Christy Henrich, who threw herself recklessly at balance beams and uneven parallel bars and survived the bruises to become one of the world's top gymnasts, was no match for killer eating disorders.
On Wednesday, a day after her death at age 22, Henrich was remembered as an obsessed athlete who worked other gymnasts into the ground and wanted to win with a single-minded intensity."She was driven from an early age, to the point that she had blinders on," said her former coach, Al Fong. "She worked five times as hard as anybody.
"She didn't become good because she was talented. She became good because she worked so hard, and she had this kind of focus. She could only see one thing."
A victim of anorexia nervosa and bulimia, Henrich, of Independence, died of multiple organ system failure after more than two weeks in the hospital. Research Medical Center wouldn't say how much she weighed at her death, but she had wasted away to 60 pounds a year ago.
Fong became estranged from the Henrich family after confronting the teen-ager in 1989 about her eating problems.
"I kicked her out of the gym for her own good," he said. "I said, `You're going to kill yourself.' She was throwing herself into the equipment because she couldn't do the routines. I set up all these appointments with the nutritionists, and then I found out she wasn't attending those sessions."
Henrich missed making the 1988 Olympic team by 0.118 of a point. Acutely disappointed, she aimed for the 1992 trials. But in between, the vicious cycle of anorexia and bulimia - starvation and vomiting whatever food is eaten - took over.
She withdrew from a competition in fall 1990 and retired from gymnastics in January 1991. She was among the top 10 U.S. gymnasts then but was too weak to compete. "My life is a horrifying nightmare," she said. "It feels like there's a beast inside of me, like a monster. It feels evil."
The dieting frenzy began after a judge in an international competition in 1988 told Henrich - who weighed 93 pounds at the height of her career - that she needed to watch her weight.
Fong described the judge in Budapest, Hungary, as a "nice, old lady" who had made an offhand remark. "It was perceived by her as `You're too fat to be an Olympic gymnast,' " the coach said.
Over the past three years, local TV interviews showed the Olympic hopeful wasting away, often with her mother, Sandy, by her side, vowing to help her daughter through the ordeal.
A year ago, Henrich was briefly hospitalized and began seeing a psychiatrist, Dr. Gail Vaughn. She stopped seeing Vaughn recently. "I worked with her for about three months, and she seemed to be doing pretty good when she let me go," Vaughn said. "She was getting better there for a while."
Henrich won six international championships by the time she left junior high in 1987. She chose then to work full-time on gymnastics, taking high school classes with a tutor. "I want it so bad," she said in 1988, at age 15. "I know I have a chance for the Olympics."
Even after Henrich retired, Fong got a phone call that reminded him how strong her drive was. It came after the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona had just concluded, with Henrich asking Fong to meet with her.
"She says, `Al, I'm really jazzed. I want to train for '96 (the Atlanta Olympics).' " Fong said he told her she had to beat the eating disorders first. She never called back.