My sport wrapped up coverage yesterday. Which actually is probably a good thing as I’ve been waking up early to follow Twitter feeds and staying up late to watch NBC’s tape delayed coverage. Don’t ask me why I didn’t get my cable company password set up until today, I just didn’t. As a result, I’m pretty lacking in sleep – not that I’m not normally an insomniac but this is self-induced. My doctor might take away my Ambien™ prescription if she knew (Hi Doc! The pills are working great, thanks!) but I’m pretty sure she’s not following this blog.
What have I been following?, you ask. What haven’t I, more like. But the sport nearest and dearest to my heart is and always will be women’s artistic gymnastics. I know it’s a lot of people’s favorite sport to watch, always covered in prime time, and always strong on ratings but since I have buckets – nay, barrels – of blood, sweat, and tears invested in the sport I can get a little crazy every four years or so. Put it this way: this is the first time in 20 years that I have not gone to U.S. Olympic Trials.
I’m a recovered gymnast, coach, and judge but by no means does this make me an expert on the sports current rules. Unlike track or swimming where the fastest individual or team always wins, world without end amen, the sport of gymnastics is ever-evolving with changes in equipment, requirements and rules. “Why, back when I was a gymnast” …the best score possible was a 10.0, we vaulted on a horse, and your bar setting was from your palm to your hip bone so that you could beat/wrap the bar. Only boys wore dowel grips and swung giants, vocals were verboten in floor music, and you’d be deducted for wearing jewelry let alone having a visible tattoo. No one wore glitter in their hair or sparkly leotards, although even back in the day Eastern Europeans, specifically the Soviets (yeah, that long ago) and Romanians had bad makeup. I guess some things don’t change.
Nadia Comaneci, Montreal 1976
(Photo: Getty Images)
My SO asked me about “that perfect 10 chick” (sacrilege to not know her name!), “I don’t know anything about gymnastics but her routine didn’t look that hard.” Sigh. Things are different, plain and simple. The BB routine Nadia Comaneci did as an Olympian in 1976 would only have a start value of about 4.3 according to the current FIG Code. As far as I can tell it’s missing a required dance combination and only gets .1 in connections for the D+B acro combo of an aerial to a back handspring step out. And for all those judge haters out there, freakin’ TRY to memorize the entire Code of Points (revised edition every quadrennium!) and just keep track of what’s in a routine without even taking execution errors or calculating start value. Both BB and FX are 90 seconds max, penalties for overtime. UB and V are over in the blink of an eye or, God forbid, a poorly timed sneeze. How many twists in the air was that? Was that turn a 2½ or a triple? Were those skills connected? And yes, it sucks when an athlete has to wait while they calculate the score of the gymnast before her, and yes, it can mess with her head but guess what? The judges are stressing too! Are you kidding me? I wouldn’t be Nellie Kim if you paid me €1M! (Okay maybe I would if I could go back to my real identity post-Olympics and wouldn’t have to hear all the whining about scores and politics.) The worse the routine the harder the judges are working, trust me. I have, when judging high school gymnastics, come up with negative scores. We never gave them, of course, but you comb your memory banks, you calculate and recalculate and you question your senses, your knowledge, and ability every time there’s a poor performance. It’s not easy and often your knowledge and efforts are unappreciated by athletes, coaches, parents and uneducated spectators.
Uncredited Twitter pic of Oscar Pistorius and Ellie Challs
There are some who say it’s not a sport because it’s subjective. To them I say Φ¢kQ: anybody can run*; not anybody can do what an Olympic gymnast can do. Even on a bad day, he or she can do things you can’t even imagine doing. Do you know how wide four inches is? My smart phone is longer than a beam is wide. When Gabby Douglas fell off beam, did you see where it came up to on her body? Almost to her armpits. When I was coaching, some of my little peanut gymnasts were terrified of going from sitting on the low bar to hanging on the high bar, a little pop done by pushing against your hands and upper thighs and springing forward and upward. I couldn’t understand it. Until I sat on the low bar and saw how far I had to go, that is. Mind you, this was as an experienced 5’0″ 20-something. My babies were anywhere from 6 to 16 years old, some of them just over 3′ tall (granted, also some taller and heavier than me). For them it was the Grand Canyon, a seemingly insurmountable chasm that promised certain death if you failed. And they did it. Sometimes with tears, sometimes after threats of massive quantities of pushups, sometimes only if their favorite trick or event was withheld or if bribed with stickers or rubber stamps. And sometimes they just went for it. The heart of a lion can exist in a child. Don’t tell me it’s not a sport.
I’m proud of how well the Americans did. Sad for Jordan Weiber, McKayla Maroney, and John Orozco but they know it’s the nature of the sport. It doesn’t matter how many times you hit it in practice, if you don’t hit when you’re competing you don’t win. Brutal, heartbreaking, and true. I was happy to see the old guard make a strong stand. I remember seeing Oksana Chusovitina, now 37 and just retired from competing for Germany, win FX at World Championships in 1991 (I got the whole Soviet women’s team’s photo & autographs!); watching Jordan Jovtchev (BUL) on rings when his hair was still dark (7th place on rings – not bad for 39!); Catalina Ponor (the old lady turns 25 in a couple of weeks) medalling on BB & FX and Beth Tweddle (Team GBs most decorated gymnast at 27) medalling on UB at the 2003 Worlds in Anaheim. I am ecstatic that Epke Zonderland won HB (even Samuel L. Jackson loved it – oh wait he muthafqqn luvs everything Olympic) and that Deng Linlin won BB. Ultimately I’m a fan of the sport (ya think?) more than a fan of just the U.S. team.
I could go on and on about gymnastics. As I said, I’m a bit of a zealot about my sport and the Olympics. But women’s artistic gymnastics at the 30th Olympiad is now one for the books. My task now is to bone up on taekwondo so I can have a somewhat intelligent conversation with the SO over the next four days. It’d be so much easier if he was a swimmer…
Uncredited photo of the 2012 Australian Olympic Swim Team on Manly Beach, Sydney (more photos on SquareHippie.com just be aware it’s a gay site – not that there’s anything wrong with that (Seinfeld).)
*Not saying anybody can run like an Olympic athlete!
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