Winning Balance

by Nancy French

  It wasn’t probable, but it was possible. That’s all I needed, and his encouragement was music to my ears!

  “Plus, I can see in your eyes that you still have a heart for the sport,” he said. “Go get your knee fixed first and then come back.”

  Chow gave me hope . . . just like old times.

  A few hours later, I returned home and ran upstairs to see my mom. I plopped down on her bed as she was getting ready in the adjacent bathroom. The conversation began just like any other talk we’d ever had, as we filled each other in on our plans for the day. That’s when I casually asked, “So . . . has the doctor called with the results from the MRI yet?”

  “Yeah, I heard from him,” she said. I couldn’t see her, since she was still in the bathroom putting on her makeup. But I knew from her voice that she wasn’t telling me everything.

  “Well?” If the problem was minor, she would have told me immediately. I almost had to force myself to ask her, “What did he say?”

  She came into the bedroom and looked at me. “Well,” she said, “you tore your ACL.”

  My heart sank at the three letters: ACL. Anterior cruciate ligament. The bone structure of the knee joint, I would learn, is formed by the femur, the tibia, and the patella. The ACL is one of the four main ligaments connecting the femur to the tibia. Like a tear in the Achilles, a torn ACL is an injury no gymnast ever wants to have.

  Especially me. In a sport notorious for broken bones, I’d never had one. I’d never even had surgery before. My worst injuries were sprains or strains, little annoyances that didn’t keep me from practice. Even my stress fracture hadn’t kept me out of the gym for long. I was the fearless kid who flipped out of her crib, jumped off the kitchen counter, and fell off the monkey bars. I somehow always landed on my feet, with only scrapes and bruises to show for it.

  How could this happen to me? I had always thought of myself as tough and unbreakable. Suddenly, as I sat on the bed, I realized I wasn’t invincible.

  “He said there’s some other damage in there that needs to be fixed too,” she gently added. “You need surgery.”

  Immediately, I started to cry. I was afraid to go under the knife, and I blamed myself for what I’d done. I don’t even think I said a word to her as she matter-of-factly explained what needed to happen next.

  Mom sat down on the bed and pulled me toward her. “You know, it’s fine. Everything happens for a reason.”

  This is the same phrase, the same comfort she offered to me as a child when I faced minor disappointments. And here she offered it up again, with the same calming reassurance.

  “For some reason, this was supposed to happen,” she explained. “I bet you would have torn your knee doing something else that day, had you not gone skiing.” As strange as it may sound, her words made me feel a little better.

  Lesson I’ve Learned

  Everything happens for a reason. Let that help you keep perspective in the hard times. Try to find the good in everything that happens—it’s usually there somewhere.

  Chapter 31

  The Surprise Announcement

  You can’t put a limit on anything. The more you dream, the further you get.

  —Michael Phelps

  THE WORST PART OF MY INJURY, my doctor told me, was that I’d torn my meniscus. If I’d torn only my ACL, I could have been back on my leg in a mere four weeks. Unfortunately, I had what he called the “terrible triad.” This meant I’d torn my anterior cruciate ligament, medial collateral ligament, and the meniscus. Always an overachiever, I’d managed to injure all three at once.

  Before undergoing surgery, I had one more commitment to fill. My dad and I headed back to Canada, this time to Vancouver for the Winter Olympics. I was there as an ambassador for McDonald’s Champion Kids program, which was created to encourage kids to be physically active. Several days after the opening ceremonies, we headed home so doctors could operate on my knee.

  The surgeons took part of my hamstring off and attached it to my ACL to make a new ligament. When it was all over, I had stitches, darts, and a pin in my knee. They warned me to make sure it was completely non-weight-bearing for eight weeks.

  In those first days of recovery, I realized that Chow had been right. I had been on such a roll since the Olympics—so caught up in the chaos of traveling to appearances and considering new opportunities—that I never had time to take a step back and think about what I wanted to do next. The injury gave me the time to really consider my options. Gymnastics was the path I saw to help me get healthy again and get my life back on track.

  As I recovered, I developed a new daily routine. I started with three hours of school, followed by a quick lunch, three hours of therapy, a workout, homework, and then rest. My workouts had to evolve to accommodate the weakness in my knee. I couldn’t run; however, I did upper-body exercises, swimming, and eventually even cycling. On some days, I swam four miles with a float between my knees. While my upper body got to be crazy strong, my legs were a whole different story. One of my thighs felt like a marshmallow.

  At first I struggled with my crutches, but later I got pretty good at maneuvering on them. Using them gave me new empathy for anyone with any sort of disability. Though most people are kind and considerate, others . . . not so much. I was always shocked at how people sometimes looked at my crutches as an inconvenience to them.

  “Miss, you can’t take those on board,” one flight attendant told me because she didn’t know where to store them on the plane.

  I had no idea what she thought I would do without them—I guess she expected me to hop down the aisle. It could be so much worse, I tried to remind myself as I attempted to keep my sense of humor about it all. I knew I couldn’t guarantee any sort of a comeback, but I never dreamed how terribly I’d miss just doing a normal workout. During those weeks of recovery, I did a lot of soul-searching and praying.

