WHEW...I thought I was going to have a heart-attack during women's gymnastics tonight

I obviously LOVE gymnastics, and in my mind there is no event more exciting than the women's All-Around competition in the Olympic Games. Tonight as I sat on the couch watching the 2008 Olympics my emotions were all over the board. For the first three events, vault, bars, and beam, my outrage at the blatant bias of the judges grew and grew. I was about to swear off watching the rest of the Olympic gymnastics competitions this year (individual event finals remain), as I was sure there was some sort of conspiracy and the judges were being paid off to give the Americans lower scores than they deserved. On the floor exercise, however, they finally got things right and I truly believe that the results ended up the way they were supposed to. That's when my emotions switched from anger to sheer happiness.

Tonight Nastia Liukin became only the third American woman ever to win the Olympic All-Around gold (and I just realized that I have been in front of the TV to see every one of those gold medals as they happened), and as I watched her last routine I got tears in my eyes. I was screaming at the TV screen to "stay in bounds!" and "land it!" and I thought to myself about how nervous I was as a spectator, and I couldn't even imagine how her parents must feel. I've been a fan of Nastia ever since I saw her compete in the junior national championships in 2002 in Cleveland, at which I worked during my time with USA Gymnastics. She was only 11 or 12 years old at that time and she fell really hard on bars and didn't place that high, but you could definitely tell that she was going to be a star. I met her dad/coach, Valeri, at the 1991 World Championships in Indianapolis when he was still a gymnastics competitor for the Soviet Union. I really don't remember that but I have his autograph somewhere. Anyway, I'm off the subject. I was cheering for Nastia and Shawn Johnson all night, and I really didn't have a preference for who I wanted to win the gold - just as long as one of them got it! After the horrendously unfair scores on the balance beam I honestly wasn't sure if either of them would do it, to no fault of their own. Gymnastics is such a subjective sport and sometimes it's just not fair. I will say that earlier in the day I had a weird feeling that Nastia was going to win. Dr. Miloch can be my witness - I emailed her and said that earlier this evening. ;) Nastia and Shawn were both flawless on floor exercise, and Shawn Johnson should have no regrets - she competed as well as she possibly could tonight and Nastia was just the stronger gymnast on this occassion. I am so excited for the U.S. gymnasts, as our country has never had a 1-2 finish in the women's all around competition. I loved seeing Nastia and her father's emotional celebration 20 years after he won an Olympic gold medal for the USSR, and I loved seeing the good sportsmanship of Shawn Johnson, who had to have been slightly crushed after not winning the gold, but it was also obvious that she was genuinely happy for her teammate.

Well, I don't have much more to say about tonight's competition other than I am extremely happy for the USA and also glad that the meet is over, for the sake of my nerves!!! Seriously, I was a wreck tonight - my heart was racing, I was hot, and I sat with my hands on my head most of the night. haha I just didn't want to see the U.S. gymnasts get cheated out of medals they deserved because of the flawed judging. If you watched the competition, you know what I mean. Oh and one other thing about tonight's broadcast - it was nice to finally see some gymnasts from countries other than the U.S. and China! Thank you NBC for showing us a few routines by gymnasts from Romania and Russia. It would have been nice to see even a little more variety, but it's better than limiting the coverage to two countries.

Now for my final thoughts: I have a strong feeling that the U.S. will pick up a few more gymnastics medals in the individual event finals this weekend, so watch for that! Nastia qualified to compete on bars, beam, and floor, and Shawn qualified on floor and beam. Alicia Sacramone also qualified for an individual event, the vault. On the men's side Jonathan Horton and Alexander Artemev both qualified to compete in one event. If Artemev does a pommel horse routine like he did in the All-Around competition, he could very well come away with a medal.

P.S. Karl put his new video together and posted it to his blog so check it out when you get a chance. It's a montage of us doing some simple gymnastics in the backyard. ;)