Jaycie Phelps today runs a busy training center for young gymnasts in Hancock County. (Tom Russo | Daily Reporter)
GREENFIELD – While an estimated three billion people are expected to tune in as the Olympic Games unfold in Paris on July 26, only a select few will see the games through the lens of someone who has made their own run for the gold.
Jaycie Phelps of Greenfield counts herself among those lucky few who are able to reflect back on their time as an Olympian each time the summer games roll around every four years.
Now a gymnastics coach at a local gymnastics center that bears her name, Phelps says it never gets old cheering on Team USA when the gymnasts take the floor.
Phelps was a proud former member of the Magnificent Seven, the U.S. gymnastics team who scored gold in dramatic fashion at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Ga.
The “Magnificent Seven” made Olympic history by being the first U.S. women’s team to win gold in the team event, which had been dominated for years by the former Soviet Union.
The upset over the Russians happened on July 23, 1996.
Phelps was just 16 at the time.
Now nearly three decades later, Phelps spends her days teaching future Olympic hopefuls at the Jaycie Phelps Athletic Center off Mt. Comfort Road in Greenfield.
She and her husband Dave Marus – an Elite Level gymnast she met while they were both coaching in Colorado – love shaping the talent of young gymnasts, no matter how far they may choose to go in the sport.
Phelps watched the action Wednesday afternoon as roughly two dozen young gymnasts somersaulted, cartwheeled and sprung around the gym floor.
As the Olympics take place July 26-Aug. 11 in Paris, Phelps will likely be tuned into the games alongside her family.
When the last summer Olympics took place in Tokyo in 2020, Phelps was featured in a documentary Netflix had just released called “The ‘96 Effect,” a three-part series featuring four legendary USA women’s teams who won gold at the Atlanta Games.
The women were the first generation to become world-class athletes during the era of Title IX, which was enacted in 1972 to give women athletes the right to equal opportunity in sports in educational institutions that receive federal funds.
In the documentary, some of the athletes share how they inspired each other during that year’s Olympic games, and the impact Title IX made on their lives as well as female athletics worldwide.
This year’s Olympics are marked by the release of another Netflix documentary, “Simone Biles Rising,” which follows the two-time Olympian as she balances her personal life, mental health journey and training ahead of a highly anticipated return to the Olympics this year.
Biles previously competed in the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro and the 2020 Games in Tokyo.
Phelps knows first-hand that competing in the Olympics as part of Team USA often means becoming a lifelong public figure.
While she’s happy to be living a relatively quiet life in her hometown of Greenfield (she attended Harris Elementary School as a child), Phelps has said she never will forget the summer the world watched with baited breath and she and her teammates made history by clenching the gold in the 1996 Summer Games.
The feat was pulled off when her teammate – Kerri Strug – nailed the team’s final vault after tearing a ligament in her ankle on her previous turn.
Strug’s teammates — including Phelps, Amanda Borden, Amy Chow, Dominique Dawes, Shannon Miller and Dominique Moceanu – watched in stunned disbelief, their arms locked together, as the crowd chanted, “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”
“From the very first routine all the way up until the last vault, it was such a swing of emotions that night,” Phelps recalled four years ago, just before the Tokyo games.
She and her fellow teammates made their mark in Olympic history, forever to be synonymous with the sport they love.
This year’s Olympics will broadcast on NBC and Telemundo from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET each day. Peacock will live stream every event, including opening and closing ceremonies. Certain events will be available to watch on USA Network, Golf Channel, CNBC and E!.
A preview of the Opening Ceremony will air at noon ET July 26 on NBC. Live coverage of the ceremony starts at 1:30 p.m. ET, followed by an enhanced encore at 7:30 p.m. that day.
For more information, visit the official website at Olympics.com.
