Former Workforce USA gymnast Kerri Strug’s title is again within the headlines — however her life has taken a serious pivot away from the highlight since serving to deliver the Individuals to gold on the 1996 Summer season Olympics.
Deadline reported on Wednesday, September 24, that Stranger Issues actress Millie Bobby Brown will play Strug, now 47, in an upcoming biopic referred to as Good. The film will inform the long-lasting story of Strug touchdown a vault on a badly injured ankle on the 1996 Summer season Video games in Atlanta. As a part of a bunch affectionately referred to as “The Magnificent Seven,” Strug and her teammates gained the first-ever gold medal for the US within the ladies’s group competitors.
Practically three a long time later, Strug finds herself an awfully good distance from the gymnastics mat.
The previous Olympian now works as a program supervisor on the Workplace of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention inside the US Division of Justice in Washington, D.C.
“I assist nonprofit organizations — tribal and authorities packages that obtain federal funding — with creating packages for high-risk youth,” Strug defined in a September 2024 interview with the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury. “So, I really feel like I’m nonetheless serving Workforce USA in some capability.”
She added, “I need to inform younger ladies on the market that it’s actually vital to imagine in your self and your goals, not your fears. Plenty of instances we now have actual obstacles and we additionally typically permit ourselves to think about issues. However you gotta keep targeted on what you need and it’s not at all times going to be good.”
Strug inspired younger ladies to make use of “these setbacks as motivators.”
The Olympian began faculty at UCLA simply weeks after profitable gold on the 1996 Summer season Olympics and later graduated from Stanford College in 2002 with a grasp’s diploma in social psychology.
Whereas she ultimately landed on her ft — one thing she’s fairly used to — Strug admitted adjusting to issues post-Olympics was troublesome.
“My complete life, all I wished to do was go to the Olympics and win a gold medal,” she advised Sports activities Illustrated in June 2008. “Then I began faculty [at UCLA] just a few weeks later, and that was a transition. I used to be used to any person controlling each transfer, telling me the place to be and what to do and do it. The primary couple months have been form of robust.”
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After briefly working as a trainer in San Francisco, Strug accepted a job as a particular assistant within the Workplace of Common Counsel of the US Division of Treasury.
Strug started working her present job on the Division of Justice in March 2005.
“If you happen to advised me I’d be working as a program supervisor within the OJJDP again after I was in Atlanta, I’d’ve laughed,” Strug advised Sports activities Illustrated. “However on the identical time, I believe I additionally knew I wasn’t going to be a health club coach or proprietor. It was vital for me to show to myself and to others that I could be profitable in different arenas as nicely.”
Strug married her husband, Robert Fischer, in April 2010 and the couple share two kids: son Tyler, 13, and daughter Alayna, 11.
