Olympic gold medalist Aly Raisman is a retired artistic gymnast known for captaining the 2012 "Fierce Five" and 2016 "Final Five" U.S. women's Olympic gymnastics teams. With six Olympic medals, she is the third-most decorated American gymnast in Olympic history behind Shannon Miller and Simone Biles. She is also recognized as a sexual abuse survivor and for her bravery for coming forward, along with several other victims, to testify against the former Olympic team physician, Larry Nassar. She and many others read victim impact statements at his sentencing.
Raisman was born in 1994 and first started doing gymnastics at the age of two with her mother at “mommy and me” classes. By the time she was 13, she had already placed in the top three in the National Championships in Dallas, Texas, and the Junior Pan American Championships in Aracaju, Brazil. In 2010, she competed at the Pacific Rim Championships in Melbourne and helped her team win gold. She gained her first experience as a team captain the following year when she competed at the 2011 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Tokyo.
In 2012 at the London Olympic Games, Raisman earned gold with her breathtaking and dynamic floor routine set to “Hava Nagila,” in honor of her Jewish heritage. She became the first American woman to win on the floor in addition to having the highest score on floor exercise recorded at a major international competition in the 2009-2012 Olympic quad. She also won the bronze medal in the balance beam final.
After taking a break from her sport and appearing on “Dancing with the Stars,” Raisman returned for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, where she won two silver medals and one gold. She and teammate Gabby Douglas were the only Americans with back-to-back team gold medals.
Raisman has spent recent years as a well-known, outspoken advocate for athlete safety and as a fierce critic of USA Gymnastics. Since the revelations regarding Nassar surfaced, she has not minced words regarding her thoughts on how the situation was handled, the corruption of USA Gymnastics, and why the abuse was allowed to go on for so long. She and other survivors of the scandal have been awarded the Arthur Ashe Courage Award.