Trent Dimas

Trent Dimas is the final 2014 inductee to the New Mexico Sports Hall of Fame to be profiled here.  He was a Olympic gold medalist in gymnastics. 

Dimas was born in 1970 in Albuquerque and is a graduate of Eldorado High School.  At the time of his Olympic appearance he was a nationally and internationally ranked athlete having competed in the Goodwill Games and Pan American Games.  He had won the American Cup and was the U.S. Men’s Vault Champion, Parallel Bars Champion and Horizontal Bar Champion. 

His Olympic moment came on the last day of the last event of the Barcelona Olympics in 1992.  The American team was languishing in 6th place.  Dimas was next to last on the list of performers after being the final person selected for the team at the Olympic Trials in Maryland months before.  Trent Dimas’ high bar routine lasted only one minute and is shown here in the YouTube link below. 

Trent Dimas Olympic Gold Medal Performance, 1992

The video only takes about 2 minutes to watch from start to finish and is well worth the time.  It is an electrifying performance that energized his team and the crowd.  Dimas scored 9.875 out of a possible 10.  This was only the second time that an American gymnast had one a gold medal at an Olympics held outside the United States, the first being Frank Kriz in Paris in 1924.  It is also believed that this is the first time that an American of Hispanic heritage had won an Olympic Gold Medal in the sport of gymnastics.

This was Dimas’ only appearance in the Olympic Games.  Before the Olympics, Trent and his brother Ted had entered University of Nebraska but Trent had left school after his freshman year to pursue his Olympic dream.  After the Olympics he went on to graduate from Columbia University with a BA degree in Political Science and University of New Mexico School of Law.  At this writing, he is living in Albuquerque and serving as Director of Development for the University of New Mexico Foundation.