OKLAHOMA CITY -- Ten years later, Shannon Miller doesn't feel that much different than she did as the 19-year-old who led the U.S. gymnastics team's "Magnificent Seven" to Olympic gold.
The most decorated gymnast in U.S. history, Miller is now a law school student in Boston. On Friday night, she was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame along with three others.
"I guess I'm just kind of laid back about it. It's kind of like I don't really think about it very much," Miller said Thursday in
a phone interview with The Associated Press. "If someone
recognizes me and wants an autograph, I am more than happy to do
it. The fact that me signing a piece of paper can put a smile on
someone's face, I mean, that's pretty awesome.
"I know what it's like to be the kid asking for the autograph. I remember what that's like, so I am happy to do that, but you know what? I go to the grocery store in my sweats and I just don't worry about it too much. I just kind of live my life and do my thing."
Among her seven Olympic medals, Miller has two golds -- one for winning the balance beam in '96 and a team gold won with Dominique Moceanu, Amanda Borden, Jaycie Phelps, Amy Chow, Dominique Dawes
and Kerri Strug. She also won nine medals at the world
championships.
Miller says she thinks more about the laughs shared and tears cried on her way to the Olympics than she does the actual events.
She doesn't think of herself in terms of being America's most
decorated gymnast.
"I think people started saying that before I even took the time
to think about what it meant," the 29-year-old Miller said. "I'd
get introduced as that and I would just go up and do my thing and I
didn't really pay attention to what people said about me good or
bad or how many medals I had or any of that stuff.
"It never really sunk in. I think maybe one day it will, maybe
when I have kids and they ask about it. Maybe it'll sink in then."
Even now, Miller says she has to keep reminding herself that the
Atlanta Games were a decade ago."
"In some ways, it feels like it was yesterday," Miller said.
"And then other times, it feels like it was a completely different
lifetime and I have to really think to know that I actually
competed there and all of that really happened."
Miller says she never intended to go to law school to become an attorney but hopes the education she receives will open doors for her. She already has her own television show, "Gymnastics USA with
Shannon Miller," that airs on the East Coast, and she'd like to
stay involved with the Olympic movement.
"I already do what I love doing, so it's more progressing toward getting more involved in the things that I'm already involved in," Miller said. "Maybe I might branch out into other areas but I don't know that there's going to be this sudden change in what I'm going to do because a lot of it I already am fortunate enough to get to do."
After the induction ceremony, Miller will stop by the U.S. Junior Women's National Championships and fulfill her duties as
honorary chairman of the Oklahoma City Memorial Kids Marathon
before returning to Boston to take final exams next week.
She plans to finish law school next year but after that her
plans are still up in the air. She doesn't expect to remain in
Boston and will go wherever her television show and her career take
her.
"Ten years ago people were asking me to do just about anything and everything. It's one thing to get offered a job but it's
another to be able to actually do the job," Miller said. "I guess
that's kind of what my thinking is. It'd be great to get offered
something, but I want to be sure that I'm able to do it and do it
well."
Miller says she doesn't think Olympic fame has changed her much. After she won five medals at the 1992 Barcelona Games, she remembers going from "nothing to all of a sudden everyone
everywhere recognizes me."
The past 10 years haven't been as dramatic.
"I think the biggest thing for me was that it showed me there are a lot of other ways that I can continue in this sport even past competition days," Miller said. "That's really what this last 10
years has been about for me -- finding myself and what I want to do
after the Olympics, and finding ways to stay involved with the
sport that I love."
The other inductees were Vladimir Artemov, who won four gold
medals in 1988 as a member of the gold medal-winning Soviet Union
team; Natalia Kuchinskaya, a gold medal winner on the balance beam
on the Soviet Union team that won gold at the 1968 Mexico City
Olympics; and Eizo Kenmotsu, who won the all-around at the 1970
World Championships and was on Japan's teams that won consecutive
gold medals in 1968, 1972 and 1976.
German equipment company director Ulrich Spieth will be
recognized with an International Order of Merit.