Chapter 20: The Climax

I’D HAD THE SECOND HIGHEST score in floor exercises during qualification and the highest score in floor during the team finals. I had a floor element with an extremely high difficulty factor (H) in my routine. It was a back double pike salto with a one-and-a-half out. It came on my fifth line. The men’s floor exercise comprises six tumbling lines, plus one strength exercise. My strength exercise was slated between the fifth and sixth passes.

Tuesday night finally arrived and I was ready for my floor exercise. My heart was racing. I’d received a silver medal as part of the team all-around, but had failed to qualify for the individual all-around, and had finished just out of the medals in high bar and vault. I had the highest floor exercise score in the games so far and I knew no one had as high a difficulty score as I had in the event. All I had to do was my best, and none of the others could touch me. Coach DiCello laid a hand on my shoulder before I approached the mat.

“Breathe,” she said calmly. Yeah, right. I gulped in a lungful of air and headed to the floor.

When I stepped up to the mat to await the green light, I had adrenaline pumping through me like I’d never experienced before. My heart was racing. This was it. My best event and my shot at an Olympic Gold Medal. There was a tone and my seventy seconds of fame began. I stepped back on my first pass landing which was a deduction of 0.100. The second pass stuck perfectly and I took a deep breath to begin my third pass.

I don’t remember my third and fourth lines. I think they were perfect. The fifth was where things took a slight deviation from my tariff sheet, submitted before the event. It was my highest difficulty pass, featuring the double salto in pike position with a one-and-a-half out that I’d practiced daily with Coach DiCello. I started the pass and did a forward layout salto with a half twist which gave me exactly the bounce I needed to launch the back double.

I guess that’s where the adrenaline proved too much. I realized about halfway through the second salto that I was over rotating. My first thought was to save my neck and I immediately snapped open and threw my hands out above my head.

In practices, I’d often landed jumps on my hands. I’d never used one in a competition, though. The rules outlawed all moves that landed on the hands with a roll-out.

By some miracle, I stuck the landing on my hands. I went from that, directly to my strength exercise, holding myself on my hands, and doing the splits, then moving directly into a flair with a spindle and roll-out. The final tone indicating ten seconds remaining in my time sounded and I had to hurry into position and start my final line. I stuck it, and all-told, I felt I’d done a great exercise. I stepped off the floor after acknowledging the judges and Coach DiCello gave me a quick hug, letting the Olympics coach congratulate me. Coach DiCello immediately wanted to examine my hands and wrists. I hadn’t expected a hand landing and wasn’t wearing wrist braces. Bearing the impact of about ten times your body weight when you come out of a high flip like that can be murder on the wrists. She immediately wrapped them and used a brace because I still had my p-bar routine to go.

It took forever for my score to come up. It seemed there was quite a discussion going on among the judges. When they finally settled down, my scores were 0/0/0.

I’d been disqualified!

The coaches immediately went to the judges table to protest and appeal the decision. I had not done a roll-out. It had not been a 1.5/1.5 Thomas Salto as I’d rotated 2.5 and twisted 1.5. The coaches argued that the difficulty score should have been increased to a level I (the most difficult element) and that I had done it flawlessly. The judges, in principle, agreed, but said the move was a clear violation of the intent of the rules. The decision to disqualify me stood.

I was not only off the podium, I was last in the competition.

Fuck!

I didn’t have time to really let it soak in, because I had to get to my p-bar routine. Unfortunately, Coach’s assessment of my wrists was accurate and I was in pain through the entire routine. Even though I fought through it, I simplified my dismount to save my wrists, and that dropped my score enough to leave me with another fourth place finish.

When I finally got off the floor and collected my possessions, I found I had a flood of text messages on my phone. I think everyone I knew personally had sent me a message expressing outrage at the judging and congratulating me on a routine that was near perfect and should have been awarded a gold medal.

Nice. Thank you. Wish you were judging.

The message from Tara was simply a crying emoji.

Well, I’d sent her enough of those in my life.

I did not stay in LA after the event. Wednesday were the rings and pommel horse finals, and I had no desire to watch them. I gave my silver medal to my parents, kissed them and my sister goodbye, and flew back to Florida. When I got there, I quietly packed up my dorm room and my massage room into my car. There wasn’t any reason for me to stay at the academy. Coach DiCello had made it clear that I needed to find a new venue to continue my training. I just wasn’t interested. It was so unfair.

If they’d said I’d blown the element and awarded no points, I’d have been mad, but I would have understood. I had blown the element. My tariff sheet said a double with a one-and-a-half out. I’d recovered, but the resulting move wasn’t technically in the code of points. I would have needed prior approval for it and a judgment of how difficult it was before the competition.

But to disqualify me entirely based on it being a derivative of a banned element just wasn’t right.

