CATCHING UP WITH…
Jennifer Sey
“There is life beyond sport”
FRACTURING her femur at the 1985 Montreal World Championships was certainly an
unexpected turn of events for Jennifer Sey.
But winning the 1986 U.S. Championships
seven months later might have been an even bigger shock. “I never thought [it was] possible,”
recalls Sey. “I was just hoping for a top- 10 finish.
I was happy just being a member of the national
team.”
Her joy wouldn’t last long. Sey’s femur was
fine, but the sore ankle she competed with in
1986 only got worse. Doctors could find nothing
wrong, so Sey coped with the pain and continued training. She managed to place eighth at the
’87 USAs and says she was pleased with that
result. “It’s a tough sport to stay on top in,” she
says. “Hard on the body, and on the mind.”
Sey’s journey through elite gymnastics was
nearing its end, even if she ignored the signs initially. “I deferred college because everyone
expected me to, so that I could train for the
Olympics. But my body just fell apart. I was
depressed and broken, both physically and men-
The Impact of Sey’s Fall
At the time of Sey’s fall at the 1985 Worlds,
spotters were not permitted on the uneven bars
podium. FIG Women’s Technical Committee
Member Jackie Fie of the U.S. had tried to get
the rule changed for several years, but to no
avail. The rule was changed shortly after 1985.
Recalls Sey: “I remember, pretty vividly,
being midair and knowing that it was going
terribly wrong on the Tkatchev. …The bars
had a slower give to them than I was used to,
and my timing was off.
“Then, I remember landing and just spinning around the leg, with my foot staying in
one place. It felt very very wrong. And then I
collapsed. …I’d broken my femur…. I was
sure I’d never do gymnastics again. I was devastated in addition to being in terrible pain.
…A simple push forward on the back from a
coach would have prevented my injury.”
tally. I’d run out of steam
after the comeback.”
After the 1987 USAs
Sey left the Parkettes and
returned to her former
gym, Will-Moor, in New
Jersey. “[Gym owner
Lois Musgrave] nursed me back to mental health
and I ended up retiring in February of 1988, with
her blessing,” Sey says. “My parents took a little
longer to come around on that one.”
Sey turned down her athletic scholarship to
Stanford but went there anyway. “I loved Stanford,” she says. “I became a person other than a
gymnast there.”
Sey studied political science and communications (with a film emphasis), and after graduating
in 1992, landed a job in advertising. “I worked
hard, as learned through gymnastics, and had a
keen sense of popular culture,” says Sey, who
eventually got hired by Levi’s in San Francisco,
where she is now Senior Director of Strategy.
“I led the marketing campaigns from 2004-
06, all the funny ads on television, like the one
about the guy who tackles the thief who stole his
jeans from the clothes line,” she says. “That was
mine.”
EILEEN LANGSLE Y/IG
Sey also met husband Winslow Warren, a software engineer, in San Francisco, and they have
two sons, Wyatt, 4, and Virgil, 7. Winslow is a
stay-at-home dad.
Though Sey has produced a short film called
The Gymnast, (on You Tube) starring former
teammate Jennifer Greenhut, she doesn’t follow
Sey broke her right femur after missing a Tkatchev
at the 1985 Montreal World Championships (left).
Seven months later she became the 1986 U.S.
champion (below).
PHOTO SUPPLIED
Today, Sey lives in San Francisco with (from
left) husband Winslow Warren; and sons
Wyatt, 4; and Virgil, 7.
gymnastics anymore, even if it’s on TV. “Brings
back sad memories and feelings of inadequacy,”
she says. “I say that with only the tiniest bit of
sarcasm. It’s pretty true that that is how I feel.”
Sey’s most recent project is a book due out this
spring: “Chalked Up: Inside Elite Gymnastics’
Merciless Coaching, Overzealous Parents, Eating Disorders, and Elusive Olympic Dreams.”
(See review on p. 40.)
“The book is not an indictment of the sport,”
Sey assures. “It’s not intended to be at all universal, or
about the sport in total. It’s “Iloved
just about my personal experience, the good and Stanford.
the bad. Through the Ibecame
process of writing it, I realized that I was on a mission aperson
back then. No one could have stopped me. I was otherthan
going to do what I was going to do. And now, I’m grateful a gymnast
for having done it.” there.”
Sey, 38, claims complete
responsibility for all the decisions she made as a gymnast. And she says she
has a “great relationship” with her parents, but
does not keep in touch with the Parkettes coaches she “revered” as a gymnast.
In hindsight she simply believes the adults in
her life back then should have intervened. “The
only place [my parents] went wrong was when I
was clearly depressed and struggling in 1987,”
she says. “They didn’t even ask about my state of
mind, because at this point they felt like they’d
sacrificed so much that I had to follow through on
the dream, which in their mind was the Olympics. So much for that dream.”
For her own children, Sey strives for a balanced life. “I’d be wary of [them] doing anything
to the exclusion of anything else,” she says. “I
want to expose my kids to as much as possible. I
don’t feel like they need to achieve everything in
life … while they are still children. Plenty of people have normal childhoods and [are successful]
as adults. I think kids should be kids.”
Asked for a single piece of advice for aspiring
elites, their parents and their coaches, Sey says:
“There is life beyond sport, beyond gymnastics.”
