If you don’t already know I am the USA women’s gymnastics SuperFan. Seriously, their Number One Fan. I’ve watched every competition since 2005. I know those girls’ routines by heart and I’d been looking forward to last night’s Team Finals for, oh, forever.
So, the turn things took yesterday evening was painful to say the least. I was watching a trainwreck and the whole you can’t look away thing did not apply. I covered my eyes for…a lot.
If you didn’t watch, Team USA was the favorite before arriving in Beijing. They had a couple injured athletes that messed things up quite a bit for the prelims and finals, but everyone figured it would be a very close matchup between us and China.
Unfortunately, no. It was a blowout and, even more unfortunately, the blowout was caused almost completely by one girl: Alicia Sacramone.
Could the US have lost without the help of her two falls? Sure. Of course. But it’s really hard to say. Her fall on balance beam, as the first US athlete to perform on the event was bad. Then, her fall on floor as the first US athlete to perform was way, way worse. A measly 14.125 was awarded. Ouch.
Nastia and Shawn performed beautifully despite the disastrous turn of events.
It might seem like I’m angry at Alicia, but I’m not. She and Shawn are my favorite athletes on that team. The look on Alicia’s face made my heart hurt.
She’s a girl in serious need of her mom.
Ugh. And then watching her interviewed afterward? Brutal. I can’t believe she held it together that well. I’d have puked. Literally.
By the look on her face though, I’m pretty sure she thought she was going to wake up any moment. But even in her wildest nightmares she probably never would have thought that she would lose a gold medal for her team. Never would she have thought that she would fall TWICE and step out of bounds.
If you haven’t watched the moment of her second fall on floor, you might want to. It’s one of the most human/painful moments to watch.
Ok, so yeah, this post is completely unrelated to everything this site usually offers. I’ll try to bring it back.
As writers, we complain a lot about rejection, a lot about failure. But as bad as it gets and as many rejection letters as you receive, remember that never do you fail in front of a billion people. Never do you have to give an interview after to sum up how you failed and why you’re such a screw up.
Most importantly, you can never fall on your ass if you are already sitting in front of a keyboard on it.
Remember that.
Ok, so was that uplifting or what?
Status: In my new apartment! My mom did an amazing job on it. It looks fabulous. Now, the trick is keeping it that way. I’m making my way through Eclipse. I know, I know, I’m WAY behind, but my boyfriend decided to steal both the books and, well, it’s not my fault. Ok?
A few hiccups with SCOUT. I’m going to need some serious positive thoughts from you guys. Scott, the artist, injured his wrist badly. I’ve notified a couple of the agents and we’ll see what they say. But send the karma this way please. And I’m going to keep remembering that I’m paying my dues.
Actually, that is a pretty good reminder! Another reminder we’re given from Alicia’s performance last night is to get up and do it again. When we fail, it’s often easy to give up. She failed in front of the world and got up to do it again. And then she failed again.
These athletes have more guts than most of us could dare to have!
And how about Chellsie Memmel competing on a broken ankle, not a sprain. Amazing heart these girls have. Silver medals, hearts of gold!
Unfortunately, there have been quite a few times that I’ve fallen on my ass while sitting in front of a keyboard.
I’m a former gymnast and while never competitive, it didn’t keep me from having the bat-poop insane coaches that the competitive girls had. Just in front of other gymnasts, tumbling on a 4 inch wide wooden beam is nerve-wracking, especially when you’re afraid of heights. You’re thinking “I have to land this, I have to get it right, I have to not fall off, I have to not land on my head, I have to not slip and land in very bad places.” I can only imagine the magnification of that in front of the entire world.
Although I think being a gymnast made me better able to cope with the rejection, stand up and doing it again and all of that. I remember one time I was complaining of pain in my wrists and my coach comes up to me and says, “Are you broken? No? Then shut up, get up and do it again.” I was 7 and in noncompentitive gymnastics. Funnily enough now I have multiple cysts in each wrist. You are taught from the second you start to suck it up and do it again. When I was 8 I pulled my core muscles, making breathing rather difficult. I only told my dad for the first time about it a couple months ago. I was gasping for a week when I did that. Miscalculate on a vault and you’re launching straight into it instead of over it. Miss on the bars and say hello to the floor (or the other bar). Lets count the blunt head traumas, shall we?
I think every writer should be a gymnast, if only for a year. They’ll definitely learn to stop their complaining and keep writing. Perseverance and all.
Hey! Maybe not as irrelevant as I thought. Thanks for the comments, you guys.
Donna, I, too, was a gymnast. I competed for about a billion years–ok 12. I hadn’t thought about it, but I think you are right. Gymnastics makes you very tough and that certainly can help deal with the stress of writing.
I also think it has helped me deal with time management. And I pray that carries over into my new life dealing with writing and law school simultaneously.
Mmm…OK, I was a competitive gymnast too, for about 10 years, so of course that’s one of my fave Olympic events to watch, too. Regarding what happened the other night, I have a few thoughts:
1. Yeah, it sucked to be A.S. – and yeah, she held it together on national (international?) TV much better than I would have.
2. Their level of difficulty is so amazing – the tumbling on the beam, especially. Shawn Johnson is incredible to watch.
3. However.,,the number and severity of the girls’ injuries makes me wonder about both their training and the demands that the sport is putting on them. Multiple injuries just in time for the Olympics? Not cool.
4. Seriously, the US gymnasts need to figure out where the boundaries are on the floor exercise. No excuse for how many times they went out, the first night of team competition. At that level, they should have an innate sense of where they are and where their tumbling passes are going to end.
5. The women’s team of 1996 was better than this group (sorry, Chandler
– Kerri Strug vaulting on a injured ankle to win the team gold medal goes down in history as one of the best Olympic moments in recent memory.
I really can’t agree that the ’96 team was better. I’ll agree with the Kerri Strug moment. Fine. But this group was far more talented. They just had bad injuries and a bad day. I mean, look at our 1-2 finish. That certainly says a lot.