I was someplace near Atlanta when I pulled into a motel. It advertised a pool on its sign and vacancy. They told me the pool closed at ten, but it was only a little after nine, so I put on my Speedo and headed outside to it. It seemed there were a lot more bugs than in Florida, but I didn’t really use a pool much while I was at the academy. We always swam in the Gulf. Well, the bugs wouldn’t bother me in the water. I jumped in and began swimming laps.

There were a couple of other guests at poolside and some kids playing in the shallow water. I stayed clear of them and just swam laps up and down the pool, using the water to wash away my tears. I stopped when a guy shouted at me at the end of the pool. I looked up.

“It’s ten. We’re closing the pool,” he said. “You need to get out now.”

“Oh. Okay. Sorry.”

“You a professional swimmer?”

“No. I just needed the exercise.”

“Forty-five minutes of laps is a lot of exercise.”

“Maybe I’ll sleep tonight,” I said. I got out of the pool and looked around. A couple of parents were herding their kids back toward their rooms. I grabbed my towel and hotel key and went to my own room.

I stayed there a couple of days, trying to figure out what the hell I was doing. The route I’d taken was one that would eventually get me up to Minneapolis, but I didn’t want to shuffle into the city and ask my parents to take care of me. I had a pretty sizable bank account now. I didn’t really have much to spend money on. My sponsors had awarded me sizable bonuses for each medal I’d brought home in the past three years. I hadn’t really dated much. I still drove the same Chevy my parents bought me when I graduated from high school. I never thought much about clothing because I never went anyplace but the gym or the beach. And I’d had my expenses covered by sponsors. I’d earned money by giving massages.

Between finding appropriate food and swimming to keep fit, I researched places and found a national chain of fitness centers that seemed to have a good spread of locations and various degrees of gym spaces. There was one not far from the motel where I was staying, so I went over for a tour.

“Are you looking for a place as a trainer?” was the first question the club manager asked. “If you’ve got experience, we could probably use you.”

“I was actually looking for a place where I could train and exercise as I travel around the country. I know I look strong, but I’m not a weight trainer. I’m a gymnast.”

“We don’t have a gymnastics area in our club,” the manager said.

“I know. I’ll have to search out gymnastic clubs while I’m traveling across the country. It’s just important for me to have a place where I can work out for a couple of hours each day and that has nice facilities and amenities,” I said.

“We have that. Two hours of workouts and you don’t lift weights? I’d like to see your workout.”

“Happy to show you. I’m still designing the routine I’ll use as I’m traveling. It involves a lot of bodyweight training and floor work.”

“Got your gear? Let’s get you set up. I’ll even arrange to let the next club on your route know you’re coming.”

That was cool. I grabbed my bag out of the car and followed the guy on a tour of the facilities. It was nice and I especially liked that they had a sauna and hot tub. I’d gotten used to using those at the academy. Unfortunately, they didn’t have an ice bath. When I’d been through his orientation, I changed into a working uniform and began my routine with stretches and warmups. If I was on a two session a day gymnastic workout, I’d spend more time than the half hour I used getting warmed up. Then I started with my bodyweight routines. This club didn’t have a peg board, which was too bad, but it did have a regular chinning bar. Like most fitness clubs, the bar had a platform so people could adjust how much of their bodyweight they were lifting. I put it on zero, jumped just slightly, and started underhand pull-ups. Those are the ones with the palms facing the body and develop the biceps and latissimus dorsi muscles.

I think he was a little surprised that I stopped at twenty-five, but then I switched to neutral grip pull-ups and did twenty-five of those. The neutral grip is with palms facing away about shoulder width apart. Finally, I did twenty-five wide grip pull-ups, which are hands wider apart, palms facing away. This is the position I use for doing waist-high pull-ups. He was really surprised when I did twenty-five pull-ups that went beyond the chin and up to the waist. By that time several people had gathered around to watch me just doing pull-ups.

I was specifically targeting my upper body that morning, so my next move was to use one of their yoga mats on the floor and do a handstand. I took a Japanese handstand position first, my hands spread wide apart as I lifted my body up. In the Japanese handstand, the top of your head is supposed to be a hand’s breadth away from the floor. I moved to and held several different positions from that stance, then moved my hands in to the more common shoulder-width handstand. Once I was there, I started doing push-ups. I had to admit that after this, my wrists were really sore and I realized I probably did some damage to them when I landed that move at the Olympics.

I asked to use one of the hardwood floor rooms where they typically do things like dance aerobics, Zumba, yoga, and other such classes. For me, it was time for a limited leg workout. I started by simply making several circuits of the room in a squat position, thrusting my legs out and pulling myself forward. Then, because I thought the people watching deserved to see something gymnastic, I did a few single saltos in front and back rotations with pike, tuck, and layout positions. I wasn’t going to do any multiples or more than a half-out without a sprung floor and a higher ceiling.