Gymnast Dominique Moceanu was her idol. Then she discovered they were sisters.
In 1996, Jen Bricker was glued to the TV watching the U.S. women’s gymnastic team at the Atlanta Olympic Games.
Bricker idolized one gymnast in particular: Dominique Moceanu, the youngest member of the team.
“She was tiny, but she was so strong. Just like me,” Bricker said in the documentary She Looks Like Me. “I was drawn to her…She was doing all these amazing things and I thought ‘I think I can do that.’”
Born without legs, Bricker was left at the hospital by her biological parents. She was adopted by a family that encouraged her to try anything.
“Gerald and I raised our kids the way we were both raised. If you want to do something, go for it,” said Sharon Bricker, Jen’s mother.
Inspired by Moceanu, Bricker started power tumbling. She was the first person in the U.S. to compete in power tumbling without legs, winning the Illinois state championship and placing fourth in the Junior Olympics, against able-bodied athletes.
“That desire, which is what drove me to work so hard, was natural,” said Bricker.
A shocking discovery
When Bricker was 15, she asked Sharon if she knew anything about her biological parents that she hadn’t told her. Sharon revealed that Bricker’s adoption paperwork showed their names: Camelia and Dimitri Moceanu.
Dominique Moceanu, Jen Bricker’s childhood idol, was her older sister.
In She Looks Like Me, Bricker and Moceanu share the shock of finding out about each other, look back at their very different childhoods and explore what’s happened since their lives unexpectedly intersected 20 years ago.
Watch it now on CBC Gem.
