Shawn Johnson's Biography

Shawn Johnson's father, Doug, was a carpenter, and her mother, Teri was an accounting clerk for the West Des Moines school district in Iowa.

Shawn started walking before she was 9 months old.

When she was a toddler, Shawn Johnson's parents sent her to ballet and then a tumbling class as a way of burning off her excessive energy. Shawn then moved to gymnastics and when she was just 6, she began training with coach Liang Chow, a top-class competitor for China who had a gym in West Des Moines.

Shawn Johnson went to four schools in West Des Moines: Westridge Elementary, Indian Hills Junior High, Valley Southwoods Freshman High and Valley High.

At the 2008 Olympic Games, Shawn Johnson was just 16, about 4ft 8in tall and 90 lbs. She won gold in the beam and 3 silvers in the team, floor exercise and individual all-around categories.

Her autobiography Shawn Johnson: Olympic Champion: Stories Behind the Smile was published in December 2008.

In 2009, Shawn Johnson and Mark Ballas won Dancing with the Stars season 8.

She was the youngest ever competitor on Dancing with the Stars.

After Dancing with the Stars, her activities included being a judge on the Miss America pageant and being featured on the milk mustache ad for the "Got Milk?" ad campaign.

However she put other activities on hold in a bid to make an Olympics gymnastics comeback at London 2012.

In 2010 the BBC revealed that Shawn Johnson had written a poem which started:

"You fear the loss and pain of defeat
but still are able to stand on two feet,
You crumble and cry as much as you want,
but nothing can keep you away from the hunt,
this is what you've been working for,
the pride and honour as you take to the floor … "

In 2015 she was a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice.

In 2016, she married NFL player Andrew East.