Athletes Find Time For Life Strug, Ghaffari, Clark Move On After Atlanta Olympics

Kerri Strug has taken her golden ankle to college. Matt Ghaffari coaches wrestlers now, and wonders who’s sending him wedding invitations. Mary Ellen Clark still hangs around divers, but they’re jumping off cliffs in Acapulco.

The boys and girls of summer are moving on.

After starring at the Atlanta Games, U.S. athletes are packing up their medals and memories as the Olympic year comes to an end.

The medals they keep in bank vaults or by their sides. The memories are always with them and for the most part, they are good ones.

They hope the future will be as bright.

“We just had a tremendous opportunity and took advantage of it,” said Mia Hamm, the top player on the gold medal-winning U.S. women’s soccer team. “Now if we can just get these young girls attracted to sports.”

Strug won gold as a member of the “Magnificent Seven,” the first U.S. women’s gymnastics squad to take the Olympic team title. She also provided one of the most stunning moments of the Atlanta Games, nailing a last-chance vault with torn ligaments in her left ankle that have yet to heal completely.

Now a freshman at UCLA, Strug splits time between the classroom and national tours with an ice show and a gymnastics promotion. She’s taking her first long-term break from high-level sports since she took up gymnastics at age 3, and she’s enjoying the change.

“I think it’s good for me,” Strug said. “I think after 15 years, you deserve a little break. But at the same time, I kind of miss it. It’s kind of hard not being able to do everything that I would like to do.”

Along with school, Strug has written a book, “Heart of Gold.” Aimed at young readers, it tells how Strug started in gymnastics and persevered through disappointments and injuries.

“I feel like I know exactly where a lot of the kids are coming from,” the 19-year-old said. “I hope I can relate because, you know, it’s the ‘90s, and you can get involved in a lot of bad things.”

Also back to school is Ghaffari.

Since winning the silver medal in Greco-Roman wrestling’s heavyweight class and appearing on seemingly every talk show and photo op in the country, Ghaffari returned to Cleveland State as assistant wrestling coach.

Ghaffari is one of the rarest athletes in the American Olympic community: a nationally known star in a sport most people know nothing about.

“I got airline tickets to a wedding, and I don’t know the bride or the groom, honest to God,” he said. “I didn’t go, but I sent them a wedding present.”

Ghaffari said he would keep competing. He wants at least one more shot at Alexander Karelin, the Russian heavyweight generally considered the greatest wrestler in the world, who beat him 1-0 for the gold medal in Atlanta.

“I know I can beat this guy,” Ghaffari said. “I keep sending him telegrams - ‘Don’t retire!”’

Strug, while ineligible for NCAA events, won’t rule out a third Olympics in Sydney in 2000.

“My life is changing so much, it’s hard to think about the faraway future,” she said. “I want to finish up school and tour for a while, go through physical therapy and have my ankle heal, and take it from there.”

Saying goodbye to competition, however, is Clark. A two-time Olympian, Clark battled back from a bout with vertigo last year to win her second consecutive bronze medal in platform diving.

“That’s it,” said the Fort Lauderdale athlete, who turns 34 on Christmas day.

Clark’s post-Olympic sports experience has been limited to the Pacific coast of Mexico, where she helped judge a championship among Acapulco’s cliff divers.

“I knew there was life after diving,” she said.