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The balance beam is roughly four inches wide or, if you prefer, about the length of an iPod. You might want to pause and think about that for a second. Think about how hard it would be to do a backflip on your iPod.
In the end, when you’re trying to do flips on iPods, it comes down to more than practice, more than fundamentals, more than athletic talent. It comes down to confidence. A gymnast has to be absolutely sure. A gymnast has to be willing to commit entirely to the routine — even the slightest loss of confidence can lead to a bobble or a fall or some other mistake that can wreck the competition. The Chinese gymnast Li Shanshan finished second on the beam at the World Championships last year. But she looked shaky from the start on Tuesday. She fell. She finished sixth.
Then Shawn Johnson came out. And suddenly, she said, the headache was gone. The stomachache was gone. She is regarded as the best in the world on the balance beam — “She tumbles on the beam the way others tumble on the floor,” said U.S. coach Martha Karolyi — and she came out full of confidence and life. Gymnastics is obviously a technical sport, one viewed differently by expert judges than by moderate fans, but no one could miss Johnson’s brilliance on this day. She hit every move. She looked like she was having fun. And the British Open wind could not have knocked her off the beam.
And she won gold. It was a touching moment. Everybody seems to love Shawn Johnson. The Chinese gymnasts hugged her happily. Liukin, who won silver, talked about how great it was for her friend to win gold. And finally, Johnson hugged Chow, who has been her coach for a long time. Chow is not always a man of many words. But Johnson looked in his face and that was enough. “I could tell,” she said, “that he was prouder of me than he has ever been before.”
As Johnson said that, she was wearing the gold medal around her neck. She was asked if it meant more to her than all those silvers, and being a friendly Iowa girl she said no, all the medals mean the same thing to her, all the medals represent the hard work and passion she has put into the sport.
Then she looked down at the gold.
“Of course,” she said, “It is nice to win one of these.”
To reach Joe Posnanski, call 816-234-4361 or send e-mail to jposnanski@kcstar.com. For previous columns, go to KansasCity.com.
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