After seeing Laurie Hernandez win Olympic gymnastics gold, “everything changed for me”

Growing up, Colombian American gymnast Luisa Blanco was surrounded by greatness since she moved as a young girl from Los Angeles to the Dallas suburbs.

When football (soccer) season ended – her family devoted fans of the Colombian national team – her mum channelled her boundless energy from living-room leaps to gymnastics.

Her talent was evident early on as coaches at World Olympic Gymnastics Academy (WOGA) quickly told Blanco’s mother they wanted to see where it could all go.

“The gym owner approached my mum and said, ‘I think your daughter has something, and I’d love to explore that with you,’” Blanco recalled in an exclusive interview with Olympics.com. “I started at WOGA because it was the closest gym to home.

“It was luck after that,” she continued. “Looking back after many years, it’s a place where Olympians are raised. While I was training at WOGA, I saw all these incredible girls like [junior U.S. champion] Katelyn Ohashi, [world and Olympic champion] Madison Kocian, [world champion] Alyssa Baumann.”

While Blanco is clear that talented trio inspired her, there was something missing: women who looked like her.

“Even though they weren’t Latinas, they were in my group, and I could take inspiration from them,” she says. “But being Latina in a space where there aren’t many Latinos is very difficult, especially in artistic gymnastics.”

But then, Laurie Hernandez changed the landscape for Blanco when she became the first Latina US gymnast since 2004’s Annia Hatch.

“I think in 2016 is when everything changed for me, seeing Laurie Hernandez do what she did,” said Blanco about the member of the 'Final Five' who won team gold at Rio 2016. “At that moment, the idea of representing Latinos became something I wanted to do in the future.”

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