Great American Gymnastics Express

GAGE Center
Full name	Great American Gymnastics Center
Nicknames	GAGE
Sport	Artistic gymnastics
Founded	1979; 45 years ago
Based in	Blue Springs, Missouri
Colors
Head coach	Al Fong, Armine Barutyan
Members	Madison Desch, Brenna Dowell, Sabrina Vega, Courtney McCool, Terin Humphrey, Katelyn Ohashi, Christy Henrich, Julissa Gomez, Ivana Hong, Sarah Finnegan, Kara Eaker, Aleah Finnegan, Leanne Wong
Website	gagecenter.com

Great American Gymnastics Express, known also as GAGE Center or GAGE, is an American artistic gymnastics academy, located in Blue Springs, Missouri.

GAGE was founded in 1979 by its present-day owner and head coach, Al Fong.^[1]

Notable alumni

Among the gymnasts who trained at GAGE are:

Lynnzee Brown, 2024 Olympian (representing Haiti)
Madison Desch, a gold medalist with the U.S, team at the 2014 World Championships
Brenna Dowell, a 2015 World Championships team champion and four-time NCAA champion
Kara Eaker, a two-time World Championships team gold medalist
Aleah Finnegan, 2024 Olympian (representing the Philippines), 2019 Pan American Games team champion
Sarah Finnegan, a two-time NCAA champion
Christy Henrich, a 1989 World Championships competitor; Ivana Hong, a 2007 World Championships team champion
Terin Humphrey, a 2004 Olympic Games team and uneven bars silver medalist and two-time NCAA champion
Courtney McCool, a 2004 Olympic Games team silver medalist and four-time NCAA champion
Leanne Wong, a 2022 World Championships team gold medalist

Controversy

The deaths of GAGE gymnasts in 1988 and 1994 drew controversy.

In May 1988, Julissa Gomez broke her neck while warming up for vault at a competition in Japan. Observers had noticed her struggle with the apparatus over the months leading up to the competition, including her former coach Béla Károlyi, past and present teammates, and even her own coach, Al Fong. Gomez's technique on the extremely difficult Yurchenko vault had been described as shaky at best, and Gomez was unable to perform the vault with consistency during practices, sometimes missing her feet on the springboard.^[2] A teammate from Károlyi's, Chelle Stack, later said, "You could tell it was not a safe vault for her to be doing. Someone along the way should have stopped her."^[2] However, Gomez's coaches insisted that she needed to continue training and competing the Yurchenko vault in order to achieve high scores.^[2] Gomez fell into a coma during treatment due to a hospital error and never awoke. She died in 1991.

In 1994, Christy Henrich died from anorexia nervosa. Her condition was allegedly spurred by comments from international judges and her coaches. Desperate to move up the ranks in the highly competitive world of Olympic-level gymnastics, Henrich took the criticisms to heart; her drive to lose a few pounds progressed to unhealthy eating habits and, eventually, became full-blown anorexia nervosa.^[3]^[4] She weighed 47 pounds when she died. Her death led to changes in the way coaches across the nation implement nutrition in training, and how television and media discuss gymnasts' bodies.^[5]

References

^ "Women's Dragon Team | GAGE Center". Archived from the original on 2015-04-26. Retrieved 2015-06-06.
^ ^a ^b ^c Ryan, Joan (1995). Little Girls in Pretty Boxes. Garden City: Doubleday. pp. 17–20. ISBN 978-0-385-47790-1.
^ "Dying to Win: The Christy Henrich story" Dateline,1995
^ Obituary New York Times July 28, 1994
^ "Striking the Balance" Archived 2010-07-17 at the Wayback Machine, Benita Fitzgerald Mosley, Technique magazine, July 1997