The Olympics!

So I've written a small essay about women's "artistic" gymnastics, but I can't bring it to any conclusion, and I don't really care to read it again to edit it, so read forth at your own risk, really.

It is widely known that I am not a sports fan. I hate sports. That said, the Olympics don't count. I will watch certain Olympic events with a kind of glee that only the Olympics can generate. This glee is event-specific. I generally like the winter sports better, because you've got your curling and your biathlon, and the loge. Summer Olympics have track and best of all, women's gymnastics. I was kind of surprised when N. refused to watch gymnastics with me.

"That's sports!" he said, dejected, "I thought you hated sports!"

The next morning on NPR they did a segment explaining that the audience who watches the Olympics on TV are not sports fans. There's not much of a cross-over between the crowd following Yankee baseball games and the Olympic-watching audience.

Now, I have no interest in beach volleyball. I have a vested interest in hating volleyball specifically. But did you know that beach volleyball is played on two person teams? That seems really hard! Nevertheless, who cares, its beach volleyball. I didn't watch more than two minutes of that. I'm writing to you now about women's gymnastics.

Many, many years ago my friend Jen (who's wedding is in October) was into gymnastics. She quit after 8th grade, but when we started being friends in 7th grade, Jen could still do a no-handed cartwheel. It was pretty impressive. One time there was a pretty high level American gymnastics meet on TV, and I recorded it and watched it with Jen. Later I kind of regretted recording it, because she made me watch it with her several dozen times.

Anyway, several competitors from that meet when on to compete in the next Olympic games, and I couldn't help but feel like I knew them somehow. I'd seen them previously, and I felt like I had a vested interest in their success. I don't think anything memorable happened to that set of gymnast, and they're probably all retired now.

I missed the whole Kari Strugg incident in the last Olympics and I felt really left out for like, the next two years as Saturday Night Live parodied the incident.

This year my roommates recorded the girl's gymnastics on TiVo, so I got the chance to watch both the team competition and the individual all-around

It works like this - national teams compete on one night, where each gymnast does the four events, vault, uneven bars, balance beam, and floor (like a floor routine), and their collective scores determine the team metals. The next day, the gymnasts all compete again, but this time they're not on teams, so we get to find out who is the best individual gymnast in the world.

And that's where it gets really weird. In the team competition the Romanians kicked some serious ass. All of their performances were totally flawless. They "stuck" all their landings (more on this later). The NBC commentators were almost totally silent during every Romanian girl's performance because they never fucked up anything. The Romanian girls were like tiny gymnastic machines, and they took the gold they deserved.

But when it came to the individual competition the next night, only one Romanian chick was in the running for a medal. And although the previous night, she had given an error-free performance, she totally messed up on the balance beam, and was knocked out of medal contention all together.

What the hell happened!? The Romanians were like freaking Olympic terminators! Were they all under some kind of suicide pact for the team competition, and then utterly wiped out by the time the next day rolled around?

Also during the team competition, the Russian girls gave very dramatic performances. Apparently they barely made it into the medal competition, so they were really stoked to take the bronze, even though the previous year they were real jerks about "only" getting silver medals. I found out why later, but we'll get back to that.

The best girl on the Russian team was Svetlana Khorkina. I'd never heard of her before, but she's some kind of international super-star (of gymnastics). Svetlana is immediately striking because at 5'5", she towers like a giant over all of her fellow gymnasts. She's also very striking in that she looks a lot like The Bride in Kill Bill - not so much in that she resembles Uma Thurman, but more like she looks like she could (and maybe she has, or she's about to) kill a bunch of people. She really has a look in her eye all the time that screams out "I've taken human life before, and I'm not afraid to do it again!"

This is immediately very different from the other gymnast, all of whom are younger than Svetlana (who's 25, while the competition is 16 or less) and all of whom look deathly afraid through the bulk of their routines. During Svetlana's floor routine on both nights, she looked relaxed, as if this was actually fun, and she seemed to devour the crowd's attention. The crowd, in turn, seemed to be totally in love with her, and payed more attention to her events than any of the others.

It occurred to me later that maybe the scared-to-death look in most women gymnastic competitors might be why that sport appeals to me and the rest of the prime time non-sport-fan audience. By contrast, swimming events (which took place during the same broadcast, so I had to fast forward through them) were almost totally uninteresting. You can't see how the swimmers feel because their faces are underwater. When they get awards, and you get to really see the swimmers, they're all in their twenties at least, and most of them are sleek and muscular and confident.

In women's gymnastics, on the other had, the competitors are tiny kids. They're midgets, they're skinny, and it doesn't look like their bodies ought to be able to hurdle through the air like that. And, as I mentioned before, they're fucking scared to death to be there. That's how I would feel if I was there. I'd be pretty fucking nervous. But you don't get that from swimmers or the male gymnasts. They worked really hard and are quite confident in their abilities. Also some of the little gymnasts are cute.

Cute scared girls who have the ability to fly are way more interesting than some muscled guy on rings.

There are two or three really annoying things about watching women's gymnastics.

