I have loved gymnastics for over 20 years. Back then I did cartwheels in front of the TV while watching the 1988 Olympics. I still have the VHS tape of that, and I remember every single bit of commentary (Dick Enberg, Bart Conner, and Mary Lou Retton) and every slight hop on the landings. I haven’t followed it in the past couple of years – the new scoring system was a total shock – but I still love the sport. I have a couple of thoughts to share.

I’m not very happy with the Chinese age scandal. I think they are definitely under 16, and the IOC should be ashamed for accepting those passports. Bela Karolyi is from a former Communist state, and he says passports are very easily falsified. There are some girls on their team who look well under 16. He Kexin is the most controversial, but I think Deng Linlin really looks like she could be even younger than 14, though she’s not one of the ones under heavy scrutiny. Now, it’s not that 14 year olds can’t compete for health reasons or whatever…Nadia was 14 in 1976. But the point is that current rules require 16+, and some of those girls aren’t 16. Yang Yun competed in Sydney at the age of 14 (she admitted it herself after the fact) and also Chinese press has internally reported some of this year’s athletes as being 14! I like Bela Karolyi’s solution…just take away the Olympic age limit. Then again, we’d have to get rid of juniors/seniors altogether if we did that, and you’d get very young kids trying to pull very difficult tricks. I find it interesting that the IOC/FIG will strip medals for accidental doping – Andreea Raducan was given a cold medicine and lost her gold medal – but not for blatant disregard of the rules. Then again, I’m not sure it’s fair to blame individual athletes for mistakes made by their coaches or superiors. Andreea Raducan didn’t know, and I’m sure Yang Yun was doing what she was told as well…”say you’re 16″ – “okay, I’m 16″…can you blame little girls for mistakes made either for their nation’s glory or their own health?

I’m turning my attention now to Yelena Mukhina. I’ve been watching a lot of very old gymnastics routines on YouTube, and I’ve come across quite a few “gymnastics disasters” videos too – collections of people falling on faces, falling on butts, etc. There’s one video that has me disturbed. The intelligent comments on that video have been saying it’s Yelena Mukhina in the video, who became a quadriplegic as a result of a failed Thomas salto back in 1980; she died in 2006 from complications relating to her accident. The video appears to be of a missed Thomas salto, so people are assuming it’s Mukhina, and I figured they were right. But I just watched it again, and I realized – Mukhina fell in training just prior to the 1980 Olympics. Not in competition, in training. There wouldn’t have been a number on her back, there wouldn’t have been sportscaster commentary, and there might not even have been cameras. Furthermore, the gymnast in the video is wearing red, and her trainers are clearly Asian, so the girl in the video is probably Chinese. But if that’s not Mukhina, who is it? The Thomas salto has been banned for women – following Mukhina’s accident – because it requires upper body strength that only the guys have. So who would have been performing it, and when? What happened to her? She’s obviously badly injured there, but I can’t figure out who she is. (It’s not Sang Lan, if you’re thinking along those lines – she was paralyzed on vault during the Goodwill Games in 1998.) I’d love to know if video of Mukhina’s fall exists, but I don’t think it does. That video is another girl, but who is she?

I did it! I took the day off. I did a little bit of chores in the morning – I still haven’t done anything with the auction package from ABW, that’s next on the list – but most of the day I just relaxed. In the afternoon we went out to see the movie “Stick It” – the first time we’ve gone to the theater in a while, at least in several months. I was rather disappointed in the movie, unfortunately…knowing that it was from the people who did Bring It On gave me high hopes, but it wasn’t nearly as cute as that movie. It had about as much gymnastics as Bring It On had cheerleading, though, so I was pleased with that aspect. It was amusing to see Tim Daggett, Elfi Schlegel, and Bart Conner on the screen, but with all the hype surrounding Carly Patterson’s appearance I thought it would have been longer than two and a half seconds. Also, Mohini Bhardwaj’s name was on the meet scoreboard and in the credits, but I didn’t see her anywhere. Anyway, I will probably rent it from Netflix once so I can freeze-frame the gymnastics, but I won’t be watching it nearly a dozen times as I did with Bring It On.

After the movie, we went to Baskin-Robbins, which was having “buy one sundae, get another free” day to celebrate their new “signature” sundaes. I chose a peanut butter sundae, because I haven’t had peanut butter sauce since the local Friendly’s restaurant closed! Unfortunately the girl didn’t quite know how to make it, so it wasn’t as delicious as I was hoping – but it was still damn good. I replaced the officially-designated chocolate ice cream with nonfat vanilla, and having that in the same cup as the full-fat Peanut Butter and Chocolate ice cream was a bit odd. Anyway, it was a huge break in my diet, and two scoops of ice cream was way too much, but it was fun. I won’t be doing it again soon, though.

Throughout the second half of the 20th century, eastern European countries dominated gymnastics at the international level. The Soviet Union was renowned for its training centers that consistently turned out prize-winning gymnasts, but when the government dissolved in the early 1990s another Communist country was given the opportunity to showcase its gymnasts. Chinese gymnasts such as Yang Bo, Liu Xuan, and Mo Huilan paved the way for younger gymnasts to achieve great recognition on the international stage. One such young gymnast was Sang Lan, but her dream was shattered.
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