Winning Balance

by Nancy French

  “Look!” Alicia said, pointing out the window. Outside, several police cars waited with their blue lights flashing.

  “A police escort?” I asked.

  With the police leading the way, we were able to get to—and through—the airport more quickly. Before I knew it, we were boarding the plane.

  “Please turn off all electronic devices,” the flight attendant said as we settled into our seats. I texted my parents one last time: “I love you. Taking off.” Then I settled in for the nearly twelve-hour flight.

  Mom and Dad had already bought refundable airline tickets to Beijing and would be heading over in a couple of weeks. Though they never assumed I would make the Olympic Team, they definitely didn’t want to miss the Games if I were there. To avoid paying the highest priced airfare later on, Mom had bought tickets she could cancel if I didn’t make the team. I was so thankful that she wouldn’t have to do that!

  The plane we flew on was a double-decker, a first for me. Most of the passengers were headed to the Olympics. Every few hours, we were instructed to get up and stretch. That meant that suddenly a bunch of gymnasts were doing handstands in the aisles. All in all, the flight was a restful time to think about the upcoming competition and to dream about what the Olympic Village would be like.

  When we landed, we sleepily got off the plane and walked through the airport, getting our first look at the country. Everything was written in Chinese, which was disorienting. When we were led down to get our luggage, chaos broke out.

  Everyone was yelling, and there were Chinese reporters and media crews everywhere. That’s when it dawned on me: Chow was a celebrity! As a former champion gymnast in Beijing, Chow had been very popular there before he’d left to make a new life for himself in America. It had been fourteen years since he’d been back to his homeland. He had no idea whether the Chinese would welcome him or resent him for coaching their competitors. In an instant, it became clear that they loved Chow and were proud of him.

  Taken by surprise, he told the crowd of reporters, “We just landed; I don’t want to talk about anything yet.” When they told him they’d been waiting for four hours to meet our plane, he relented. They mobbed him, and it got even worse as we headed to the buses. Because they were so excited about Chow’s return, more and more people started following us. I could tell they were going to cover our every move.

  What I didn’t fully realize was that they’d also been following me. Since I was Chow’s student, they loved me, too! Anticipating my popularity in China, Chow had told me before we left for Beijing that he thought the media there would ask me my Chinese name. If they cannot pronounce your English name, he told me, they’ll remember your Chinese one. He then gave me my own Chinese name, which translated into English is “Golden Flower.” The Chinese, he told me, always refer to beautiful girls as flowers. Their warm greeting was very special to me because I felt loved by people who didn’t even know me.

  My first glimpse of the Olympic Village was beyond anything I could have imagined. The beautifully arranged village is like a city, except completely spotless. It was built specifically for the Olympics near the city’s historic district, just south of the venues for the competitions. The village consisted of twenty-two 6-story buildings and twenty 9-story buildings, complete with everything we could possibly need: dining halls, an entertainment center, a recreational sports area (including pool tables, tennis and basketball courts, and a swimming pool), a library, a medical clinic, a fire station, banks, shops, coffee shops—even a McDonald’s, which was the official restaurant for the Games.

  Of course, the village was teeming with athletes. Most were in their twenties or thirties and looked big, muscular, and mature. Athletes were hanging out and getting to know each other, using charades to overcome the language barrier. Then we walked in.

  When our group of nine girls walked in confidently, the other athletes noticed our arrival. Needless to say, we loved the attention—especially since some of it was from pretty fine-looking guys.

  It was a little surreal to be in Beijing and to be known and celebrated. With a population of over 1.3 billion people, China has four times as many people as the United States . . . which means that it is slightly larger than Des Moines, too.

  It took a while to get over jet lag and adjust to the climate, even as we practiced our routines and received massages and physical therapy. While the other athletes were allowed to hang out and explore the Olympic Village, our activities were strictly limited. When we weren’t eating or at practice, we weren’t even allowed to leave our rooms, so we downloaded TV shows, designed tattoos we promised to get after the Olympics were over, and passed around books. Sometimes we went out for media interviews, including fun ones with Meredith Vieira and Matt Lauer. They were welcome distractions from the pressures of Olympic preparation.

  But we did manage to entertain ourselves, even with all the restrictions. Nastia and I were roommates, and we decorated the walls in our room with postcards from home and inspirational quotes. Our team was staying on the ninth floor, just one floor above where the US men’s cycling team was staying. At night, our doors were closely watched, so we’d go out on the balcony and talk to the cyclists on the floor beneath us.

  I enjoyed getting to know all of the guys, but I really hit it off with Taylor Phinney, a cyclist from Boulder, Colorado. He was dating someone back home, so he was off-limits for me. That didn’t stop us from developing a good friendship, though. Nastia and I had a lot of fun talking to Taylor and his teammates. The boys thought it was kind of sad that we (or rather our coaches) closely watched what we ate, so they tossed us Snickers candy bars late at night.