First of all, there's "sticking the landing". When the gymnast finishes a vault, or dismounts from the bars or the beam, they're expected to land with their feet together and to stick there - that is to say - not to take a tiny (or large) step for balance off to one side. Apparently this is really hard to do, because that's one thing that the commentators really harp on, and the gymnasts often fuck it up. It's worth about a tenth of a point deduction from the judges. It must be really difficult, because in the entire time I've been watching girl's Olympics, American girls seem to keep fucking it up. Thy just can't stick a landing 98% of the time. The Romanians and Russians have way less of a problem sticking their landings.

Maybe there's just some key difference, where if your countries economy blows, and you can't stick your landings, the KGB is going to fucking kill your parents. Whereas, you know, if you have a nice suburban home to go back to at night, it's not as big of a deal if you take a tiny step.

From what I know about basketball, sticking landings in gymnastics is kind of like the ability to make free-throws. Free-throws are worth two points, but you're not allowed to just over the line. That's an easy two points, because no one's allowed to interfere with the shot. If I were a basketball coach I'd make my team practice free-throws for like, two hours a day. If I were a gymnastics coach, I'd make my team stick their goddamn landings.

The second annoying thing about girl's gymnastics is the weird ass "dance elements" that get worked into the beam and floor routines. The "dance elements" are not like real dance moves. They're more like weird, militarist hand motions, or sometimes very precise pirouettes. It reminds me of when we did dance-type things in marching band. It was more important to be sharp and precise than it was to be graceful.

There were a couple of gymnasts who's "dance elements" didn't look freakish. An Australian individual competitor had a decent floor routine - so much so that the commentators were kissing her ass. But then the Australian's score sucked. I guess the judges are all about robotic precision. Svetlana's floor routine was also pretty graceful, whereas the winner, Carly Patterson (the American) had this irritatingly cheerleader-like choreographed moves that I hated, but the judges seemed to love.

These "dance elements" on beam and floor are often so cheesy that I can see where it would stop most people from bothering to watch girls' gymnastics at all. The bizarre hand gestures and weird-ass poses on the beam and floor just seem like annoying distractions from an otherwise bad-ass routine of flipping through the air. It's kind of like how in figure skating, their routines don't seem to follow the music at all. Figure skating out to be more like ballet. But gymnasts should really either stop trying to dance or make it more dance-like.

When I was looking up more information on Svetlana, I was really, really annoyed by one sports columnist's piece on the Olympic games. He claimed that watching girls' gymnastics was somewhat horrifying, because all of the girls in it are emaciated, probably have "eating disorders" and they wear too much eyeshadow. Who gives a shit about any of that?! Of course they're skinny, they're 16 year-olds on mad athletic diets. But we shouldn't be judging them on their eyeshadow, we ought to be judging them on their ability to flip through the air!

That got me to thinking about how women's Olympic gymnastics is one of the very few times in the year that teenage girls are portrayed in a positive light in the media. When you seen a teenage girl on television, she's usually a screaming fan of some band, or a cliche on a sitcom, or some starlet/singer who the public has a weird love-hate relationship with (like Britany Spears or Avril Lavine). Usually teenage girls are expected to be idiots and judged based on their looks. Everyone hates teenage girls in our society. I hated teenage girls when I was one (yes, including myself).

During women's Olympic gymnastics, girls are being judged based on their strength and agility. They are not ditzy, but are dead-serious about what they are doing. An Olympic gold metal is probably the highest honor any teenage girl could hope to receive. As a female athlete, those prime-time NBC high-ratings are also the most attention they could hope to receive in the US.

Now I'd like to take the time to talk about some of the individual competitors. Zhang Non from China did one of the awesome-est uneven bar routines I've ever seen. It was graceful and terrific, but apparently not a very high skill lever. Then Zhang screwed up on beam, so she was out of the medal contest. The other Chinese girl, Wand Tiantian, looked more nervous than Zhang, but after wobbling on beam, Zhang was able to recover (and take home a Bronze), where a lot of other girls weren't. One good slip-up on beam shook up so many girls so much that two of them fell on their asses during the dismount. A tiny step is one thing, but falling on your ass means no medal for you! I can't imagine it! I'd never be able to forgive my ass!

Anna Pavlova was the next best Russian girl after Svetlana. Anna is really cute, but not as cute as Zhang (after all I said about not judging them on appearance... gah...) Catalina Ponor put on an impressive performance, apparently a lot more impressive than I gave her credit for, since now she has three gold medals. I liked Oana Ban a lot, because she was very small but very good. I didn't really like Carly Patterson much at all - but she beat everyone by simply not fucking up on beam, and later, she took a gold for just the beam (I didn't see that competition).

Svetlana is supposed to be queen of the uneven bars but she also fucked up her performance in a competition I didn't see - one where the gymnasts get medals for the individual events (beam, floor, etc). She actually fell off the bars during an easy move, and then was too upset to recover, and placed last out of eight competitors in what was her last chance ever (she's retiring) to win Olympic Gold. She retires with a Bronze from the team event and a Silver from the individual all-around.