  Just over a month after my surgery, I had another first: I gave my first formal speech at the University of South Florida. Though I was incredibly nervous before my talk, the students seemed very receptive as I encouraged them to be true to themselves and follow their dreams. Only a few days later, I spoke to several hundred Girl Scouts in Cedar Falls, Iowa. I told the girls how I had struggled to fit in when I was younger and how my passion, gymnastics, had helped me find my place. Then I asked the crowd to raise their hands if they knew any “mean girls.” Just about every hand went up.

  “I’m sorry to tell you it doesn’t go away,” I said. Then I shared the lesson my mom had taught me: you can’t change what others say about you, but you can change the way you respond to criticism and insults.

  I was energized by the girls’ enthusiasm as I spoke. I enjoyed even more the chance to talk with the girls one-on-one. While I was busy with the organizers, several teenage girls came up to my mom. They asked her to tell me how much it meant that I’d shared my story. They, too, struggled to fit in, so they felt I’d really connected with them.

  After my eight weeks of recovery, I went back to Chow’s Gym ready to resume gymnastics training. It was a little surreal to be training under a gigantic poster of myself from the Olympics, which hung on Chow’s wall. However, the poster served as a daily reminder of what was and what could be again. It helped me stay focused, even when six-year-olds were running circles around me.

  At first I thought life would slow down, but before I could really focus on training, I needed to fulfill a number of commitments. Two were particularly meaningful. On May 4, I was back in the Hy-Vee Hall in Des Moines speaking to seven thousand fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-graders from across Iowa as part of a CHARACTER COUNTS! event.

  The atmosphere was energetic and uplifting as the excited kids screamed and cheered for me. I stood on the stage and soaked it all in. The event was called Exercise Your Character, and I talked to them about setting goals and not letting people dissuade them from reaching for their dreams. I told them the story about how a coach at my first gym told my mother I had no talent. I told t
hem not to listen to those who tell them they aren’t able to pursue their dreams.

  Then, just after I’d finished speaking, a kid yelled out, “Are you going to the 2012 Olympics?” It seemed like the entire arena went silent.

  Out of nowhere, something just clicked inside me. And right there in front of every camera covering the event, I said, “About London, everybody, I don’t know if you know this, but I am going to give it a shot! I’m going to go for it!”4 As everyone clapped and cheered for me, I walked down off the stage and thought, Oops!

  Within seconds, every phone seemed to be ringing. I had really stirred something up. I quickly texted Sheryl: “I just announced in front of 9,000 that I’m going to try for London.” I knew my parents would be thinking, What!? Chow hadn’t even told me I could return to training yet, let alone make a comeback. On top of that, Sheryl would have wanted to orchestrate such an announcement.

  I saw Donna Tweeten, a member of Hy-Vee’s marketing team. She was smiling and holding out a phone to me. “Sheryl is on the phone. She wants you to know she’s not upset, but she would like to talk with you right now.”

  Sheryl told me she’d already gotten a call from Sports Illustrated for confirmation that this rumor was true. My mom had gotten calls from reporters, and she responded in all honesty, “I had no idea she was going to announce this today!” Though this wasn’t how I’d planned to tell the nation of my comeback, it was the perfect way. I spoke from the heart, and it just bubbled out of me.

  A few weeks later, I was back in Beijing for the grand opening of Woodward Beijing, a 425-acre extreme sports arena and educational facility. The original Camp Woodward had been founded in Pennsylvania in 1970, largely as a gymnastics training institute. By 2010, it had spread to five locations in the United States and, now, one in Beijing. I went along to represent gymnastics.

  While there, we toured the National Indoor Stadium, the arena where I had competed in the 2008 Olympic Games. Though the gymnastics equipment wasn’t set up, walking down into the stands and onto the floor was emotionally overwhelming. Time seemed to stop, and I felt like I was reliving every moment of the Games. The people touring with me noticed that I was close to tears, and they all stood around watching me and waiting. “You have no idea how hard this is,” I told them.

  To this day, I have never watched my Olympic performances from start to finish. It’s just too emotionally taxing. Though I had been nervous about our visit to the stadium, wondering how I’d feel, I was still unprepared for the intensity of my response.

  While my visit to Beijing reminded me of the incredible joy I’d felt at the Games, shortly after I returned home I had to deal with something I’d tried to push to the furthest recesses of my mind: my stalker.

  About fifteen months had passed since Robert O’Ryan was apprehended after jumping a studio fence, but he was finally having his day in court. This meant I was about to have mine, too. My family and I had to go to the Los Angeles Criminal Courts Building to face him.

  I hated the idea of having to be in the same room with that man. I wasn’t sure I had the emotional strength to face him. Yet, when the day came, I forced myself to walk into that courtroom.

  O’Ryan claimed to be insane, and I believed him. In a tape of an interview with police that was played in court, he testified that he heard voices in his head. He claimed this allowed us to begin communicating telepathically while I was in Beijing at the Olympics.

  Because O’Ryan had waived his right to a jury trial, Judge Michael Pastor, a well-regarded Superior Court judge who handled the most serious criminal cases in LA, would hand down a decision.

