A couple of years back, a former high school gymnast from Michigan named Julie Foucher was in the hunt to win the CrossFit Games—the fast-growing strength and endurance competition that determines, in its own words, "the fittest on earth." Over several days, Foucher lifted, swam, ran and jumped. Wait: that is making it sound way too much like a lazy day at sleep-away summer camp. The CrossFit Games are not a lazy afternoon at sleep-away summer camp. They can be grueling. Like her competitors, Foucher repeatedly pushed herself to the physical limit.

Then came handstand push-ups. If you are like me, you can do somewhere between zero and zero handstand push-ups. Foucher also encountered difficulty. Any chance at the title slipped away. Foucher took second in 2012. Not at all bad, though not first.

A medical student at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University—you must need to wear two school sweatshirts for all that—Foucher took a season off to focus on her studies. But 2014 loomed as a comeback year. Foucher began to ramp up her competitive training, working as usual with her longtime CrossFit coach, Doug Chapman. But she wanted a little outside help. Gymnastics help. Help on specifics like those handstand push-ups. She asked around, and discovered that there was a gymnast in the Cleveland area interested in helping her: Dominique Moceanu.

As in that Dominique Moceanu. Gymnastics idol, member of the Magnificent Seven, 14-year-old gold medalist at the 1996 Olympic Games. With her gymnast and doctor husband, Michael Canales, Moceanu had an affiliation with a Cleveland facility called Gymnastics World. Both Moceanu and Canales had been intrigued by the rising popularity of CrossFit—specifically how it employed gymnastic techniques, and the athleticism of its competitors. A connection with Foucher was made. "We reached out and said, 'Hey, if you ever need, we'd love to help out," Moceanu, now 32, said in a telephone interview earlier this summer.

"I don't normally get star-struck or nervous," said Foucher. "But when I found out I would get to meet her, I was really excited. I'd really looked up to her when I was a little girl."