Inside the Gold Cup gym where the men’s team trains you won’t see a lot of trophies covered with a thin layer of chalk dust or banners decorating the walls trumpeting their accomplishments.  Instead you will encounter larger than life murals depicting four of the program’s Olympians performing one of their signature gymnastics tricks.

When Ed Burch (or Burch as he is known to his gymnasts) began his Albuquerque, New Mexico program in 1978 he set out to produce a successful club program and to supply the national team members with quality elite gymnasts.  Because the NCAA teams of the day dominated the scene, his peers and US Gymnastics Federation (the forerunner to today’s USA Gymnastics) officials told him it would be impossible for a club team to reach the elite level.  That declaration was all the motivation Burch needed to forge ahead.

Indeed, club athletes were rarely in the national gymnastics spotlight with NCAA stars leading the US in both national and international competition.  Over time Gold Cup athletes gradually made their appearance on the junior and senior elite level.  As each gymnast earned his place on the national team, he also earned a picture on the Gold Cup wall.  Burch soon scrapped that idea as he ran out of wall space with the success of his athletes.

When Lance Ringnald earned his spot on the 1988 Olympic team bound for Seoul, Korea a new plan for commemorating the athletes was launched.  Ringnald was immortalized on the wall housing the gym observation deck performing his signature move, a Delchev on the Still Rings apparatus along with his autograph and the official Olympic Games logo.  Burch chose this move to capture because of the reaction the appreciative crowd always gave when he came to rest.

Lance Ringnald: 1988 and 1992 Olympian

Four years later Ringnald returned to the Olympics as the alternate for the 1992 team.  Joining him in Barcelona was his Gold Cup teammate Trent Dimas.  Three US athletes qualified for event finals competition:  Chris Waller (PH), Jair Lynch (PB), and Dimas (HB).  Trent threw a routine of a lifetime and did what no American  high bar finalist had done since Dallas Bixler in 1932:  He won gold!  Trent’s mural is featured on the wall near the high bar where he perfected his signature Kovacs skill.

Trent Dimas: 1992 Olympic gold medalist

Although he trained with Ringnald and Dimas for much of the 1992-1996 quadrennium, Mihai Bagiu was the only Gold Cup athlete to qualify for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta (alum and UCLA gymnast Chainey Umphrey was also part of the team).  As a team the US finished in 5th place, 0.792 points from a bronze team medal, marking a significant return to international competition in a fully attended Olympics.  Burch chose to capture Bagiu mid-vault catch because he believed it was the best one he’d ever seen.

Mihai Bagiu: 1996 Olympian

All along as Ringnald, Dimas, and Bagiu trained at Gold Cup there was another athlete studying their every move, gaining inspiration, and watching the murals get painted.  Young Joe Hagerty had seen Ringnald and Dimas compete in the Olympics on television and supported Bagiu from the stands in the Georgia Dome as a 14-year old.  While there he and fellow Gold Cup athlete Walter Jaramillo and Bagiu’s father-in-law Bob McNamara had narrowly escaped serious injury by the bomb set off in Centennial Olympic Park when they left the immediate area of the blast to grab a burger before the nightly concert started!

When training partners dwindled off and retirement from elite coaching beckoned Burch, Hagerty moved to Colorado Springs to train at the US Olympic Training Center.  In 2008 with Burch in the audience at the Olympic Trials, he watched as 26-year old Joe Hagerty took his place on the team headed for Beijing and a team bronze medal.  Burch recalls the first thing Joey asked as they met for congratulations following Trials was, “Do I get my picture on the wall now?”  He not only got a mural but was given pick of where it would go.  Hagerty chose the wall he’d knocked a hole in while learning (and missing a few) Kovacs!

Joey Hagerty: 2008 Olympic Bronze Medalist

Bagiu states having his picture on the wall is equivalent to having his star on the Walk of Fame.  Hagerty agrees:

“The picture on the wall means the world.  Growing up at Gold Cup one of my goals was to be on the wall.  I would go into the gym every day and look at them thinking what it would be like if I was up there, and now I am!  Having my picture on the wall is like I just got the Olympic medal put around my neck again it means that much. Some of the greatest gymnasts of all times are on the wall.”

Hagerty went a step further to tease his former teammate Bagiu by noting his mural is bigger.  That’s why they call him the Roach.

Each mural was painstakingly traced using an overhead projector and painted by Burch perched atop a extension ladder.  It takes between 20 and 30 hours to complete each one.  Hagerty’s was hardest because it is over the pit.  When asked about missing Gold Cup alum Chainey Umphrey, Burch says at the time he approached him, Umphrey declined to have his image included.

At the end of his career Burch says his only goal unfulfilled was being named Olympic coach, but he feels good knowing he’s aided many young men in achieving their Olympic dreams.  You can visit Gold Cup Gymnastics online at:  http://goldcupgymnastics.com/.