The moment the 'Final Five' told Marta Karolyi the team was named in her honor
One bittersweet lining in the U.S. women's gymnastics team's dominance in Rio was the fact that this was Marta Karolyi's last Olympics with the American team.
The 73-year-old Karolyi, who, with her husband, Bela, had a hand in gymnastics champions from Nadia Comaneci to Mary Lou Retton to Kerri Strug, has served as the U.S. women's national team coordinator since 2000. And now the woman largely responsible for the American women's emergence as a gymnastics superpower is calling it quits after 16 years as coordinator ... and some 40 years in the sports altogether.
So this year's gold-medal-winning women's gymnastics team of Simone Biles, Aly Raisman, Madison Kocian, Gabby Douglas and Laurie Hernandez dubbed themselves the "Final Five" in Karolyi's honor.
On Wednesday, Biles shared this Getty picture of the moment when they told Karolyi of their decision:
final five | we dedicated our team name to The Legend Marta, so when we told her she started crying. WE LOVE HER ❤️ pic.twitter.com/p8lYVzKMbR
— Simone Biles (@Simone_Biles) August 10, 2016
Which reduced the usually-stoic Karolyi to tears.
"From my nature, I'm really not a sentimental person, honestly," Karolyi said afterward, as reported by the New York Times. "So I felt, 'Oh, what's happening to me? What is this?"
"It's just, Final Five," she continued, reportedly tearing up again. "It's crushing."
