completely and removing herself from the meet, rather than competing on an injury. She thought she’d be able to use her high national ranking to petition for a spot on the Olympic team instead.
Commentator 10 (Archival): There is a rule concerning this. She will be able to petition in.
AMIRA: But either Bela Karolyi didn’t actually know the rules, or he didn’t have a chance to think them through with Dianne. She was pulled from the meet. And her petition? It didn’t work.
ALYSSA ROENIGK: There was a stipulation that you had to have competed at Worlds and placed in the top six to make the practice squad. She had not competed at Worlds because of injuries. So, it was very easy for the selection committee to say we can't petition her onto the team.
JOYCE WILBORN: And that hurt me too, because, you know, she was one of my idols. So, yeah, that hurt me when I found out that she was injured and couldn’t go into the Olympics.
AMIRA: It’s still unclear who made the decision for Dianne to scratch bars. Educated guessers think coaching personalities had a lot to do with it. There was only so many elite American coaches. And they were all vying to be that national team coach. And have their gymnasts at the Games in LA.
ALYSSA ROENIGK: I think there was also a lot of ego between the other head coach and Bela. And, you know, Bela thought he could sort-of do whatever he wanted. I think Dianne really, truly got caught in the middle of a lot of big egos. And she became incredibly disposable.
AMIRA: In your opinion, is there a sense that that was a decision that was influenced by the selection committee's feelings about Bela or about Dianne or a combination of both?
TOM DRAHOZAL: You know, what Dianne's told me through the years, she felt it was a combination of both. And she felt, you know, maybe America wasn't ready for a Black gymnast to be on a Wheaties box.
AMIRA: The 1984 Olympics rolled on without Dianne. The dominant gymnastics team from the Soviet Union - they had boycotted the Games - putting Mary Lou Retton in a pretty sweet position to win gold in the all-around. Which of course she did. She became America’s gymnastics darling, plastered on Wheaties boxes. The sport exploded in popularity. Girls flooded into gyms – including future Olympian Betty Okino – inspired by seeing Mary Lou on TV. It’s tempting to think about what could have been had Trials gone differently. Dianne Durham was the last person to beat Mary Lou in an all-around competition. Would Dianne have medaled at the Olympics in '84? Most people I talked to said yes, probably many times. Would Gabby Douglas have become the second instead of the first Black woman to win all-around gold? Or would there have been more Black girls entering the sport earlier?
ALYSSA ROENIGK: But I remember Wendy Hilliard saying it is too painful to ask these what ifs. So just do not ask me to think about them because I'm sure it's incredibly painful for, you know, for someone like Wendy Hilliard - who saw the impact Gabby Douglas had on her gym. She had more Black young girls coming into her gym than she could fit in the gym. Man... what if that had happened twenty/thirty years earlier?
AMIRA: Twenty/thirty years earlier, Dianne’s career was immediately impactful. Her successes, of course. But even her misses.
JOYCE WILBORN: Right then and there, I said, “OK, she's not going to be on the Olympic team, but I will be the first Black girl on the Olympic team."
AMIRA: Joyce put in the work. And she made it to the Olympic Trials in 1988. She breezed through the compulsory round – where every gymnast is asked to perform the same routines. But right before the optional competition, the same tragedy that struck Dianne... struck Joyce.
JOYCE WILBORN: I got injured in the workout in-between.
AMIRA: In 1988, there were incredibly complicated Olympic team selection process. Rules we're not going to get into here because, frankly, they’re very boring and very hard to explain. Just know: that according to those rules, Joyce’s scores weren’t high enough from other meets for her to petition onto the team. Even as an alternate.
JOYCE WILBORN: I didn't want I didn't want to do gymnastics no more after that. It affected me really bad to the point where it still bothers me today. And I'm 51 years old. I haven't been in gymnastics in years and just talking about it still affects me. You know, I just hope for the best for everybody. I still wanted Black girls to come up and do their thing…
Dianne Durham (Archival): Life is too short to be bitter and live in the world of what might have happened if I was on the 1984 Olympic team. I have come to terms with the way things played out, and I can only hope the same for the individuals that made the decision to not let me be a member of the Olympic team.
AMIRA: Dianne retired from competitive gymnastics at sixteen in 1985. Maybe it’s because Dianne didn’t make it to the Olympics. But for whatever reason, the US Gymnastics Federation, the governing body of American gymnastics at the time, quickly forgot about her. She wasn’t officially recognized as the legend or trailblazer she truly was until her death in 2021. That’s when she was finally inducted into the USAG Hall of Fame.
AMIRA: We saw a lot of people remember, right? And offer flowers now. This always feels like too little, too late.
ANGIE DENKINS: Hell yeah!
AMIRA: You know...
ANGIE DENKINS: Hell yeah! And they know it because they weren't even thinking about it. I mean, she'd had been- we'd had been out competition since, like, the late 80s. So why not? Why not put her in, you know, the Hall of Fame at that time? So, it was like- They were just haters! They were haters. And until they, you know, stop entertaining misery, they gonna always be haters.
TOM DRAHOZAL: She always said that that's the way it would happen, that they would never put her in the Hall of Fame when she was alive. I'm seven years older than her. She said, “Tom's gonna to be so old, he’ll need a cane to go up and accept my award for me.” That's what's tough. But the Hall of Fame? That's what hurt. [Exhales] So... I just wish I didn't have to go accept her award for her. That she could have done it herself.