  While we spent our evenings chatting from the balcony like Olympic Rapunzels (without the long, golden hair), we spent our days training. Frequently, we got to catch glimpses of the other gymnastics teams coming to and from practice. We’d crane our necks, trying to check out the competition. When we finally got to see the Chinese team, we were surprised at how small they were. Only one of them was even five feet tall, and their average weight, we later found out, was seventy-seven pounds. One of them was missing a baby tooth, and the permanent tooth had yet to appear! I wondered what kind of pressure they were under. What would it be like to carry the hopes of 1.3 billion people on your tiny shoulders?

  Finally, three weeks after we left Texas, the night of the opening ceremonies arrived. In Chinese superstition, a day is considered lucky if it sounds like a word that has positive connotations. Apparently, the word for the number eight is ba in Mandarin and paat in Cantonese. Because these words sound similar to the words for prosperity (fa in Mandarin and faat in Cantonese), the opening ceremonies were held at eight minutes after eight o’clock in the evening on August 8, 2008. This date and time was believed to be the luckiest possible moment to start the Games. And—wow—what a way to start!

  The event showcased China’s rich history with jaw-dropping high-tech tricks and illusions during a four-hour extravaganza. It was produced by Zhang Yimou, a celebrated film director, and had more dramatic flair than any movie I’ve ever seen. After the parade of nations, the Olympic torch entered the stadium. Seven torchbearers carried it before passing it on to former Olympic gymnast Li Ning. He had been hoisted aloft by invisible wires and then “ran” along the rim of the stadium’s roof carrying his torch. When he lit the enormous cauldron, thousands of fireworks lit up the night sky, officially beginning the 29th Olympiad. It was called the most impressive opening ceremony in the history of the modern Games, one that future hosting countries will be hard-pressed to match and that none of the 91,000 people in the stands watching will ever forget.

  We weren’t among them.

  “The ceremonies are a just a distraction,” Martha had told us. The gymnastics competitions began on the following day, and nothing was more important than staying in our rooms and preparing for them. Our team watched the ceremony on TV in our rooms. A few team members tried to downplay the opening ceremony, saying the e
vents were overblown. However, I was glued to the TV, just as I had been when I watched the Olympics from the training center in Colorado Springs.

  These opening ceremonies were even more amazing, such a nice representation of China’s long history. As an American, it’s hard to imagine that Beijing is over two thousand years old. After all, we think of a building that’s 150 years old as “historic.” Beijing is filled with historic sites that are many hundreds of years old. For example, Tiananmen Square, the site of several important events since its construction in the seventeenth century, is best known today as the place where the government cracked down on a pro-democracy movement in 1989 by declaring martial law and killing hundreds of protesters. The Palace Museum, where many emperors have lived, houses a collection of artifacts from over eight thousand years of Chinese history. Though we weren’t there for a sightseeing adventure, I hoped that after our competitions I’d be able to join my parents and visit some of the sites with them.

  By August 8, I was anxious for the Games to begin. My teammates and I were getting a little testy under the pressure and the constant training. Chellsie had broken her ankle while we were practicing before the Olympics, and her injury weighed on all of us. We worked hard to keep our spirits up, but it was tough. To make matters worse, I was homesick, which made me decide I wanted to be free of the sport that had consumed my life up until then. I wanted to set my own schedule, to work out in a regular gym like everyone else, and to start a different phase of life. With all of the injuries and heartbreak surrounding gymnastics, I hoped to get out of the sport while I was still healthy, happy, and full of life.

  The days away from home had started to wear on me. I began to really miss my parents. I hadn’t seen them for weeks, and even when I’d seen them at the selection camp, I didn’t really get to spend time with them. Since I was feeling so depressed, I called them.

  “Mom?” I said into the phone, fighting back the tears. “What are you doing?”

  I tried to sound normal, but she could hear the emotion in my voice, which caused her own voice to crack a bit.

  “Just planning out what to do once all of this is over,” she said, trying to sound chipper. “Want to go shopping after the competition?”

  “Sure, Mom.”

  Within seconds I was crying. Weeping. My call had only made my homesickness worse, and the pressure seemed to have taken its toll on me. Even though my parents had made it to China, they still seemed a thousand miles away. There was nothing they could do to alleviate the stress or to make it better like they used to do when I was a child. No Band-Aid could heal the way I felt.

  So I prayed.

  “Dear God,” I wrote in my journal. “I’m just afraid of getting hurt. Not just physically, but more mentally. I feel like I’ve put too much of my heart into this. I feel I’ve done enough work to deserve it, though, and I want it more than anything. Amen.”

  Now, a few days later, the moment I’d waited for had finally come.

  Lesson I’ve Learned

  Sometimes the real victory comes from simply not giving up. Just remember: God is big enough to handle every challenge, and he is loving enough to calm every fear.

  Chapter 13

  The Showdown

  Life is mostly froth and bubble,

  Two things stand like stone,

  Kindness in another’s trouble,

  Courage in your own.

  —Adam Lindsay Gordon

  VICTORY IN GYMNASTICS often comes down to tenths of a point. That was certainly true during much of our face-off with the Chinese Olympic team. Though six other countries fielded teams in the all-around competition, everyone knew this matchup was really between the Chinese gymnasts—the 2006 world champions—and the United States team, which had taken the world title in Germany in 2007.

