McKayla Rose Maroney

"When I was younger," Maroney said, "I would be watching Tarzan and running around on all fours. My mom was like, 'I need to put this child in gymnastics. She's crazy.' I was technically in gymnastics at the age of 2 and always felt comfortable in the gym."
When Maroney was 9 years old, she started training at Gym-Max in Costa Mesa, California. In 2012 she said, "I realized that I had a dream that I wanted to go to the Olympics and I wanted to go as far as I could go. I thought I should probably move to a new gym and start thinking about the Olympics."
About her first Olympic memory, she said, "I remember watching Carly Patterson. She was one of my favorites. I loved her floor routine. I went to Olympic Trials that year (2004) with Kyla Ross. I remember seeing the gymnasts on the floor and I loved all of their leotards. I thought they were so little and so amazing. I thought, how am I going to stay this little? I was worried that I was going to be really tall because my dad is 6'3" and my mom is 5'2", so I didn’t know which one I was going to be."