So far the 29th olympiad has been a mixture of emotions for me, but right now I'm on Cloud 9!!! The women's gymnastic individual all around just finished and WOW!!! What a night!!!! I'm so excited and happy for Shawn to earn the silver, and for Nastia to earn the...GOLD!!! Those 2 girls have dreamed their whole lives for this moment, and while you wish they could have tied for gold, going 1-2 is pretty darn amazing!!!
Only a few Americans have won the Olympics (individual) all around: Mary Lou, Carly Patterson and now Nastia Liukin. What prestigious company! And Shawn Johnson is no slouch. This is only the 2nd time in major competition that Nastia has edged her out.
I love gymnastics- it is a sport of definite skill, strength, stamina, beauty and grace under pressure. There is a lot that needs to be changed in my sport, but there is also so much good in it as well. I hate that it is only spotlighted for a few months every 4 years.
Most people know the infamous flaws in the gymnastics system: the eating disorders that come from a sport that is judged on looks. There is also the huge potential for injury, from the frustrating to the deadly. The only sport that rivals gymnastics for its injury potential is American Football. Gymnastics is not a sport for whimps- it is a sport for the brave- in more ways than one.
For the women you have to do so much.
On vault: you propel yourself down the runway, rocket off a springboard, bounce off the vaulting table, flip through the air and try to land on your feet, without moving them!
On the floor: you dance, you flip (multiple times) you twirl and you try your best to stay in bounds and look graceful.
On the uneven p-bars: you have to mount them, use your abs and your arms to flip over them, swing over them, go from 1 to another, do handstands, and then propel yourself off of them by doing a series of flips, and once again land in a "stuck" landing.
on the balance beam(my favorite): you have to get on it. It is over 4 feet from the ground. And then you have to stay on it, which is not that easy because it is only 4 inches wide. The key here is to keep your hips centered over the beam. But you are not just walking up and the down the 10 feet. You are flipping, turning, jumping and flying. And then you have to dismount- once again in a flip that lands in a "stick".
If that doesn't sound hard enough- you have to make everything look beautiful and easy! Man- what a wonderful sport!!! Don't you just love it!!! I do- I admire what these girls are doing, it is gorgeous.
Ok- you might have noticed that scoring has changed. No longer are scores just worth 10.0 these days. Scores have 2 parts: the A score is based on how difficult your routine is- most Olympic level routines are anywhere from 5.2 in difficulty up to 7.9. This difficulty is based on the type of moves you do, and how you connect them to each other. The B score is the more traditional looking score. For the B score everyone starts with a 10.0 and every little mistake you make gets subtracted from that 10. And then the A tally and the B tally are added together and you have your score. In these Olympics we saw everything from 11.0 to 16.9- a wide range. Most girls average in the 15's or low 16's.
So that is my sport- the sport of graceful daredevilism I like to think. And to think that 2 teenagers from the USA just achieved the sport's highest honor!!! WOW! WAY TO GO!!!
-JLK/PRT-
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