  Even before we met the Chinese in the finals, my teammates and I knew taking the gold wouldn’t be easy. Chellsie Memmel had broken her ankle in early August while practicing for the floor exercise. In an eerily similar mishap, Samantha Peszek sprained her ankle two days after the opening ceremonies while warming up for the floor exercise in the qualifiers.

  Martha had to scramble to rework our team lineups. Samantha had been expected to compete in all four events in the qualifying rounds; now she and Chellsie would compete only on the uneven bars.

  Watching Samantha go down after spraining her ankle had stunned the estimated fifteen thousand spectators and upset many on our team. After competing so often, though, I knew I had to control my thoughts and emotions by staying in my own little world. If I didn’t ignore what I couldn’t control, it would rattle me, too.

  I made it through Sunday’s qualifying round without any major errors. Our team looked especially strong on the balance beam. At the end of the competition that evening, all six of us gathered in a circle in front of the balance beam and put our arms around one another’s shoulders. We were proud of making it through a difficult day.

  Two days later, on August 12, we met the Chinese in the team final, one of the most anticipated events of the Games. The Chinese remembered what had happened at the 2007 World Championships, when we beat them by less than a point to win the team gold medal.

  So far in Beijing, their routines had looked crisp and clean. They demonstrated masterful technique in their skills, and several of their routines had a higher level of difficulty than ours. On top of that, they were performing with a home-field advantage. This was their opportunity to prove and demonstrate their country’s remarkable rise, a way to validate their way of life and their politics. China had spent a huge amount of money to impress everyone with their opening ceremonies. But they’d also spent a great deal to make sure they won more gold than any other country—especially the United States.

  To add to the pressure, rumors and allegations about the age of some of the Chinese gymnasts were swirling. The New York Times had unearthed some Chinese sports registration lists that indicated some of the women gymnasts might not have been old enough to participate in the Olympics. When one reporter asked a tiny gymnast how she had celebrated her fifteenth birthday, she hesitated before saying it was just like any other day. The accusations created a heavy fog of bitterness and resentment around the competition . . . the one we were about to walk into.

  Yet determining their eligibility was out of my hands, another issue I couldn’t control and so didn’t worry about. Besides, before the competition, when I’d meet the Chinese gymnasts in the Olympic Village, we would laugh and tease one another. Though we had to overcome the language barrier, we did that fairly easily by using sign language, smiles, and the occasional handstand.

  As much as I admired the Chinese team, I had no mixed feelings when I walked into Beijing’s National Indoor Stadium on August 12 for the team final. Eighteen thousand people were cheering as we took our place on the side, and I wanted nothing more than to beat their hometown favorite. I wanted to show the world that America was a powerhouse in gymnastics and that we’d come to compete.

  No, this wasn’t an individual competition. That would come a few days later. I’d come to the Olympics with a team, and as a team we were about to show the world what we could do.

  Chow had told me just to be myself and not to try to do anything differently now that we were in Beijing. I kept his words in mind as I prepared for my first vault. In fact, our whole team started off strong, and after that first rotation, we were slightly ahead.

  But when we got to the balance beam, things started to go wrong. For some unknown reason, Alicia, the first US gymnast on the balance beam, had to wait an unusually long time for the go-ahead to begin her routine. Finally, she was given the signal to start and began with a running start into a front flip. Much to our astonishment, she landed with her foot slightly off the beam, which left her teetering. Then she fell off. It all happened so fast that we almost couldn’t believe our eyes.

  By the time we got to the floor exercise, China was beating us by a whole point. On Alicia’s second
tumbling pass, she came out of a flip and fell backward. To make matters worse, Nastia and I stepped out of bounds during our floor exercises, infractions that cost us each a tenth of a point.

  As our team captain, Alicia had rallied and encouraged us countless times; now it was my turn to encourage her. Once I’d finished my routine, I sat down next to Alicia, smiled at her, and took her arm in mine. The press assumed she apologized and I told her we all still loved her. That’s not quite accurate. Actually, to get her to smile, I brought up an inside joke that had been circulating among our team. I wanted to keep her mind off what had just happened.

  Meanwhile, the Chinese breezed through their routines to secure their first-ever team gold medal. The audience went crazy as the Chinese gymnasts hugged one another and smiled for the cameras.

  Later, the press made a big deal out of the fact that the team didn’t hold Alicia’s falls against her and instead rallied around her. Of course we did. It’s not like she planned to fall! Alicia wanted to go out there and win the gold as much as any of us, but it wasn’t meant to be. As Chow had told me at Worlds, “Mistakes happen.” We’re human after all. The most important thing is how we handle our disappointments.

  Not only that, but we had just gone from Olympic athletes to Olympic medal winners! Shortly after receiving our silver medals, Meredith Vieira interviewed us on The Today Show. Because my parents came to watch the taping, I finally had a chance to see them. They were in Beijing with their good friends Mark and Jill Oman and my agent, Sheryl Shade. I had a few, brief minutes to hug and talk with them. Seeing them made my emotions bubble to the top, but I had to get back to training. The individual all-around competition was only two days away, and I couldn’t let the fact that I missed my parents affect the job I needed to do.