20 years later, the ‘Magnificent Seven’ are still amazing, still close and still hyped for USA Gymnastics

When the Summer Olympics start in Rio this year, a great deal of attention will be paid to the American women’s gymnastic team. Four years after the “Fierce Five” took over in London by winning gold in the team all-around competition, a new group led by 19-year-old phenom Simone Biles will try to protect that title in Brazil.

They’ll be looking to continue a tradition of excellence that started 20 years ago in Atlanta with a group of young women dubbed the “Magnificent Seven.” It was that team -- led by Shannon Miller, the most decorated American gymnast in Olympic history -- that won the United States’ first-ever gold medal in team all-around. In the process, its members became national superstars we still celebrate to this day.

The 20th anniversary of the Magnificent Seven’s triumph is on July 23, and it’s a day that remains special to the seven women who won gold in Atlanta two decades ago. To honor them, NBC has put together a big package of interviews and videos with the group reflecting on their amazing victory in 1996. Miller, Kerri Strug, Dominique Dawes, Dominique Moceanu, Amanda Borden, Jaycie Phelps and Amy Chow have moved on to new professions and lives, but they’re still connected by what they accomplished together.

And indeed, it was magnificent. Not only did the Magnificent Seven jump and flip their way into the history books, but they provided some of the greatest moments in Olympic history. As we celebrate what those women pulled off 20 years ago, here’s a look at what’s so cool about the Magnificent Seven.

For Americans, there’s no greater Olympic moment than a bunch of college kids beating the Soviet Union in ice hockey at the 1980 Winter Games. It was the day Al Michaels asked the world if it believed in miracles because it certainly felt like one had just happened.

The Magnificent Seven’s victory in Atlanta is on a similar, if not greater, magnitude. Like ice hockey, gymnastics was a sport dominated by the Soviet Union throughout the 20th century. From 1950 through 1992, the Soviet Union (or its former members as the Unified Team) won women’s team all-around gold in every Olympics they entered. Only in 1984 when the Soviet Union boycotted the Games in Los Angeles did another country, Romania, take the top prize.

So the Magnificent Seven entered competition in Atlanta, on their home soil, looking to end a run of dominance that’s almost unheard of in sports. The Soviet Union or the Unified Team had won 10 straight golds in gymnastics. Even the American ice hockey team had won gold as recently as 1960, just two decades before its greatest feat.

The resulting medal ceremony, with an injured Strug being carried by her coach to the podium wearing a cast on her left leg, was almost surreal.

Strug’s vault is an all-time great Olympic moment
It’s one of the Olympics’ most enduring moments. Strug was the final gymnast up for the U.S. in the vault with the team holding a commanding lead over the Russians. All she needed to do was avoid disaster in order to clinch gold for the Americans.

But on Strug’s first attempt, she injured her ankle, causing her to fall and get an underwhelming score of 9.162. In retrospect, this would’ve been enough to win gold anyway because of a poor showing by the final Russian in the floor exercise, but at the time Strug needed to complete her second vault to establish her score.

So an injured Strug limped back to the runway, needing to land one more vault to clinch gold. Few athletes in Olympic history have faced as much pressure in a single moment as Strug did there. What happened next was pretty much out of a movie.

Strug could barely walk up to the runway, but managed to push herself into a full sprint. How she did this on one ankle -- adrenaline, pride, some combination of the two -- is almost unfathomable. And yet her execution was almost perfect in jumping, flipping and landing, even though she couldn’t put any weight on one foot. After just a few seconds, she collapsed to her knees. The crowd was going nuts the whole time.

“I always know on the 23rd of July, I kind of know that this is the day my life changed,” Strug said in a recent NBC interview.

There have been a lot of special moments in Olympic history. For Strug, and the country as a whole, this is near the top.

They try to stay close
It’s hard staying together with friends from your younger days as you get older, create families and move into that next phase of life, but the Magnificent Seven still try to keep up with each other. A recent reunion in San Jose held by Team USA was the first time all seven had been together since 2008 at the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame induction ceremony, but they had no trouble getting along again.

They’re hyped about Simone Biles, too
Biles wasn’t even alive when the Magnificent Seven were delighting the world, but she’s the leader of the next wave of great American gymnasts. And as the U.S. enters Rio with high expectations in the sport, it owes a lot to the path that the Magnificent Seven set as athletes and role models.

“We watched video of Mary Lou Retton winning the gold medal and it was so inspiring, so hopefully we continue to inspire even decades later,” Miller said to NBC recently.

The Magnificent Seven set the model, and now Biles will try to carry the torch. Joined on a team with 2012 gold medal winners Gabby Douglas and Aly Raisman, the Americans boast no shortage of star power. And in Biles, Miller believes the U.S. has a truly special talent.

I think Simone is absolutely incredible, she is amazing. One of the things I love about her is that she kind of blows the doors off of all the typical things you think about gymnastics with specialists. Well, if you’re good on bars and beam, you’re probably not quite as good on floor and vault, or vice versa. While Simone’s extremely powerful, great on vault and floor, but she’s able to contain it even on balance beam. Which is absolutely incredible, and that puts her heads and tails, that and her difficulty, put her heads and tails above everyone else.

Dawes added: “It’s unsaid how amazing Simone is.”

As amazing as that 1996 team? We’ll just have to wait and see.