Winning Balance

by Nancy French

  After a film clip showed me at work in the gym, Gibson mentioned that my devotion to my sport had brought “balance in life,” noting that my hours of training helped me be disciplined and make good choices about how to spend the remaining hours of each day. The piece closed with my advice to others aspiring to rise to the top of their sport or discipline: “You can’t really work hard if you don’t have fun and make sure you’re doing what your heart wants you to.”1

  Not long after the ABC Person of the Week segment aired, my congressman, Rep. Leonard Boswell, introduced and helped pass a resolution in the US House of Representatives to congratulate me on my world championship. And to top it off, Governor Chet Culver officially welcomed me home from Germany at the Iowa State Historical Building and named October 17, 2007, “Shawn Johnson Day.” I stood a little taller when he called me a “role model for thousands of girls in Iowa and millions more around the country and the world, [who] represents herself, her family, her state, and her nation with grace and dignity.”2 I was then presented with a framed Congressional Record from Congressman Boswell and a letter from cyclist Lance Armstrong, one of my favorite athletes.

  That same day, Adidas, an official sponsor of the USA Gymnastics team and the 2008 Beijing Olympics team, announced its major sponsorship deal with me. Agreements with Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, and Hy-Vee soon followed.

  As I stood there wearing my red, white, and blue warm-up suit with Chow and Li, it just felt surreal, like the governor was describing someone else. I looked out into the crowd and saw so many friends and family. I smiled, grateful that they had come out to celebrate with me that day. Something about finally being home, seeing old friends, and being among fellow Iowans made me really appreciate my home state.

  What a season I’d had! In 2007, I placed first in every single competition I participated in. But there was one goal, one medal that I was still eyeing—though I’d have to make it to Beijing first.

  Lesson I’ve Learned

  As long as you’ve done your best, making mistakes doesn’t matter. You and I are human; we will mess up. What counts is learning from your mistakes and getting back up when life has knocked you down.

  Chapter 9

  A Cast and Some Power Tools

  Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.

  —Lance Armstrong

  BY THE TIME I RETURNED home from Germany, the buzz had begun. People began speculating that I would definitely make the Olympic team, though I kept myself from believing it was a sure thing. My parents had taught me not to take success for granted, and I never assumed I’d be able to compete at the Olympic level. It seemed like a bubble, one that might break if I reached for it too quickly.

  On top of that, I finally had to face one nagging concern after a year of unbelievable success—I had begun feeling severe pain in one leg. Like all competitive gymnasts, I had had to deal with the occasional twisted ankle or sore wrist. However, I knew that this leg pain, which I began feeling before Worlds, was different. Until I got home from Germany, however, I didn’t have the time (or the heart) to investigate why it hurt. I took some Advil, put heat on it, and didn’t let on that there was anything wrong. Based on the results I achieved at Worlds, I knew I’d made the right choice.

  When I returned home to Des Moines, I went straight to the doctor. The pain had gotten so intense, I knew I had to have it checked out. After examining my leg, my doctor gave me the bad news.

  “You have a stress fracture to your shin,” he explained. I let out a tremendous sigh, which is when I realized I’d been holding my breath.

  “It’s actually very typical,” he said. “You’ve had a hard, long year, pounding every little ounce out of your body.” Apparently stress fractures happen when muscles become fatigued or overloaded. Since gymnasts frequently overuse their muscles, they get tired and can’t absorb the shock of the repeated impact that they endure sometimes hundreds of times per day, six or seven days a week.

  “We’re going to have to cast it,” he said. I bit my lip as I listened to him. Every day of missed practice would put me behind in my preparations for the Olympics. “And you need to stay off of it for about twelve weeks.”

  I knew I was fortunate. I’d sort of prided myself on not being injury-prone. On top of that, Chow and Li had devised a training program that had kept me remarkably free from injury for nearly ten years. While the doctor’s recommendations made good sense, I definitely was not going to take several weeks off.

  Gymnasts simply do not miss practice. I’ve seen girls come to practice with ligament injuries, fractures, and the flu. If something terrible happened that took you out of the gym for a week or two, you’d be done. At least that’s what we constantly heard from our coaches, so that’s what we believed. We were told that if we took a week off at this age—when normal girls are going through puberty—we might grow two inches and gain five pounds. Our sport is demanding because it’s not possible to “play” gymnastics, like one can play basketball, football, or most other sports. You either are a gymnast or you are not. Gymnastics uses so many different muscles and motions that have to be consistently repeated or they’ll just go away.

  I could tell if I had taken a single day off. When I’m up on the bars, I have to have accuracy and precision. Even if I’m just a second off, I’m off . . . possibly dangerously so. That means I could fall off the beam or off the bars. A day spent recovering from an injury means I might have lost the skill to let go, flip, and then catch a bar. It only takes one time of missing the bar for disaster to strike. That’s why gymnastics is so hard. We can’t have an off-season or even an off day. We don’t take long vacations and rarely take short ones. Gymnastics is—and must be—our life.

  Twelve weeks off could mean the end of my career. Since the Olympic Trials were coming up in Philadelphia, I was particularly serious about not sitting in a cast at home.

