Chapter 22: It Happened in Vegas

THE FIRST MAJOR COMPETITION to qualify for the Olympic Trials was the Winter Cup. And, yes, all the top college athletes registered for the competition as well as those in dedicated training at the center in San Diego and others who had not yet left their normal gym for the training center. There were fifty competitors in the men’s division at the Winter Cup. It was a little different than some of the big competitions. An athlete did not have to compete on every piece of equipment unless he was going for the all-around title. Like I was.

We were randomly divided into twelve groups of four (and a couple of five) and the first six groups did their routines on the first flight in the morning, and in the afternoon, the other six groups did their routines. Day One was the qualifier round, determining which gymnasts advanced on which apparatus. I qualified for the final round in all-around, and for the floor exercises, high bar, and vault in the individual rounds. There was no team competition at this event. Out of fifty men in the open competition, eighteen qualified for the all-around final. That was easier than dealing with everyone. The final was over in two hours.

I didn’t win. You can’t drop any scores in the final. When I fell flat on my face off the vault, that was really it for me in the all-around. I just lay there for a minute trying to catch my breath while a medic rushed to me to see if I’d broken anything. I hadn’t, but I hurt like hell.

Most of the individual apparatus competitions had far more competitors. I almost withdrew from the vault because it was in the afternoon after my fall in the all-around. I went for it, even though I hurt in every part of my body. A handful of Advil helped to dull the pain. I completed a good vault, but I’d simplified my difficulty level enough that even with a perfect execution, I wasn’t in the top three.

The next day, I placed second in the Floor Exercises, fighting through the pain of a full-chest bruise from my fall the day before. I launched my routine on the high bar with a chest pull-up in slow motion. When I reached the top of the bar with my arms extended to my waist, I kept pressing up into a handstand on the bar. That was a move I thanked Coach Karov for. Unfortunately, my double pike at the top of the next rotation left me short of the bar and I fell on my face again.

I was thankful for my one medal, but disappointed overall.

I was beginning to feel old. Most of the men on the team were between twenty and twenty-three. That was because of the number of college kids who were now competing. I think there was only one other guy who was nearing thirty in age.

I’d worked hard over the past three years with coaches who drove me harder than any coach I’d had in the US. Their intent was to either make me a champion or kill me. It didn’t seem to matter which. Over the past twenty years, USA Gymnastics had focused on less abusive training techniques. I guess in principle, I agreed with that. While the women’s team had been the focus of the reform—and victims of the most egregious abuses—the men’s team had also come under close scrutiny. Every training program and trainer in the country had been visited to be sure they were not physically or mentally abusive.

Mostly, I think the program benefited from that. My years in Asia and Europe had definitely taken a toll on me in some ways. I’d had various injuries and a surgery for a torn meniscus that kept me going easy on my knees for a while. It didn’t stop my training in other events, though.

The US Classic was the next qualifying event. Technically, I was already qualified for the Olympic Trials, but the coaches and selection committee wanted to see consistent performance in competitions. I couldn’t just sit idle for the next four months and expect to get selected for the Olympic team.

I did better at the Classic. Men and women competed on alternating days and there was a team component to this event. The colleges and universities entered their entire teams in the events. I think only one independent gym entered a full team. As far as I was concerned, that was a day wasted on a college event while the rest of us sat idle.

However, I got four silvers in the competition, including second in the all-around, floor exercises, high bar, and vault. It was good to show the coaches how much I’d improved and conquered my problems on vault and high bar from one competition to the next. On the other hand, there were only three competitors on the vault. Getting second was a hollow victory.

The new national team training center and association headquarters was really state of the art with multiple stations for each apparatus. Two guys could work out on the vault at the same time, for instance. Four on rings and high bar, six on p-bars, and six on pommel horse. There were only two floor exercise areas because of the amount of space they take up. When we looked across the gym toward the women’s area, we could see eight or nine beams, three vaults, six uneven bars, and three sprung floors. Well, the women outnumbered the men about three to one here and only had four apparatuses, so it made sense that they had more of them.

Coach Danilo Ryabets finally agreed to function as my principal mentor. He was Ukrainian, and immigrated to the US during the war when he needed to get his students out of the country. He approved of the training I’d had in Europe and Asia because it was closer to what he did in Ukraine. He did, however, comment that my routines were more acrobatic than other seniors. He thought that was okay, but warned me that some would discount that.

It was true, I guess, but I also had to thank him for an acrobatics move in my floor exercise that both increased my difficulty and assured a cleaner landing. We do six passes or lines in floor exercises in seventy seconds and have to sandwich a strength exercise in there somewhere. My most difficult element was still the double salto with a one-and-a-half out (twist). But when you get that much height and speed going forward, it’s really hard to stick the landing. Coach Ryabets suggested I connect it to a single salto half-out, going the opposite direction.

