In an attempt to meet my goal of updating this blog a little bit more to keep in touch with everyone, I've decided to make another entry today. Two entries in two days?! That's pretty much unheard of for me, so here goes.
First, Karl and I have been packing tirelessly all week in an attempt to prepare for our move (just four more days!) To the right is a picture of the chaos going on inside our apartment right now. It's amazing how much stuff we have, even after we have given a lot of it to Goodwill or taken it to the recycling center. I am looking forward to having a lot more storage space at our place in California. We only have one closet in the apartment we live in now, and that's no way to live.
Secondly, I am getting so excited about the OLYMPICS!!!!!!!!! They're coming up in August and I'm so glad we will be moved into our new place and settled in by the time they start. The Olympics are something that I look forward to every four years, especially the Summer games. The Winter Olympics are okay, but nothing beats watching hours upon hours of swimming, diving, track and field, and best of all, GYMNASTICS! I'm even more excited than usual about the gymnastics this year, because there is a very good chance that my former coach, Peter Zhao, will have an athlete competing for the United States. USA Gymnastics will announce the final four members of the women's gymnastics team in about a week, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Samantha Peszek makes the team - she trains at DeVeau's in Indianapolis and is coached by Peter. He came to my gym in Evansville (Acros) back in 1991 or 1992 straight from China, where he was on the national team. He was a wonderful coach and a great person, so I'm very happy to see that he has a gymnast with such a great shot at making the team (she placed 4th at Olympic Trials, but they only named the top two people to the team so far...now they are all at a "Selection Camp" at the Karolyi Ranch near Houston, TX to select the final four members).
I still have videotapes of the Olympic gymnastics from 1988, 1992, 1996, and 2004 (somehow I missed taping the 2000 Games) and I could watch them over and over and over again. I get chills every time I see the American competitors doing well. The Olympics is actually what sparked my interest in gymnastics to begin with. When I was four years old I watched Mary Lou Retton win a gold medal in the 1984 Games and I was hooked, although I didn't even like Mary Lou - my parents tell me that I was cheering for Ecaterina Szabo from Romania because I said she was "pretty". So after those Olympics I would bug my parents to enroll me in a gymnastics class, and finally when I was seven years old they did! The sport has been in my blood ever since.
While there have been many great Olympic moments over the years, I have to say that two moments immediately come to my mind when I think of my "favorites". Luckily with the assistance of YouTube I am able to share those clips with you right now:
1) Trent Dimas winning the gold medal on high bar at the 1992 Olympics. It was the U.S. men's team's last shot at a medal in the '92 Games, and no one expected the U.S. to win any medals in men's gymnastics at all. When I was 11, I met Trent Dimas at the '91 U.S. Championships and remembered just how nice he was to all of us "little kids", so he has always been a favorite gymnast of mine. He had a really rough year in '91 in terms of competitions and paying for training, so it was just absolutely amazing to see him do so well and win the gold medal. No one deserved it more. I love it after his routine when he runs off the floor and jumps on his coach, Ed Burch, and they celebrate. Even though there was one competitor to go, they both knew he had medaled and had the routine of his life. Every single time I watch it, without fail, I get that warm fuzzy feeling of sheer happiness, and always get a little lump in my throat like I'm going to cry. That is what I love about the Olympics - those types of feelings that are inevitably invoked in you every time you watch a competition.
Here's the clip. I believe that is 1984 Olympic gold medalist Peter Vidmar commentating:
2) Kerri Strug's vault at the 1996 Olympics, which sealed the gold medal for the U.S. women's team. I know this is a much more well-known Olympic moment, but I remember sitting on the couch at my house in Mt. Vernon with my mom and watching that vault, then welling up with tears because I was so happy for the U.S. women. A few years ago I tore a ligament in my foot (which is what I believe Kerri Strug's injury was..it was NOT a broken ankle as many people say), and let me just tell you that the pain I felt after tearing that ligament was excruciating (ironically, I tore it while doing gymnastics, although not the vault). There is no way I could have walked back down the runway, sprinted to the vault, and performed a full-twisting Yurchenko after that (okay, I could never do a Yurchenko anyway, but that's beside the point!)...let alone landing it on one foot. That was such a courageous and selfless act on her part, and truly inspirational. She was always known as the "baby" of the U.S. group and the one who could never pull it together in competition, but in that one vault she became bigger than any of the other U.S. "stars" that she had competed against her whole life like Shannon Miller and Kim Zmeskal. So, in case you feel the need to watch Kerri's vault one more time, here it is. This clip includes the first vault too - the one where she hurt her foot:
Just watching that made me tear up again. I can't help it; I'm a sap for the Olympics. I don't think we'll ever see a U.S. women's team as great as the "Magnificent Seven" that summer. Maybe it's because those were the gymnasts of my generation - I was the same age as Jaycie Phelps (who also grew up in Indiana, coincidentally) and +/- two years of most of the other girls on the team - but I really feel like they were a special group and it's so rare to see a team like that.
That's all for now...I've got to run errands and finish packing! If you actually read this entire post, good for you! :)
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