  I spent twenty-three minutes on the witness stand, and it was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do. The worst part came when the prosecutor laid the items officers found in O’Ryan’s car on a table in front of me: two loaded guns, a knife, a club, and a bulletproof vest. I’d read about these items in the papers, but seeing them made me lose my breath.

  When I looked at my mom, she was sobbing.

  The judge found O’Ryan guilty of felony stalking, burglary, and two concealed weapons violations and ordered him to be sent to a California mental institution.

  After I testified, I hugged my mom. “I thought we were going to be tough!” I said.

  “I just felt so sad when I heard you testify about how scared you were,” she cried, “and I couldn’t be there to fix it for you.”

  I returned home, grateful that this chapter of my life had ended and I could again put all of my energy into training.

  Lesson I’ve Learned

  Don’t let anything hold you back from following your heart and taking a leap of faith. Even if you’re the only one who believes in the direction you want to take, you have the power to make it happen.

  Chapter 32

  A New Identity

  There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.

  —Bruce Lee

  DECIDING TO TRY for a comeback did simplify life in some ways. It meant postponing college and canceling events on my celebrity schedule. Once again, my activities would need to fit around the training I did six days a week. Casual observers might have assumed that life had reverted pretty much to what it was in 2007 and early 2008, when I was gearing up for my first Olympic bid.

  Actually, so much was different this time around. My injury had left me with about 40 percent of the capability I’d had two years earlier, making my goal of a comeback seem pretty audacious. I also had to deal with self-doubt—something I never really battled the first time around. As an athlete himself, Ryan understood and supported me through those difficult days. Though I was in West Des Moines and he was at school in Iowa City, we stayed in frequent contact and visited each other on weekends whenever we could.

  Once I returned to the gym, I felt an urgency to get back into full training mode as quickly as possible. I put rehab on the back burner, despite Chow’s attempts to move me forward at a reasonable pace. Though I trained more hours than I had before Beijing, he made sure my workouts were less intense and limited my time working out on the hard floor. Still, I pushed myself every day, whether or not I was tired, because I was frustrated by how slowly I seemed to be progressing.

  I made my first trip back to the Karolyi ranch for a US National Team training camp in November, though I wasn’t yet doing full routines. Two years is an eternity in gymnastics, so I was worried. Would I still fit in? Would I be accepted? It turned out to be an amazing experience. I loved seeing the team coaches and the other gymnasts. The best part, though, was being warmly welcomed back by Martha.

  As encouraged as I was by my time in Texas, I returned home to a difficult reality: my knee had become quite painful again. Apparently I hadn’t allowed enough time for it to heal properly, and as a result, I had re-torn my MCL in September. I was able to continue working on skills and conditioning, but the pain was almost unbearable. In December, I went back for clean-up surgery and was told I couldn’t resume training until February.

  Perhaps my biggest mistake was comparing myself to the Shawn Johnson of 2008. I got down on myself for not performing with the same power and energy I had back then. I was especially frustrated at how long it was taking me to perform again on the floor, even though I knew my knee couldn’t handle the stress of landing on the hard surface.

  I get unsolicited advice all the time, but one day on a routine trip to Starbucks, I ran into a guy who told me something that completely changed my perspective. Very politely he approached me and said, “Hi, how are you? May I share something with you?”

  A little warily, I agreed. We ended up talking for an hour. The gist of what he told me was this: “You’ll never be what you were in 2008 because you’re not the same person.” Rather than thinking about how far I had to go, he suggested I think of how far I’d come.

  The more I thought about it, I realized that he was right. I had a completely different body build, was now three year
s older, and had sustained what might have been a career-ending injury. Just a few months before, I couldn’t even complete a full beam routine. Recovery wasn’t fast or easy, but gradually my skills were coming back.

  Though I had lost some raw power, I had gained some things as well. Until last year, I had never managed to hit a certain move, called the shaposh, on the bars. Named after Soviet gymnast Natalia Shaposhnikova, the shaposh is a difficult release move that requires you to shoot your body blindly from the low bar to the high bar. It’s a skill I’d always wanted to master but never could because I was so small. The first time I nailed it, I jumped around like a giddy six-year-old.

  I’ve also come to appreciate the wisdom my own experience brings to my training. At age fifteen or sixteen, I didn’t understand all the intricacies of the sport. For instance, I didn’t realize that doing a minute handstand would help me with my bar routine. When I walked into the gym, Chow would give me my assignments, and I’d just do them.

  Today I understand physiology, and I understand how my body works. If I walk into the gym knowing my body simply can’t work a certain way that day, Chow respects me enough to know that I’m not trying to get out of practice. I’m doing what’s best for my body. We respect each other on a different level now, and it’s a combined coaching partnership. Together we determine the best workout for each particular day, but I make more decisions on my own.

  For five months, from February to July 2011, I was in full training mode. Chow and I agreed that I had to take a completely different approach from the days when my goal was to perform the most difficult skills. With an injured knee, completing those skills was no longer realistic. Now my objective was to perform the cleanest, most flawless routines.