My next time up on bars will be a full routine. At the chalk bowl I make sure to get my grips exactly the way I like them, and then when I see Ruby dismounting and Leah getting ready to mount, I run over and take my place.
Leah’s routine isn’t bad. Bars are probably her best event, but it’s such an easy routine, it’s not like it’ll matter much. Her dismount is just a giant full to double tuck, which is something you never see in elite. Too easy.
I mount the low bar the second she walks away and I float through my first transitions, the Maloney to pak and then the Chow. A million percent different from the Open. Not a single concern here, and I’m basically on autopilot at this point.
The toe full to Gienger is as sharp as it can possibly be, I catch my other release – the Markelov – no problem, and stick the double front.
“Yes, Amalia!” Natasha screams, pumping her fist into the air. I run over for a hug. “Seriously, best I’ve seen you do it.”
Polina reaches in for a hug of her own. “Good job with corrections. Keep them in mind for tonight and tomorrow, okay? Your execution there was definitely above a 9.0, by the way…no way judges could have deducted more than a point. That would be a 14.9 in competition, which would be huge for you.”
I can’t stop smiling. First practice of the day, check. I grab a towel and wrap it around my neck while watching Emerson’s routine. She’s about as perfect as she can be as well. Has been all day.
“Come on, Em, you got this!” I yell as she winds up before the dismount, and she nails her double-twisting double layout – new for her this year, and easily the most difficult bars dismount in the country – with just a small step. Sergei throws her a celebration similar to Natasha’s for me, and I high five her once she’s off the podium.
We gather our things and walk back to the hotel for lunch and a nap. I could get used to this shortened day. Five hours of training is nothing compared to my usual seven hours in the gym and five hours in school.
Practice notes are boring. We all did fine today, Natasha and Sergei aren’t worried, keep the focus, blah blah blah. I just want to eat lunch and nap at this point.
“Oh yeah, interviews,” Natasha remembers right before letting us go. Uuuugggghhhh. “The press will watch you practice and then interview you, same as the Open. Be professional and diplomatic. Try not to look bored,” she grins at Ruby. “If you get a question about other athletes and aren’t sure how to answer it without being a jerk, try to swing it around to make it about you.” Again, a look at Ruby, who smiles sweetly as if to say “who, me?”
We stick to the deli in our hotel for lunch. They have chicken Caesar salads that don’t look super appetizing but are preferable to doing a grand search for something yummier.
“Ooh, grapes!” Ruby shouts when we get to the deli. “New development in our diet this week! Old apples need not apply.”
Everyone grabs a pre-made salad, some form of fruit (grapes for Ruby, obviously), and yogurt with some granola, minus Sergei, who goes straight for a slice of cold pizza.
“I hate you,” Ruby pouts.
“Win an Olympic medal and you can have all the pizza you want,” he retorts.
Polina finds an empty table off to the side of the lobby and we cram around it. The mere smell of Sergei’s gross pizza is taking me way back to a happier, carbier time. If a reporter asks me “pizza or the Olympics?” during interviews they might be a bit surprised to hear my answer has more to do with sauce and cheese than Rio.
“I have to say,” Natasha starts between bites of salad, “as a team, you guys are the best out there, hands down. Windy City might have a larger group but you guys could easily finish top three this weekend. I don’t think Windy City could get three in the top 12.”
Sergei clears his throat. “Irina and Charlotte are pretty solid. So is Bailey on vault, and Olivia does great work on bars and beam. They’re collectively not quite at our level but I could see one or two making the team depending on how things pan out. Let’s not forget that half of last year’s worlds team came from Windy City, which is almost impossible. They could definitely have a few surprises.”
“Charlotte’s crap,” Ruby argues. “She’s just pretty to watch. Doesn’t mean she’s good.”
“I don’t know,” he muses. “I watched her train a lot back in Chicago. She could surprise us, and she looked fantastic in training. I think out of anyone, she could have a really nice peak this summer…really start hitting her best routines ever and make a name for herself.”
I play with my straw paper, pretending I don’t hear the discussion at all. I just want one afternoon without speculation or hypotheticals. All I need to know who my competition is and how I measure up, and I’ve definitely done my research. I have a pretty firm grasp as to where I stand. Some gymnasts live with their heads completely in the clouds, thinking they’re a lock for a major team and then they cry themselves to sleep for weeks after not making it, as if finishing 15th at nationals didn’t clue them in.
