1. Held in New York, the host country took all the gold medals except for bars. Dominique Moceanu (all-around), Vanessa Atler (vault and Floor), Kristen Maloney (beam).
2. Dominique Moceanu’s Floor music was Riverdance’s “Reel Around The Sun”
3.Svetlana Khorkina defended her bars title from four years earlier.
4. A mixed pair competition was held and it was won by Ling Jie and Huang Xu. Ling Jie was unfortunate in individual event finals finishing 7th on bars and beam. She crashed her beam mount, a round off into a full twisting Korbut (ouch)
5.Unlike other editions where the Soviet Union or its composing countries had dominated, in 1998 only three medals were won by gymnasts of the former Soviet Republics: Svetlana Khorkina (gold bars), Yelena Dogolpolova (silver vault) and Ukranian Olga Teslenko (silver beam)
6. All the bronze medals were won by Romania with Simona Amanar and Corina Ungureanu
7. Simona Amanar won the all-around bronze medal despite falling on her front tuck mount. She scored a 9.150
8. Hungary’s Adrienn Varga, who finished 5th on vault, turned 18, four days after the end of the Games (August 6th). At the time, she was the current European vault champion
9. The oldest gymnast competing in an event final was Dominique Dawes (21 at the time). She finished 5th on bars.
10. During the vault final warm-ups 17-year-old Chinese gymnast Sang Lan landed a timer vault on her neck and was paralysed from the chest down. Reportedly a mat to cushion the landing was removed from her landing space. In 2011 she sued Time Warner (organizer of the event) for failing to follow through on promises to make sure her medical bills were covered. She received a 10 million settlement. Sang married in 2013 and welcomed a son in 2014.
Gymnastics Cool Facts 