|
BEIJING. CHINA |
 |
GAMES EDITION |
|
Engelhardt |
 |
From left, Olga Korbut, doing her floor exercise like any other adorable elf in 1972; Nadia Comaneci, striking a pose on her way to the first gymnastics perfect score in Olympic history; Mary Lou Retton, wondering which end is up on her way to Gold in 1984. All three helped make women's gymnastics a major crowd-pleasing event. |
Yes, it's personal! I love
women's gymnastics!
By JOANNE ENGELHARDT
of TheColumnists.com
Call me an Olympics junkie….call me fixated on women’s gymnastics...call me a sports nut. Call me anything, but don’t call me too late to watch the whole shebang of wonderful, thrilling gymnastics events coming up in less than a week.
It’s as if a strange malady comes over me every four years. Yes, the Winter Olympics are nice but I can take only so many snowsuit-wearing bodies swooshing out of the slalom starter gate before my eyes start to glaze over.
Not so with the Summer Games. I sit transfixed for hours watching everything from fabulous track and field to beach volleyball to diving and basketball. And then there’s gymnastics. I don’t know why, but I just can’t seem to get enough of watching those phenomenal little women hurl their bodies through the air in amazing feats of derring-do.
So, starting with the never-ending (and admittedly sometimes tedious) Opening Ceremonies on Friday, August 8, and continuing for 16 very long days culminating in the anti-climactic, but zany, Closing Ceremonies on Sunday, August 24, I’m going to be a couch potato of the first magnitude.
The really special days for me will be when gymnastics begins. According to my schedule, that’s Saturday, Aug. 9, running through Tuesday, the 19th (with a couple of days off in the middle to recoup my sanity and clean my house).
I can’t tell you when this fascination for all things gymnastic began. Probably it was in 1972 when I--and the rest of the world--watched that tiny mite Olga Korbut from the unknown country of Belarus singlehandedly turn gymnastics into the popular sport it is today. Olga had a sweet smile, an innocence and an elf-like physique. It was more than enough to capture all of our hearts.
By the early 1980s, when my youngest daughter, Erica, started school, she wanted to BE a gymnast, as did 18 million other little girls around the world. So, of course, I signed her up at the local gymnastics center. Though she was just six or so, her favorite trick seemed to be catapulting herself off the high bars, turning a somersault and landing on the mat below.
Until the day she missed the mat.
As I recall, it was two days before our family was going on a week’s vacation at a lake. I went to pick her up from gymnastics, and she begged me to let her practice a time or two more before leaving. She did the first one perfectly, and decided to do one more. That’s when disaster hit.
She fell on her arm, which looked a bit limp as I helped her up off the cement floor, Being the “compassionate” mother that I was, I brushed off her cries, telling her I was sure it was just a little sprain. I even stopped at a drug store on the way home, despite the tears and whimpers coming from the back seat of the car.
Once home, I began wondering whether we’d be able to take that lake vacation, especially when I called a friend in to examine Erica’s arm. One glance and she told me quite adamantly to get her to the emergency room right away.
I wish I could say that she had an x-ray and everything was fine. Instead, the x-ray showed her arm was broken in three places, and she went in for surgery that afternoon. I spent the night with her in the hospital, feeling horrendously guilty that I was more concerned about having our vacation ruined than I was about her injury. (Parenthetically, that was the night Prince Charles married Diana, so at least Erica and I got to watch it live in the middle of the night when neither of us could sleep.)
I guess you could say all’s well that ends well because we did go on our trip anyway. And Erica was the center of attention, sitting atop an inner tube, her cast-covered arm encased in a big garbage bag.
|
may be the world's favorite elf at Beijing. |
 |
That ended her gymnastics aspirations, but it didn’t put a damper on my interest in the sport during the Olympic Games. In 1976 Nadia Comaneci, while not quite as ‘cute’ as Olga, became my new heroine (and it was so great that Olga won gold once again).
By 1984, when Los Angeles hosted the Summer Olympics, the time was finally ripe for our U.S. gymnasts to shine. Who can ever forget the winning smile and grace of Mary Lou Retton, who won the individual all-around gold medal?
A 12-year dry spell for the U.S. was finally broken by the "Magnificent 7," which captured a ton of media attention during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Not only did they win gold for the team competition, but Kerri Strug captured everyone’s heart with her pluck and determination--soldiering on despite injuring her ankle on her first attempt on the vault. She gamely decided to try again, and managed to stick the landing on her second vault before collapsing in pain. No one could make up a finish like that.
So this year I have diminuitive Shawn Johnson to eyeball from dawn to dusk. She’s kinda got that Olga/Mary Lou/Kerri thing going for her. My nerves will be shot for the next few months, but for an Olympics junkie like me, it’s definitely worth it.
©2008 by Joanne Engelhardt. This column first posted Aug. 4, 2008.
TO ACCESS JOANNE ENGELHARDT'S ARCHIVE OF
COLUMNS ON THIS SITE, CLICK HERE: ENGELHARDT
ARCHIVE
You can comment
on this column online. Please address your message to either
"The Editors" or Joanne Engelhardt. To send an email,
click here and don't forget to mention Joanne's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
|
|
|
Archives |
|
|