Dianne Durham, the first Black national champion of US gymnastics, dies at 52 At just 14 years old, Dianne Durham stood before thousands of spectators on the biggest stage in American gymnastics. She’d just hurt her foot in an earlier, near-perfect balance beam routine — but she wasn’t thinking about the pain, she told a CBS reporter. She’d been “having too much fun to let it bother” her, she said. She didn’t let the pressure of being one of the only Black competitors at the 1983 Gymnastics Championships of the USA bother her either — she was poised to become its first Black champion.