The press annoyed me by playing up Svetlana's troubles at the Sydney 2000 Olympics. Apparently the vaulting horse was too low, and several gymnasts vaulted before anyone noticed it. It totally fucked up Svetlana, who fell on her knees after the vault. She was so shook up by that that she fell again on bars (back in 2000). Yes, that sucks, but I didn't want her to win gold this year out of pity (as the mass media would want me to). I wanted her to win because she's awesome.

I'd like to think that Olympic level competitors can recover after small mistakes in their performance. It's very tough to watch a girl slip a little on the beam, and then get so nervous about one mistake that she wobbles through the rest of her routine and blows her own score. Svetlana did get robbed in 2000, but she fucked up this year on her own. Maybe she couldn't ever recover from such an embarrassing incident. Maybe she got over-confident, being a self-proclaimed diva and all, and that's why she nearly stepped out of bounds on her floor-routine during the individual all-around.

Well.... this is where I trail off... This essay isn't really going anywhere anyway...

Comments Individual Archive Index

August 25, 2004 12:25 AM, Maggie said:

Erin, I have commented about your essay on the octoblog, because the Olympics are so cool, we should all talk about them a lot!

Yay, gymnastics!!!

August 25, 2004 01:00 AM, Sam said:

Oh dear. I was going to confine my Olympic madness to real life, but alas, I have been thwarted by your blog entry.

You should come over on Thursday so we can kvetch about the Olympic Gymnastics, you, me and Maggie.

August 25, 2004 11:28 AM, N. said:

I don't have much to say in my own defense. I don't like watching gymnastics because I am afraid the gymnasts will screw up - a fear that appears to be well-grounded based on what little I saw of them this year. Also, whoever controls the camera apparently loves to catch the athletes crying over a fuck-up. I hate that. Bad enough I should mess up in front of hundreds of millions of people, why should you have to show me crying afterwards?

I don't deny that I lump the Olympics with sports, and I don't really see how the two are different. I feel stupid cheering and I can't really affect the outcome of a game. . . so. . . what's the point?

I will say though that the only time in my entire life I have ever felt anything that could even be remotely construed as "American pride" was watching Kerri Strug grit her teeth and run on a sprained ankle to win the gold for the U.S. team in 1996. I happened to be sitting in some restaurant with a television in northern Colorado when she did it (which means I caught the most exciting five minutes of the Olympics that year completely by accident) and the cheering amongst the handful of patrons gathered around the screen was absolutely thunderous.

But now when I look back on that I feel mostly embarrassed. What she did is no less incredible, but that she did it for the American team seems arbitrary to me. She could've easily been Romanian or Chinese or whatever. There was no need for nationalistic pride. I don't know. I don't like sports and I don't like the Olympics. That's all I can say about that.

August 25, 2004 09:40 PM, ET said:

Well, whippersnapper, I can tell that in the old days, sticking the landing happened a lot more. I'm a little surprised at how much they take steps these days. One commentator said that the level of competition has risen so high that they have to do way more difficult moves now and that results in more imperfect landings. I can buy that, as world records keep getting broken at every Olympics, so the athletic ability is clearly improving with each generation.

August 26, 2004 01:50 AM, Halifax said:

They shoud ban eyeshadow from Olympic gymnastics. Then they should do constant eyeshadow testing of athletes to make sure they didn't sneak "just a little" on.

"Dance elements" are there in the floor routine to let you catch your breath between flips--the alternative is to just stand there motionless for fifteen seconds. Thet being said, they should just stand there motionless, because dance elements are a big freaking joke. First of all they suck. Second of all, they suck so hard, I could do them. Third of all, they come inbetween instances of flying through the air, so their cruddiness is only emphasized. It drives me nuts. What's going through these girls' minds? "I can do awesome ninja moves, as I have just demonstrated; now watch me perform a fruity box-social kick step. Okay, back to the ninja." The move where you lie down on the floor and kick your legs like a 'fifties teenager on the phone--is it even possible to screw this up? Does it take any talent at all? For God's sake, Ken can kick on his stomach. I can't imagine an Olympic judge taking points off for "not enough fruity prancing" but apparently that's what they do. Etc.

August 26, 2004 12:06 PM, Erin said:

OMFG they should totally do ninja moves instead of dance moves. I'd like to see 15 seconds of martial arts between those flips!

Also the '50's teenager on the phone move (and I know exactly the one you're talking about) was probably added in the '50's, since girl's artistic gymnastics became a sport in... well, crap, I can't find the exact year. Nevermind. I suspect the sport is rooted in unholy 1950's dance moves.

I've seen better "dance elements" in cheerleading competitions.

August 18, 2005 08:42 AM, mrinmoy said:

I want to know the Anna Pavlova`s email ID.
piease help me

October 13, 2006 02:11 PM, toenail fungus said:

its very interesting, thank

December 29, 2007 12:46 PM, tania said:

i hate the american gymnasts coz there over confident and most of them are fat. they won the 96 olympic gold team medal coz they r the host. they dont deserve at all.so what if kerri vaulted with a bad leg? i`d also do that if i want my team to win

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