But incessantly chattering day in and day out about things that haven’t happened – who might peak, who might falter, who might take the world by surprise – does nothing more than take my relatively calm nerves and completely snap them around until I’m panicking about the “what ifs.”
Natasha recognizes my frustration, thankfully, and sees I’ve finished my lunch. “All right, if you’re done eating, how about a 45-minute nap? I’d give you guys a full hour but with interviews right after practice you’re gonna need an extra 15 minutes of hairspray so you don’t look like monsters on camera.”
I thank her under my breath as I gather my trash and she gives me a half-smile and a nod. Ruby, Emerson, and I make our way toward the elevator, yawning a bit. Who knew salad and fruit could put you in a post-Thanksgiving dinner haze?
Ruby shuts the blackout curtains, making it midnight in the middle of our day. I drop onto the bed, pop in my earbuds, set my thunderstorm white noise relaxation app for 45 minutes, and try to get comfortable. My body shuts down right away, though as usual, my mind takes a bit longer to chill.
I can’t help thinking of Sergei’s comments about Charlotte “surprising” everyone. How can he tell? It’s not like he magically knows the future. A year ago not one person could have guessed I’d be in the running for the Olympic team, and yet here we are. Literally anyone could be a surprise this week. Including me.
I yawn and flip onto my stomach, stretching my legs out so they take up the full length of the bed – not easy if you’re five-foot-nothing. Eventually the fake thunderstorms lull me to sleep, but my brain rambled on for so long I’m wide awake again minutes later when the alarm goes off. Great.
Whatever. I stretch, yawn, and sit on the edge of the bed, rolling my neck and gathering my thoughts. I’ll be the one surprising everyone this week, I decide. I’ve been kickass so far and before getting up, I repeat my little “just have fun” mantra. I’ve gotten this far. There’s no way I’m slowing down now.
***
“What was the skill you were having problems with this afternoon?” a faceless reporter asks. It’s the fourth time I’m hearing this question.
“My bars dismount,” I sigh loudly. I can’t help it. “Uh, it’s called a double front.”
“Any reason why, you think? Do you usually struggle there?”
“No, actually. Never.” Ha, I sound like Emerson. “Probably a fluke. Sometimes the bars on the podium feel different than the bars we’re used to and it was my first time on the podium today. I was hitting just fine yesterday. Better to get it out of the way today.”
“You were having problems on bars at the Open, right?” another reporter asks.
“Just in training, and it was with a skill we were just playing around with,” I lie, not wanting to let them know it was a skill we took out of my routine and replaced. “I don’t compete it.”
I don’t have a damn clue as to why I couldn’t hit my double front today, to be honest. My “fluke” response make
s the most sense because everything was on point. Polina was watching closely and my swing was just right as I released the bar. My rotation was probably off or something.
Either way, it wasn’t drastic. I sat it once when I first warmed it up, it looked fine when I tried it again on its own, and then took two steps forward when I did it with the full routine. It’s not the end of the world. Those were the only two mistakes I’ve made on the dismount all season. It’s not like I’m worried.
Except I am, a tiny bit. I wouldn’t be me if I wasn’t worried.
I try to keep a smile on my face for some of the lame questions, like “how do you think you did today” and “tell us about your day.” I’ve only taken high school journalism as a requirement to write for the school paper but even I know not to ask “tell me about…” questions. Because they’re not questions. See, Mr. Drucker? I was totally paying attention.
Finally, I recognize Anna Young, the Seattle Times reporter who has been doing really nice human interest pieces about me, Ruby, Emerson, Natasha, and everything MGMA. She smiles warmly when she walks over to me after other straggling journalists wander away.
“Amalia. How are you?”
“Good,” I exhale. “Great. You?”
“Fine, thank you for asking. I know you’re short on time, so what’s the one thing today you’re taking with you as you go into the competition tomorrow?”
“Uh, between both practices, if I had to pick just one, it’s probably to remember details. I think the big things are all solid at this point, so now it’s fine-tuning, which I worked on a little bit on bars this morning, though kinda got side-tracked this afternoon with the dismount fall.”
“Any insight there?”
“It could be anything,” I say, giving her a little more credit than the others. At least this question came from a natural segue and wasn’t just bloodhounds sniffing for their next meal. “I had kind of a crappy nap today between practices, and maybe the focus on the little things took away from the big.” I shrug. “It’ll all come together tomorrow.”
“Good girl. How about your teammates? Did you see any of their warm-up? Do you think they’re ready?”
