Disclaimer: Anything said below is solely the opinions of a seventeen-year-old American girl (with 25 percent Taiwanese heritage, living with my Taiwanese grandmother) who is passionate about gymnastics with a very minor three years’ experience. I do not intend to offend any ethnic groups with my comments; I am merely speaking out against what I felt was an unfair competition. I am not out to attack people, just suggesting that the judging was unfair. I apologize in advance, however, if my critiques appear unsensitive to any person.
Gymnastics is an under-appreciated sport in the United States of America, and that alone is sad. We have many incredible athletes fully capable of doing things beyond imagination, such as a triple somersault off a high bar, and yet it goes unnoticed. I cannot hide my disappointment in the results from the Olympic games recently. I find it incredibly absurd that Team U.S.A. is going home with a bronze medal in men’s gymnastics. This is the biggest upset (so far), especially when we were so solid in nearly every routine, save the mat and two pommel horse routines, but I’ll get to that later. Our Olympic lineup for men’s gymnastics suffered greatly, or so we thought, when both the brothers Hamm (Paul and Morgan) had to withdraw from the international competition mere days before the contests began. There were no Olympic veterans, all rookies. And yet, the young last-minute fill-in for Morgan Hamm, Alexander “Sasha” Artemev, saved the day for the U.S. and received a high enough score on the pommel horse with an absolutely beautiful performance to assure a bronze medal. (Really, the Germans wouldn’t be able to get the sixteen-plus points needed to steal the bronze; it would have taken a most awe-inspiring routine. And while it surely was good with no foul-ups, it was not great enough. And where was Russia?!) In response to Artemev’s fantastic routine, Jonathon Horton said, “He pulled off the performance of his life.” Yet I feel there is much more to come from Artemev and all the other Olympians who proved themselves this year.
You’re wondering, “Okay, where’s the anger?” Well, here’s my problem, as clearly as I can put it: when American athletes such as Horton, Raj Bhavsar, and Justin Springs can go through their high bar acts with such fluidity and grace, end it with a magnificent triple flip and then stick a perfect landing, how come they scored less than the Chinese gymnasts each time? I watched the Chinese, and I saw them spin around the bar a couple times, switching up the hand movements (ooh!) and release the bar once, turning around to grip the bar from the front. Really outstanding. And how do they end their uber-fantastic routine? They land on the mat, doing what I have dubbed the One Foot Falter. This consists of a gymnast landing and one foot moving or one foot being ahead of the other. There were also a number of Bunnies, that little extra discrediting hop after landing.
