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Henrietta (or Henni) Onodi was born on 22 May 1974 in Bekescsaba,
Hungary, a town situated about two hours southeast of Budapest, near the Romanian border. [See Map]
She was spotted by teachers in her kindergarten class because she was
such a lively and bouncy child, and soon thereafter began doing
gymnastics. Immediately, it became obvious that she was a special talent.
However, Hungary was not a country brimming with a surplus of gymnastics
talent, and her coach rued the fact that Henrietta always had to train
alone, since there was no one in the country good enough for her. But she
continued to persist.
Onodi was a sentimental fan favorite because of her charming demeanor on the floor, her combination of powerful gymnastics and beauty, and her hard-luck reputation. Other than 1990, probably her best year competitively, she always seemed to have some misfortune during the AA competition, be it landing on her head on the vault or falling off the beam or stepping out of bounds on the floor. In 1990, though, she placed 3rd AA at the European Championships, and at the World Cup in Brussels, she finished 3rd AA, behind Tatiana Lysenko and Svetlana Boginskaya, and collected a bagful of medals: gold on vault, bronze on the uneven bars, and silver on the floor. However, the World Championships in Indianapolis were rather a disaster for her, because three falls sent her plummeting to 31st AA, though she did redeem herself with a silver on vault.
At the first individual-events-only World Championships in 1992 in Paris, Onodi won a gold medal on vault and a silver on floor and was viewed as a possible contender for the AA at the Olympics. Perhaps she could be the one to break the Soviet and Romanian stranglehold on the women's gymnastics medals. Heading into the 1992 Games, Onodi was not just the leader of or the favorite on the Hungarian team, she WAS the Hungarian team. It was she, all 4'8 and 77 pounds of her, who carried the hopes of her country's fledgling gymnastics program on her shoulders, and with her earlier disappointments in mind, she was determined to have a better result. However, a few small breaks cost her valuable tenths, and in Barcelona she finished 8th AA. She did manage to carry her team to 6th overall, and then redeemed herself mightily during the event finals, where she tied for the gold with Romania's Lavinia Milosovici on the vault and placed second behind Milo on floor, using the familiar, patriotic "Hungarian Rhapsody" as the music for her floor routine.
The Barcelona Olympics were supposed to be the swan song for the now-veteran gymnast. In 1993 Onodi retired and moved to the United States to do some coaching and conduct clinics, eventually settling in Texas. Since she retired, she was hardly training for anything, but early in 1996, decided to make a comeback to help out her struggling Hungarian team. The fact that she was 22 years old and four years removed from competition did not stop her, and although she did not compete all the events in Atlanta, competed very well for someone who had only had a few months of proper training. Along with her wizened teammate Eszter Ovary and the grande dame Svetlana Boginskaya, along with Oksana Chusovitina, Onodi set out to show the world that one could still compete at a very high level at over 20 years of age And that she did. But now Onodi, and Boginskaya, have decided to retired permanently, though who knows what the future might bring?
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