Kim Hamilton Anthony

Kim Hamilton Anthony (born 1967 or 1968) is an American motivational speaker and former artistic gymnast. Representing the UCLA Bruins, she won the floor exercise title at the NCAA Gymnastics Championships in 1987, 1988, and 1989, becoming the first female gymnast to win three straight NCAA titles in an individual category. After gymnastics, she began working as a Christian chaplain and motivational speaker.

Early gymnastics career

Watching Nadia Comăneci at the 1976 Olympics on television inspired Hamilton at age nine to learn gymnastics, and she taught herself to tumble on her living room floor and on sidewalks. She soon trained at a proper gym, something her family paid for by cleaning the gym after hours. The first member of her family to go to college, Hamilton from age nine aspired to go to UCLA because of its decorated men's basketball program. One judge said of her: "She's absolutely beautiful and executes flawlessly".

In her first year, while helping UCLA to finish third at the 1987 NCAA Championships, Hamilton earned a score of 9.80 in floor exercise, winning the event and setting a meet record. During the 1988 season, she injured her neck and back mislanding a vault, but returned to competition two weeks later. At the 1988 NCAA Championships, she repeated her first-place result, again receiving a 9.80 floor score, and finished in third place in all-around.

Ahead of the 1989 NCAA Championships, where UCLA would be seeded No. 1, Hamilton developed a new floor routine, saying she wanted "the challenge". At the NCAA's, she had a chance to seize the team championship with an exceptional floor exercise, needing to score 9.95 to put UCLA in a tie with Georgia, but came 0.05 short. This made her the first female gymnast to win the same NCAA championship three times in a row. Additionally, Hamilton had a surprising first-place finish in vault with a routine that scored 9.75 (another meet record) and included her first competitive Cuervo.

Post-gymnastics

Hamilton (known after marriage as Kim Anthony) discovered spirituality through her future husband, whose teaching about Christianity comforted her not long after she was held at gunpoint in mid-1987. She additionally served as an AIA chaplain for the wives of NFL head coaches and executives.

Anthony spent ten years writing Unfavorable Odds, a memoir about her upbringing and gymnastics career, which was published in 2010. She hosted an Unfavorable Odds podcast for FamilyLife, a division of Cru, beginning in 2019.

Personal life

Kim Hamilton was born to teenage parents in Richmond, Virginia. They lived in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, while serving the Miami Dolphins, before moving to Xenia, Ohio, the headquarters of AIA, in 2011, when Corwin was promoted to an executive position.