Shawn Johnson East

To have the skill set.

Driven enough to stay in it long enough.

Lucky enough to not get hurt, burnt out.

You know, it's a subjective sport, so you have to be selected.

You don't qualify.

And then there's four girls on the team now.

So it's... Everybody tries to sell this, like...

One of my favorite memories and most confusing memories was I won world championships for the first time at 15.

And world championships for gymnastics is technically a little bit more competitive than the Olympics.

In the Olympics, you have to qualify as a country.

So you have to have enough athletes in a country to qualify to compete.

At world championships, you can qualify solo.

So you can technically have better competitors on individual apparatuses, if that makes sense.

So I won world championships and I was standing on the podium with the gold medal and my teammate who was like my idol.

She was five years older than me.

She had just won the world championships the year before, was standing in the second position.

Alicia Sacramone.

She's like one of my big sisters.

I remember feeling so guilty and like something was so wrong.

I was like, there is no chance I should be here.