  “I’m going to get a second opinion,” I told my doctor.

  So I got a second opinion, and a third, and a fourth. Every single doctor wanted to cast it. Finally, I relented and went home in a gigantic, terrible cast. Every time I looked at it, I saw years of training going down the drain.

  Within days I was back in my doctor’s office.

  “I want this off, please,” I said sweetly. I was hoping he might not realize that it had been on only a week.

  “Nice try,” he said. “I want you to participate as much as anyone, but you have to realize that our bodies heal on their own schedule, not the Olympics’ schedule. Your leg hasn’t had time to properly heal.”

  “If you’re not going to get this off me, I’m going to have my dad cut if off,” I finally blurted out. “And he’s going to be using power tools in the garage.”

  The doctor reluctantly agreed under one condition: that I promise to wear a boot and rest for a little bit. Though this was a minor injury, it sobered me. It had looked like an Olympics spot was right there for the taking. But again I was reminded of what a fickle sport gymnastics can be.

  While I got over my injury and trained for what would be the most important competition of my life, many other exciting things were happening. First, I began doing promotions for the Games. Over a two-week period, I went to Atlanta for a photo shoot for Coca-Cola and to Los Angeles for an NBC promotional shoot before heading to Houston for a US national team training camp. Then, ESPN The Magazine contacted my agent. Since 1998, the magazine has created an annual life of what they call “NEXT athletes”—a group of talented, emerging athletes to watch in the year ahead. I’d been chosen as one of those athletes, and they wanted to do an interview and photo shoot with me at my house.

  As soon as the reporter and photographer showed up at our door with their cameras and lights, we welcomed them into our home. The only problem was that the reporter was allergic to dogs . . . and our house is full of animals. After a few sneezing fits, we decided to shoot outside in the yard while Mom ran to the drugstore to get him some Benadryl. The photographer wanted to get
a photo of me jumping. Of course, I didn’t tell him I’d injured my shin. It was ESPN, after all. The photographer kept telling me, “Jump!” and then a few seconds later, “Jump!” Again and again and again.

  Dad kept interrupting, asking me, “Shawn, is this hurting you?” It was, but I was so excited I wasn’t going to tell the photographer. “I’m fine, Dad!” It felt as if I’d jumped a million times. The photos turned out great, though.

  Constantly thinking about the Olympics could be nerve-racking, so I appreciated my “other life” more than ever. Though I still occasionally saw classmates pointing and whispering when I walked by, school helped me feel grounded and connected to my friends. Whether I was discussing Hemingway in English or dissecting a cow eyeball in biology, I felt a sense of freedom I didn’t have when training so intensely. I loved hanging out with my friends too—strolling through the mall, going out to eat, or just laughing with them. I also enjoyed going out with Johnny, my high school crush. Because he sometimes pushed the rules, my friends and family weren’t sure he’d be the best influence on someone like me. They didn’t need to worry; he was kind and protective of me. If we went to a friend’s house and someone brought out alcohol, he’d turn us right around and we’d leave. I appreciated him because he distracted me from the stress of competition and was a good friend to me during all of the chaos.

  I kept trying to keep my gymnastics world and my school world separate, but it was getting increasingly difficult. That’s why I resisted having any film crew come to my school. Several magazines requested permission to do that so they could get footage of me in my “normal life.” Everyone thought it was novel that I actually attended school. Finally, People magazine was given permission to send a photographer to follow me around at Valley High School. Instead of the week the magazine wanted, though, the photographer was given just one hour.

  That day I was nervous as I got ready for school, though I purposely wore the same type of clothes I’d usually wear. I warned my friends to act normal, but everyone was chattering with the excitement of having a film crew from People in our school. As I sat in English class, the photographers were outside waiting for the bell to ring. I’d been instructed to switch classes and walk slowly, greeting people in the hall as I went. That would provide some nice images of my non-gymnastics life. However, when the bell rang, I gathered my books and darted to my next class with my head down, not saying hello to anyone. The camera crew had to chase after me, and I felt ridiculous. By the time they found me in my next class, their allotted time was up, and they finally left!

  Though I managed to avoid feeling completely in the spotlight that day, I felt just as embarrassed when I stumbled across a giant cutout of me not long after that. While picking up a few items at the local grocery store, I turned the corner of the aisle and spotted, just a few yards away, a life-size cardboard image of myself in front of a Coca-Cola display. I got out of there fast, wondering what shoppers would think if they saw me staring at myself.

  Because I tend to be upbeat and love life, I knew that many people who saw that promotional cutout or read about me in their local paper assumed I never got anxious. Actually, I’m usually nervous before a competition—I think that’s only human when you want to do your best. Rather than talking about all my deepest thoughts and emotions, though, I prefer to let them spill out in the lines of a poem. The pressure had really begun to mount by the spring of 2008, and so I often wrote down my thoughts in my journal. Sometimes as the lines came to me, I used my phone to text the words to myself so I wouldn’t forget them.