I thought that was crazy until I tried it. Sticking the landing without taking a step or falling forward is hard enough, but sticking and reversing direction for a lower value element connected made sticking the final landing much easier. And I found it was actually easier to hit and reverse into another salto than to just stick the landing. Weird. It gave me another quarter point difficulty for that pass.

“Are you sure you don’t want to switch to acro?” Coach asked me, pointing across the gym where a lone girl was working out. She was tiny.

“Coach, I did that for a while. Maybe when I’m old, I’ll go back to it.”

“Don’t forget, you are twenty-seven. Think about what you mean when you say ‘old’.”

Yeah. He was probably right. I went to the training room and submerged myself in an ice bath with another handful of Advil.

I did okay at the US Championships in Fort Worth, TX. I had solid performances on all apparatuses, but finished fourth in the all-around and got a gold medal for floor exercises. The next step was in New York City for the Olympic Trials at the end of June.

It wasn’t a bad showing, considering that I was the oldest in the competition by three years. Some of the guys had started calling me gramps. A couple of the girls on the team had taken a year off to have a baby and then came back to compete, but they were having a hard time of it. I didn’t think I was old enough to be grandpa to their kids.

The trials were to be at the Jacob Javits Center and the end of the event would include the announcement of the five men who would compete at the Olympics. There was a strong preference toward selecting the top all-around qualifiers so the USA would have the top chance at the Olympic team gold. But they had to balance that with who could win an individual apparatus gold. They could switch off who competed on each apparatus in the team competition.

Back in 2020-21, IOC rules said four persons per team. Any NOC (National Olympic Committee) could submit up to three nominees to the games. That was mostly for those countries who had no national team but had one or two great gymnasts. In 2021, Team USA had four gymnasts on the team, but also had one who was absolutely great on a single apparatus. The NOC nominated him as an individual on just that apparatus and he went to the Tokyo Olympics. I was a strong all-around contender, but I was the top favorite for the floor exercises.

In 2024, teams were changed back to five members, and countries with a national team were not allowed to submit an extra. Whoever they chose for the team were all that were going.

The Olympics in 2032 were in a part of the world I’d never traveled to: Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It was only the second time the summer Olympics had been held south of the equator during the host country’s winter. The first time was 2016 in Rio. The forecast said we should expect pretty mild, dry weather with temperatures between seventy and eighty degrees. It sounded like heaven.

Of course, temperatures in New York City at the end of June were expected to be about the same, but we could expect rain, rain, and more rain. Regardless, we were all excited to get on with this next chapter and find out who would be on the team for the Olympics.

I had pains where I used to only have aches. After the Olympics this year, I was definitely going to consider retiring and coaching. A gold medal would certainly get me more high ranking students.

There was this kid...

Damn, he was good. He was only seventeen years old and a junior in high school. He came from one of the top gyms in the country and had devoted time to his training like I had. The Olympic rules said a male gymnast had to be eighteen by the end of the year. Kevin’s birthday was in October.

It seems weird to me that women’s gymnasts only need to be sixteen in the year of the games. I guess it used to be fourteen, but there were so many injuries and abuses that the age was raised. I don’t know when the age was raised for men. I guess it’s assumed we just mature later than women. After all, I was the oldest man on Team USA at twenty-seven. It had been eight years since a woman that old from the USA had won a gold medal.

Anyway, this kid, Kevin, was wicked on the vault. I’d only seen him qualify at Classics and the US Championships. He beat me at both, but it was a narrow margin. And he specialized in the vault.

Well, the story is sad but true. I was in the final five in the men’s all-around, but the selection committee decided Kevin was better for the team because of his vault. They dropped me and put him on, even though he’d been seventh in the all-around.

I wanted to appeal to the NOC for a place as an independent but, of course, that was no longer allowed. I was an alternate.

I flew back to San Diego to work with the team, but it was soon obvious that I wouldn’t be called upon in my role as an alternate. The team would not pay for my transportation and lodging in Australia.

I packed up and drove back to Minneapolis to decide what my life would be like in retirement.

God damn it all, anyway.

It was the darkest time of my life that I could remember. And there had been some doozies. Tara leaving and then telling me we were no longer a couple. Being disqualified at the LA Olympics in ‘28. Leaving Teodora. And finally, not making the Olympic team for ‘32. I had no idea what I’d do with my life now.

I considered calling Teodora and asking if I could come back. We hadn’t been on very good terms when I left, and just when I had screwed up the courage to call, I read her relationship status change on social media. She was now in a relationship with a guy who worked with her.