Amy Chow

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Olympic medal record
Women's artistic gymnastics
Gold	1996 Atlanta	Team competition
Silver	1996 Atlanta	Uneven bars

Amy Chow (周婉儀; pinyin: Zhōu Wǎnyí; born May 15, 1978 in San Jose, California) is an American gymnast and a member of the famous Magnificent 7 who were the first American team to win Olympic gymnastics gold. Her fellow team members were Jaycie Phelps, Dominique Dawes, Shannon Miller, Kerri Strug, Amanda Borden and Dominique Moceanu. Chow was coached by Mark Young and was the first Asian-American woman to take an Olympic medal in her sport.

Chow began gymnastics training in 1981, and has been competing in national and international competitions since 1990. She is primarily known for her performance at the 1996 Olympics where she won a silver medal on the uneven bars and a team gold. She also competed in the 2000 Summer Olympics, although the team did not win a medal in Sydney. Chow, however, qualified to the all-around finals where she was the second ranked American woman, finishing in fourteenth place.

Chow has two gymnastic moves named after her, the "Chow" and the "Chow II." They are a stalder 1 1/2 pirouette and a stalder Shaposhnikova. She has been nicknamed "the Trickster" for her extreme difficulty on each apparatus and her ability to perform these complicated skills with apparent ease. She was the first American woman to perform both the double twisting Yurchenko and the tucked double double dismount on bars in international competition. (Shannon Miller is the first to perform the double twisting Yurchenko in national competition).

In addition to her gymnastic career, Chow is also a pianist. In 1994, she received an advanced level certificate of merit for piano. She was also a competitive diver during high school. As of 2005, she is currently attending medical school at Stanford, having earned an undergraduate degree in biology from Stanford in 2002, with the goal of eventually becoming a pediatrician. Amy competed as a pole vaulter for Stanford, but she is not on the 2005 track and field roster. As of 2006 she is in her last year of Med school at Stanford University and is interning at Kaiser, happily delivering babies and stitching up mothers.