- published: 01 Oct 2006
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Shannon Lee Miller (born March 10, 1977) is a former artistic gymnast from Edmond, Oklahoma. She was the 1993 and 1994 World All-Around Champion, the 1996 Olympics balance beam gold medalist, the 1995 Pan Am Games all-around champion, and a member of the gold medal-winning Magnificent Seven team at the Atlanta Olympics. The winner of a combined total of 16 World Championships and Olympic medals between 1991 and 1996, Miller ranks as the most decorated gymnast, male or female, in U.S. history. Miller was also the most successful American athlete, by medal count, at the 1992 Barcelona Games, winning five altogether. Miller is also the tenth most decorated gymnast of all time, by her individual medal count.
Miller was born in Rolla, Missouri, but she and her family moved to Edmond, Oklahoma when she was only six months old. Miller had studied gymnastics for four years when, at the age of nine, she and her mom traveled to Moscow, Russia to participate in a gymnastics camp. As a twelve-year-old, she finished third at the 1989 Olympic Festival—a competition designed to showcase up-and-coming talent. She traveled to Europe in 1990 and 1991 for international meets and scored two perfect 10.0s on the balance beam at the Swiss Cup and Arthur Gander Memorial. At the 1991 Arthur Gander, she won the All-Around and amassed the highest all-around total ever recorded by an American woman under the traditional 10.0 scale: a 39.875. (Kim Zmeskal had also amassed this same total score at the 1990 USA vs. USSR Challenge.)