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.
