''I have 100 percent faith that Marta can lead this U.S. The women's team has won every major international competition since 2002, including last year's world championships, a first for America.

When Marta Karolyi moved into the position however, the nation's top personal coaches elected her. When Bela Karolyi was coordinator, USA Gymnastics appointed him. I think everyone wanted Marta to take charge, but she chose to take a back-seat role.'' ''Maybe Bela enjoyed the limelight a little too much and that rubbed people the wrong way. ''The program just didn't work,'' said Kelli Hill, the United States women's team coach. The coaches said that he was stealing too much of their power by coaching, not just overseeing, the athletes, and that he took too much of the credit when the team did well and not enough responsibility when the team did poorly. That is when the tension between him and the athletes' personal coaches began. Her husband was the national team coordinator at those Games, a competition that turned into a fiasco of infighting among coaches, gymnasts and Karolyi himself.Īs coordinator since 1999, Bela Karolyi had instituted monthly training camps at his ranch to monitor the gymnasts' progress. She took over the position in 2001, a year after the American women failed to win a medal at the Sydney Olympics. ''I'm a bunch of work.''Ĭomaneci said, ''They have a saying in Romania, 'People who do a lot, they don't talk a lot.'''Īs team coordinator, Marta Karolyi oversees the United States women's program, a job that includes evaluating talent and choosing teams for international competitions. Most of that time, though, she was in the background, where she liked to be, working and organizing while he played the entertainer. The Karolyis defected from Romania in 1981 and continued coaching in the United States. Married for 40 years, Marta Karolyi has heard those speeches before. His wife said he went on and on, telling the athletes to believe in themselves, bellowing motivational phrases so loud that they echoed in their heads for hours. ''He just called when we finished podium training'' - on the Olympic equipment - ''and said, 'How'd it go?' I said, 'Everybody did good.' He'll probably call again right now.''īela Karolyi, the showman who scooped an injured Kerri Strug into his arms in 1996 and who gave bearhugs to a victorious Mary Lou Retton in 1984, spoke to the women's team before it left for Athens. ''He calls me all the time,'' Marta Karolyi said Thursday. There, he tends to a zoo of hunting dogs and camels and emus - and waves of Olympic hopefuls who show up for weekly gymnastics camps. While Marta Karolyi is in Athens, he is on their sprawling Texas ranch in Sam Houston National Forest, about an hour north of Houston and 14 miles south of the state prison. At 61, he is 13 days younger than his wife but retired from elite coaching. The squad, favored to win the team gold medal in Athens, begins Olympic competition in the preliminaries on Sunday.įar away from that excitement, Bela Karolyi is restless. As head of the United States women's program, she leads a team that may just be the best in American history. Now the shy, quiet Marta Karolyi is on the stage alone. As a team, Marta and Bela Karolyi have trained nine Olympic champions since 1976, the year they guided Nadia Comaneci of Romania at the Montreal Games to the first perfect 10. ''I think Sunday? Or is it Monday?''įor the first time in nearly 30 years, Marta Karolyi is at the Olympics without her husband, who, by virtue of his success and flamboyance, is the most famous coach in gymnastics. ''I don't even know what day he's coming in,'' she said. No sign of her husband, the boisterous Bela Karolyi, anywhere. In the days before Sunday's gymnastics competition, Marta Karolyi watched the United States women practice at the Olympic Indoor Hall, her tiny dark eyes gleaming, her thin lips shut.

Marta karolyi husband