Balancing act

After Beijing, Alicia Sacramone juggles college, gymnastics, and a search for her next starring role

Olympic gymnast Alicia Sacramone is back at Brown University and has a career in fashion - and maybe a spot on ''Dancing With the Stars'' - on her mind. (JONATHAN WIGGS/GLOBE STAFF)

PROVIDENCE - Catch a glimpse of Alicia Sacramone, Olympic gymnast, striding along Thayer Street, and her high brown boots and snug purse may seem to put her out of step with the flip-flop-wearing students toting backpacks full of obligations toward the Brown University campus.

If there were only this brief observation, it would be easy to think that the uber-fit 20-year-old was just passing through, drawing attention en route to who knows where. But on a fall day, Sacramone, who plans to return to Brown next year as a second-semester sophomore, stopped at a Starbucks and took a window seat for an interview. She quickly rattled off details of a more rooted existence - "We have a house off campus, and I have five other roommates, which is crazy" - and recounted post-Olympic travels that first took her back home to Winchester, to Providence, then on to Oprah, in Chicago, to New York's Fashion Week, and to Los Angeles and San Diego, to meet with Hollywood agents and to take part in a gymnastics publicity tour.

"It's basically striking while the iron's hot," Sacramone said.

Fame, particularly the kind experienced by Sacramone in recent months, can be as famously fleeting as that. After laboring in gyms since age 8, she had achieved great success in a sport often overlooked, except during Olympic years, when vaulters and tumblers turn up on television screens around the world. Had Sacramone, a former world champion in floor competition and an unusually seasoned team captain, nailed her performances on the balance beam and floor during this summer's games, the US women might have won gold. (Many contend US chances against the Chinese were never realistic.) In any case, Sacramone fell.

Her televised presence did briefly earn "Alicia Sacramone is hot" top billing on Google Trends. At 4:47 p.m. the day after her missteps, though, "cbh49er" predicted on an Olympics blog how America would react to Sacramone: "And promptly forget about her in a couple weeks."

At Starbucks, Sacramone answered obvious questions eagerly, at ease with landing so squarely in the public eye. After the Starbucks conversation, more about where Sacramone has been and where she hopes to go arrived quickly, like a back flip onto a beam.

In the gym
Just past 3 p.m., Sacramone enters the practice facility at Brown's Paul Bailey Pizzitola Memorial Sports Center and slips a CD of dance music she burned that afternoon into the stereo. Sacramone, a volunteer coach for the team, leads a dozen gymnasts through warm-ups, and Ricky Harris, a Brown assistant coach and member of national championship teams at the University of Nebraska, watches.

"Rock star there," he says, pointing at Sacramone. "Rock star!"

After missing the Olympics in 2004, Sacramone chose Brown over UCLA largely for better balance: to be closer to long-time personal coach Mihai Brestyan, and to be closer to family and friends in the Northeast. She had already won gold with a floor routine at the World Championships in 2005. As a Brown freshman, she dominated, breaking school records in three events, winning ECAC rookie of the year, and finishing first in every event at the Ivy Classic.

Harris remembers Sacramone performing through injuries: "She's just got the crazy pain tolerance."

Pushing older Brown gymnasts: "They knew, 'I gotta do my part, because she would kill herself for the team.' "

And recovering from Olympic missteps: "She's not going to run and hide. Not at all. I'd take a billion of her every day."

One woman flips and turns across the mat, and Sacramone torques her own body, arms overhead, and calls out: "You went higher, but you just need to know where you are in the air."

Later, Sacramone sits on the end of a balance beam. She is nursing a knee injury and a torn labrum in her shoulder, and she tells a few gymnasts gathered around her about the ongoing gymnastics publicity tour, in which a coach cautioned performers not to fall.

"I'm like, someone should have given me that memo at the Olympics," Sacramone jokes.

It's better than the alternative.

Brown coach Sara Carver-Milne remembered seeing Sacramone after her return from the Olympics.

"She definitely had many tears at the time," Carver-Milne said. "It was hard on her."

Sacramone calls the gymnasts to the mat and gives them a series of core strengthening exercises. Then, alone, she hangs from a bar and lifts her legs 180 degrees to her chest. She pumps out a quick set of 10.

Crossing campus
Sacramone turns from Thayer Street into the green-leafed, brick-buildinged sanctuary of Brown's Lincoln Field. She says that the 1996 Olympics, when the US women won gold (and Sacramone was 9), sparked her commitment to gymnastics. Her September trip to New York's Fashion Week, where she met designer Max Azria and others, did the same for clothing design. She admires fashions by Marc Jacobs and Tom Ford, but hopes to create clothes for everyday wear. One adviser suggested that Sacramone should try to get a spot as a judge on "Project Runway."

"I was like, 'That would be sick!'," Sacramone says. "Like, I'd love to do that."

Others?

" 'Dancing With the Stars.' Hands down! Ah, man, I'd love to," she says.

Since the Olympics, Sacramone has been traveling nearly every week in what is becoming a yearlong exploration of everything from acting classes to sports marketing and public speaking. She was scheduled to perform as part of the Tour of Gymnastics Superstars at TD Banknorth Garden last night. Sacramone's agent, Kelly Downing, of TrinityOne Worldwide, said that were a role on television to emerge, for example, Sacramone would jump at the chance. More likely, though, are smaller connections. "It's a time to meet great people," Downing said, "to take all the opportunity available, and then get back to school."

Sacramone has promised her parents she will graduate from Brown and, as she stands among the university's academic buildings, she details a plan to mix courses in economics, sociology, and art.

"I'm trying to compile it all so I can have it be a design-business type of major," Sacramone says, "so I can start my own company, my own fashion line."

Near the steps of Faunce House, Brown's student center, she hugs two friends.

"Are you going to do a TV show?" one of them, Steve Daniels, asks Sacramone. "I'll be the cameo guy. Come in, 'What's going on?' "

Daniels already plays the part: dressed in sweatshirt and jeans, iPod cord dangling from his pocket, baseball cap turned backward.

He turns to leave: "I've just got to run."

Moving on
Sacramone walks beneath Faunce Arch and, after turning east on Waterman Street, laughs at the mention of her other most-viewed moment: a video of the time she punched a guy in the face. It has been played on YouTube more than one million times. After taking Sacramone's shot to his right jawbone, the man in the video appears to drop to the ground, unconscious.

"Out cold," Sacramone says, confirming the fate of the man, whom she calls a friend. "He was like, 'I dare you. You're not tough.' I had to stand on a step because he was taller than me."

Sacramone turns back up Thayer, and before a pleasant goodbye, reacts to the mention of salsa dancing in Cuba.

"OK, weird thing," she says. "I love like salsa music, and like meringue, and the cha cha and tango. . . . I love it all. Like, I secretly want to be a ballroom dancer."