'Warriors' then and now: Minnesotans have made marks in Olympic gymnastics

Olympics viewership for a Baby Boomer in Fulda, Minn. started in 1956, in black-and-white from Melbourne, Australia.

A large share of mainstream sports fans then considered the Olympics to be the world's greatest track and field meet, with swimming as an appetizer.

Most everything was lost at the 1972 Munich Games due to the murdering terrorists, yet Mark Spitz's seven gold medals became legendary and swimming moved side-by-side with track and field as an attraction.

Then came Nadia Comaneci, a 14-year-old Romanian, in Montreal in 1976. She won gold medals in three individual events. She brought women viewers to the Olympics in huge numbers.

Eight years later, women's gymnastics was cemented as the featured event of the Summer Games, when Mary Lou Retton dazzled and the U.S. team won a silver medal behind Romania (a Soviet bloc nation not boycotting).

It didn't hurt the sport that the U.S. men also won the gold medal.

Marie Roethlisberger was the alternate on that seven-athlete women's team, a non-competitor at those L.A. Olympics but with the group all the way.

She was the first Minnesota woman to gain attention at the top level of the sport in the post-Comaneci era. She competed with the U.S. team in the 1985 world championships, then as a 19-year-old enrolled at the University of Minnesota and was a four-year collegiate star.

Asked about the long-term impact of the 1984 team, Roethlisberger said: "I haven't thought about that a lot, but it does seem like a turning point. It made a great splash, when you consider that we were still underdogs then, and where we are now.''

The splash was so great that women's gymnastics seems capable of retaining its status as this country's No. 1 TV attraction in Tokyo, even while dealing with a despicable scandal.

Larry Nassar, a deranged sexual assaulter, was allowed to run amok as a team doctor for women's gymnastics for decades as blind eyes were turned.

He's in jail with sentences that can't be outlived, and the U.S. is back hoping that all-time great Simone Biles can lead the way to another team gold medal.

The four-athlete team includes Biles, Jordan Chiles and two Minnesotans: Suni Lee from St. Paul and Grace McCallum from Isanti.

How about that, Marie: Two of four Minnesotans?

"I've had goosebumps already, and that's before seeing them in Tokyo,'' she said. "It shows how strong Minnesota has become in gymnastics.''

Marie, married with two teenagers, a physician living near Madison, Wis., is part of Minnesota's first family in gymnastics' modern era.

She was a trailblazer in excellence for Minnesota girls. Younger brother John was a three-time Olympian in 1992, 1996 and 2000. Father Fred was the Hall of Fame head coach for men's gymnastics at the U for 32 years until retirement in 2014.

John Roethlisberger now lives in Knoxville, Tenn., and is the co-owner of Flip Fest, a summer gymnastics camp in Crossville near the mountains.

John's hero as a gymnast remains his sister. She competed with deafness in one ear and 85 percent hearing loss in the other.

"She also had bone chips taken out of her elbow before the Olympic trials,'' he said. "She could barely warm up to compete. She was more than a warrior. As a competitor, I say she epitomized badass.''

Roethlisberger now puts another gymnast in that category: Shane Wiskus, the third Minnesotan headed to July's Olympics as part of the five-athlete U.S. men's team, as well as the Gopher that wouldn't be silenced in battling against athletic director Mark Coyle's ongoing plan to drop men's gymnastics.

"We're not done trying to keep gymnastics alive as a varsity sport,'' John said. "I think Coyle wanted to rip this Band-Aid off and have us go quietly into the night.

"And then he and the rest trying to drop us were destroyed by Shane with his performance last week, by his making the Olympic team.

"The university sent out a tweet congratulating Shane, wearing his Gophers gear, and people buried them in the responses. What Shane has done, what Suni Lee and Grace McCallum have done, proves that Minnesota has outstanding gymnasts that deserve to be showcased at their university, at my university.''