Photo: BrokenSphere / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
Shawn Johnson trained at Chow’s Gymnastics in West Des Moines and became one of the faces of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
She was 16 when she won gold on the balance beam and silver in the all-around, team and floor competitions. A year later she won the eighth season of “Dancing with the Stars.”
A knee injury from a skiing accident ended her competitive gymnastics career, and she retired in 2012. She married former NFL player Andrew East in 2016, and the couple built a large audience with YouTube videos about family life.
Liang Chow, her coach, still runs his gym in West Des Moines, where kids from around central Iowa train.
Kim Sanders writes for Clarion News Online.