“I didn’t see much, honestly. I always try to watch some of their bigger skills and cheer them on a bit but we’re so busy with our own distractions, it’s hard to watch anything they do with like, any sort of critical eye. But they’ve been looking great with what I have seen, and no complaints from the coaches, so…”
“That’s great. Any goal this weekend for how you’d like to place?”
I want to be bold and say top three. I want to be even bolder and say first place, but I’ve accepted that I’m not topping Ruby or Emerson anytime soon. I play it safe.
“Top five,” I smile.
“Really, just top five? Even after silver at the Open?”
“That was without my teammates in the all-around,” I remind her. “Had they competed and hit, I would have been fourth, off the podium. I think I can make top three if I really go after every detail, but even then I’d probably still need to rely on some mistakes from others. I don’t think anyone can beat Ruby and Emerson for gold and silver, but the race for bronze here is going to be super close.”
“Would you be happy with bronze?”
“Absolutely. It’s my first nationals. I’d be happy with tenth,” I admit. “I know I can reach the podium, but honestly even if I have a bad week and end up in tenth place, I’d just be happy to have made it this far.”
“Tenth place still comes with an Olympic Trials spot,” she smiles knowingly. “They’re taking the top 12 from what I hear. I’d have to guess you wouldn’t be quite as happy with 13th?”
“Well, no,” I blush. “But I don’t think that’s gonna happen. I know my scoring potential well enough relative to the other girls that I could fall, like, three or maybe even four times and still not be in 13th.”
“Doing the math, I like that. Do you do the math while you compete? Checking your score and seeing how you fit as you go along?”
“Nope. Actually, I made that mistake at the Open. I looked at my score after the third rotation and saw I was in the lead. I thought I’d totally won it. Got my hopes up and then Maddy had an amazing floor, like…her best ever. So it ended up being kind of a bummer. I don’t usually do that.”
“So you were unhappy with silver at the Open?”
“No.” Good Lord these reporters know how to twist words. “I was just saying that it’s not the best feeling to think you’re in first place and then at the last second, get the silver medal. I was very happy with silver at my first senior elite meet ever.”
So suck it, I want to add.
“I think most would be disappointed in coming within a tenth of gold and not getting it.”
“Obviously gold was my goal but it didn’t happen and I can’t change the past. I also didn’t have my best meet, and I knew that. It’s not like I was perfect and still missed out. Getting that close to gold with the mistakes I made is actually awesome.”
“Are you nervous for tomorrow?”
“No? Not really. I’m fully prepared.”
“You seem a little tense.”
This woman has quickly gone from my favorite journalist to someone I want to punch in the neck.
“I’m not tense,” I smile. “Just tired. It’s a long week and I’ve had four big training sessions in the past, like, 36 hours. But we’re getting massages tonight and then have tomorrow off right up to the meet starts, so it gives us 24 hours to unwind and get into gear.”
“Okay. Back to the competition, then. Who would you say you’re most afraid of this week besides your own teammates? There are definitely a few who can beat you in that race for bronze.”
“Absolutely no one,” I smile again, bigger and brighter than before. Kill ‘em with kindness. I’m over giving polite and honest answers.
“All right.” She taps the stop button on her recorder app, types in my last name and the date, and then clicks her phone off. “I can tell you’re mentally done for today.”
She begins packing up, having already spoken to Ruby and Emerson, who are still surrounded by a gaggle of journalists.
“Thanks again,” she adds before leaving. “And sorry if I came off as pushy. But a good story doesn’t come from sunshine and bubbles. I like getting at the truth. The grit. That’s what my readers want to hear and it’s my job to give it to them.”
“With all due respect,” I say, hopping off of my chair, “your job is to report on what we’re doing, which is trying to make the Olympic team. You want the truth for your story, but your story is my life. Maybe I’m not comfortable giving you the ‘grit’ because drudging up every little doubt and insecurity could affect how I compete and thus my chances at making the team. And no matter how much you push, I don’t have to give it to you.”
I pick up my bag and storm out of the mixed zone. Outside I seem pissed off but inside I’m fighting to keep a smile from forming. That felt amazing.
***
“I still can’t believe it. Move over Ruby and Emerson,” Natasha smirks after I finally tell everyone the interview story. “MGMA has a new diva.”
“Oh, man, I wish I’d seen it,” Ruby laughs, wiping tears from her eyes.
“It’s my dream to make a reporter cry and you came so close.”
I grin. “I wouldn’t say I made her cry. But it was worth it to see the look on her face. She’s definitely traumatized.”
Finding Our Balance Page 21