  While I was at a selection camp for the American Cup in March 2008, I was struggling to perform and was doing poorly on all my routines. After another rough day, Coach Chow pulled me aside and told me, “If you don’t get your act together, I’m going to take you home.” I knew he was right to call me out, but I had no idea how to fix my performance. I went back to my room and lay down on my bunk. I couldn’t sleep, though, because all sorts of thoughts kept going through my mind. Finally, at 3 a.m. I got up, grabbed my phone, and typed my thoughts into a notebook app. Before long, the words began forming into a poem, which began this way:

  You fear the loss and pain of defeat,

  but still are able to stand on two feet.

  You crumble and cry as much as you want,

  but nothing can keep you away from the hunt.

  I wrote for a full hour and finally lay back down and tried to get a few hours of sleep. The next morning, after I reread what I’d written, I realized a weight had lifted. Rather than being distracted by all kinds of conflicting feelings, I had sorted out my thoughts, my hopes, and my fears in the lines of a poem I called “Champion.” After that, my performance turned around, and I was selected to go to the American Cup at Madison Square Garden.

  While still at the Karolyi ranch, I sent the poem to my mom, telling her how perfectly it expressed my feelings. I’m often reluctant to share what I’ve written, and this time was no exception. Rather than telling her I wrote it, I asked her what she thought of this poem I’d found on the Internet. My mom texted back to say she loved it too.

  In fact, as a surprise, she asked a local artist to paint the poem on a canvas. Then she hung it over my bed before I returned home. It was beautiful, and I finally admitted to my mom that I had written “Champion.” Not long after, when a reporter from a TV network came to our house to do a profile on me, the interviewer heard about the poem and asked me to read it on camera.

  While I felt a little strange reading “Champion” on air, it was probably the truest expression of my emotions as I looked ahead to the Olympic Trials. Part of the poem expressed my conflicted feelings:

  You remember the times when you thought to give up

  but could never find a reason to disrupt . . .

  anything and everything that you had given to the sport,

  the heart’s desire and all the support.

  But when the pressure builds and tears you apart,

  how are you able to not depart?

  How are you able to still carry a smile

  when everything inside is in a pile?

  You hold your head high and never look back

  because this is what keeps you all intact.

  Lesson I’ve Learned

  Have patience. Learn to pick yourself up and push through hard times. Find an outlet that allows you to let your emotions run free and get rid of negative energy. That might mean talking with someone, running, watching a funny movie, or crying. Then you’ll be able to begin the next day fresh.

  Chapter 10

  Travails and Trials

  Leap and the net will appear.

  —John Burroughs

  AS MY SOPHOMORE YEAR was coming to an end, I listened to friends discuss their plans for the summer. Some were planning family vacations or looking for a summer job. Most talked about how they were looking forward to sleeping in and just hanging out at home. While their summers stretched before them like a peaceful stream, mine felt more like a raging river as I raced to prepare for the major competitions of my life—the Olympic Trials and, I hoped, the Olympic Games themselves.

  I wanted to take part in at least one end-of-the-school-year tradition, though: prom. My parents were all for it. They thought the dance would provide a needed mental break from what lay ahead.

  So in May, just a month before the Olympic Trials, Johnny and I, along with a big group of friends, went to prom. I had picked out a sparkly yellow dress that made me feel glamorous. Later, our group attended an after-party hosted by a group of parents at our local mall. After dancing and laughing the night away, I went with several of my girlfriends to a sleepover at one of their homes. When my friends and I got up a few hours later, we headed to Perkins for breakfast. It was just the break I needed.

  About a month later, prom seemed like a distant memory. By this time Johnny and I had agreed to be just friends. I knew I’d never be able to keep our relationship going as I prepared for the rigors of
the Olympic Trials.

  One of the questions I’m asked most often is, “How is a gymnast chosen to participate in the Olympics?” There’s no easy answer to that seemingly straightforward question. In other sports, the top qualifiers in the Olympic Trials automatically head to the Games, but that’s not the case in gymnastics. Though we don’t actually jump through hoops in our floor exercises, we figuratively jump through plenty of them for the honor of competing in the Olympics.

  For me the first big test would come at the Visa Championships held in Boston. Though nationals are held annually, the competition during an Olympic year is particularly fierce because of one important fact: the top thirteen finishers move on to the Olympic Trials.

  There were about fifty junior and senior competitors, and the excitement was high. Sponsors hosted exhibits for the audience to enjoy—CoverGirl set up an area where spectators could learn makeup tips; Tyson had an area to teach kids about fitness; and the entire 1988 US Women’s Olympic Team was recognized to mark the twentieth anniversary of the Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea. Outside the arena, women’s gymnastics fans filled the city and flooded its shops, restaurants, and historical sites while they waited for us to begin. In other words, this was a big event, surrounded by hype and media attention.

  The team for Beijing would be decided based on the results of the events in Boston, the Olympic Trials two weeks later in Philadelphia, and a selection camp in Houston in mid-July. Despite the pressure we all felt at the Visa Championships, I realized it wasn’t a do-or-die event. I only needed to place in the top thirteen to go to the Trials, so I tried to think of it as a good time to get some more experience without overdoing it and risking injury. By this time my stress fracture had healed, but I had to stay healthy if I was going to make it to the Olympics in Beijing. I had a good day and won gold in the all-around for the second straight year.