CHICAGO -- It would figure that being the daughter of a famous Olympic athlete would lead her to following in her mother's footsteps in that sport.
But the story of Kelly McCormick, daughter of four-time Olympic gold medal winning diver Pat McCormick, isn't quite that simple.
The younger McCormick will be representing the United States in the 3-meter springboard diving competition at the Los Angeles Olympics later this summer.
However, this isn't the story of a youngster diving in the pool at age 3 for the home movie cameras to show off for her mother. In fact, the 23-year-old McCormick's original chosen sport was not diving, but gymnastics.
'I really didn't think much about diving. I was a gymnast until I was about 15 years old,' says McCormick, born in Long Beach, Calif. but now diving out of Columbus, Ohio.
It wasn't her mother that made her switch. It was recreational hobbies. McCormick found she didn't have the time to do some of the things she wanted when she wasn't practicing, so she switched to diving.
'You couldn't go snow skiing or some of the other things I liked because of the demands of practicing for gymnastics,' McCormick says. 'So I took up diving. It allowed me more time for fun.'
It isn't that McCormick doesn't take diving seriously or put in the practice time necessary to be the premier springboard diver in the country.
Her coach, Vince Panzano, pointed to her preparation for her victory in the Olympic trials held earlier this month at the Indiana University Natatorium.
'She worked hard -- I mean hard. Practiced hard,' Panzano said. 'It paid off for her.'
McCormick had a strong, if volatile, relationship with her coach.
Frustrated by a nagging back injury earlier in the spring, McCormick considered quitting altogether because of poor performances off the springboard, according to Panzano.
'About a week and a half before the trials, she came up to me and said she didn't want to dive in the trials if she couldn't do better,' Panzano recalls. 'I told her to get off her ass and start working ... or get out of the pool.'
After a 20-minute session, McCormick came away resolved to fight off the pain and continue training.
'What most people don't know is that she is diving with a lot of pain, and I mean a lot of pain,' Panzano says. 'It's a tribute to her character that she is where she is.'
McCormick says she was in traction in June and had to go to a sports medicine clinic to get 'shaped up' in time for the trials. It paid off. She won the trials, beating out her best friend and fellow Olympian, Chris Seufert.
As she was diving, her mother, a gold medal winner in 1952 and 1956, looked on. Publicly, McCormick says little about any influence her mother has had on her current success.
Privately, sources have said the two have a 'strained' relationship, at best, and that the younger McCormick prefers to talk more about her accomplishments than her mother's past glory.
But there will be continued inevitable comparisons between the two, especially if the younger McCormick can duplicate her mother's Olympic title winning performance at the Summer Games.
