Julissa Gomez

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Julissa D'anne Gomez (b. November 5, 1972, San Antonio, Texas; d. August 8, 1991, Houston, Texas) was an American gymnast.

Trained by Béla Károlyi and, later, Al Fong, Gomez was an up-and-coming international elite gymnast in the mid-1980's. At the 1986 US Championships, she placed fourth in the all-around in the junior division; by 1987 she was representing the United States in international meets. Especially strong on the uneven bars and balance beam, Gomez was considered a legitimate contender for the 1988 US Olympic team.

However, several months before the Olympics, Gomez was sent to Japan to compete in the World Sports Fair. In an eerie foreshadowing of events to come, during the qualifying rounds of the competition, Gomez spoke about her favorite gymnast, Soviet Elena Mukhina, who had been paralyzed in an accident in 1980 just a few weeks before the Moscow Olympics. She also mentioned that she had dreamt of the death of another gymnast.

While Gomez had qualified for the vault final, she had also been struggling with the event for some time. Many people close to Gomez, including her former coach, Béla Károlyi; her present coach, Al Fong; and several teammates from both gyms, had noticed her shaky technique on her Yurchenko vault. A teammate from Károlyi's, Chelle Stack, later stated, "You could tell it was not a safe vault for her to be doing. Someone along the way should have stopped her." However, in spite of the fact that Julissa was not able to consistently do the vault safely even in practice, sometimes missing her feet on the springboard, her coaches continued to have her perform it in competition.

During warmups for the final, Gomez's foot slipped off the springboard as she performed the Yurchenko. Her head hit the vaulting horse at high speed, and the resulting crash paralyzed her. A subsequent accident at a Japanese hospital resulted in severe brain damage and left her in a catatonic state. Gomez's family cared for her for three years before she succumbed to an infection and died in 1991.

The Gomez tragedy stands as one of the most serious accidents ever to occur in artistic gymnastics, and helped prompt changes in the sport. In 1989, the International Gymnastics Federation decided to increase vaulting safety by allowing U-shaped springboard mats, traditionally utilized in practice to give gymnasts a greater margin of error in preflight, to be used during competitions. The mat is now mandatory: under the new 2006 Code of Points , performing a Yurchenko-style vault without the safety mat results in an automatic score of zero. In 2001, the traditional horse was completely phased out replaced by a larger, more stable vaulting table to provide gymnasts with additional safety.