KIM RANDALL: Hi, everyone. My name is Kimberly Randall, and I'm one of Dianne's former gymnasts.
AMIRA: In 1996, Dianne opened her own gym, Skyline Gymnastics, in Chicago. Kim was already a competitive gymnast by the time her mom brought her to Skyline.
KIM RANDALL: Dear Dianne, my warrior, my mentor, my coach, my friend. I never thought that our relationship would grow to what it’d become, especially considering the fact that you didn't even want to take me on as your gymnast.
AMIRA: Dianne wasn’t interested in taking on gymnasts that weren’t, as Kim puts it, “homegrown". She wasn’t looking to build a super elite team or even train Olympic hopefuls. But Kim’s mom insisted. "She was a decent gymnast who just needed the right training," she said.
KIM RANDALL: And Dianne, in her own voice, was like, “I know who she is!”
AMIRA: After a lot of begging, Dianne gave Kim a shot.
KIM RANDALL: And I thought I was everything too... Let me tell you. And Dianne quickly shut that down. She was like a second mom... People at competitions thought that she was my mom or my aunt. And I didn't deny it.
AMIRA: That year, under Dianne’s guidance, Kim competed as a Level 7 and won the top award in the state. The next year, she got the top award for Level 8s in the state.
KIM RANDALL: I remember waking up one day and we were going to... I don't remember if it was eight or a... seven or eight Regionals or State or whatever. And I told my moms like, “I'm 'bout to win.” And she was like, “Kim, you know, you can't say that! You can't say that. You know, you have to go through... You have no idea what these other gymnasts are gonna do...” And I was like, “No, because Dianne said I could!” So, needless to say, I won.
AMIRA: Dianne was generous with her belief and support of young Black gymnasts, even if they didn’t compete for her. After Bonnie and Alyssa wrote an article about Dianne paving the way for Black gymnasts, two different friends in two different parts of the country told Alyssa the same story:
ALYSSA ROENIGK: Both of them were at gymnastics meets. Dianne was at the meet - she was coaching her team. And she saw two separate daughters in separate states at separate meets. And she was the only Black girl on her team. And she walked over to each of them and took the time to sit and talk to them and ask them about how their experience was... and what their lives were like in gymnastics and tell about her life... and say, you know, I look like you... and I won a national championship. If you ever needed anything, here's my phone number…
AMIRA: It didn’t matter whether Dianne almost went to the Olympics decades before they were born. It didn’t matter whether she was in the national gymnastics hall of fame. She saw them. She knew what they were going through. She was there for the next generation of prodigies.
ALYSSA ROENIGK: And, you know, if I'd personally happen to randomly to know two little kids who this happened to... you know, to think about the impact Dianne Durham made on the gymnastics world - just the world at large - throughout her entire life is pretty remarkable to think about.
AMIRA: This is where Dianne's impact and legacy is felt in the lives and the futures of Black girl gymnasts. The ones she influenced both by coaching and by being a visible presence in the sport. Her legacy gave them a blueprint - or a glimpse of what could be possible. And in the end, that matters more than any belated celebrations from USAG. Because for the people who knew and loved and were impacted and inspired by Dianne, they certainly didn't need an institution to tell them that she was an icon. Dianne Durham was already a legend. And she knew it.
Dianne Durham (Archival): I shattered one glass ceiling for a Black gymnast being the first Black gymnast to be the all-around champion in the United States. Betty Okino and Dominique Dawes shattered another glass by being the first Black athletes to compete as members of the USA Olympic team. Dominique shattered another glass ceiling in 1996 by being the first Black gymnast to be a part of a team that won a gold medal. Gabby Douglas and Simone Biles shattered the final glass ceiling by being the first Black gymnasts to be Olympic all-around champions. Yay!
CREDITS
AMIRA: This episode of American Prodigies was reported and hosted by me, Amira Rose Davis. Story editing and production by Jessica Luther. Jessica Bodiford and Kelly Hardcastle Jones are our senior producers. Sound design, mix, and mastering by Camille Stennis.
If you want to hear more of my interviews with gymnasts, subscribe to Blue Wire's Apple Podcast Subscription Channel. Along with ad-free episodes, you can listen to my full interview with rhythmic gymnast Wendy Hilliard.
Search "Blue Wire" in Apple Podcasts for access to all the extended interviews. It's free for the first seven days. Subscribe today.
This episode featured archival audio from CBS, the USA Gymnastics Region 5 Hall of Fame, the USA Network, and ABC. Production assistance by Isabelle Jocelyn, Kayla Stokes and Jordan Ligons. Fact-checking was done by Mary Mathis and Jessica Luther. Production coordination by Devin Shepherd. And we had research help from Shwetha Surendran, Mariam Khan, and Mary Mathis. A very special thanks to Tom Drahozal for inviting us to attend Dianne’s celebration of life. American Prodigies is executive produced by Peter Moses and Jon Yales.
POST-CREDITS JOY
ANGIE DENKINS: I trained doing beam to music. So, if there was music on, I always did my routine to whatever song that was on.
AMIRA: What kind of music?
ANGIE DENKINS: I loved all kinds. But you know, I was the only chocolate chick, so you know I had to deal with Bon Jovi and all them, too, but...
AMIRA: [laughs]
ANGIE DENKINS: I put my R&B, my hip hop on there. They knew they had to hear it. Yeah, you want me to handle my business, my music is going to be on here.