Tuesday, July 19, 2016

17 days left

 

 

“I had a fibula fracture once,” Zara grins. “That was my worst. I was twelve. My coach wasn’t spotting me on bars, I missed my Tkachev, and I like, drilled my leg into the mat and landed on top of it with my full body weight. It felt like it totally snapped in half.”

 

“That’s nothing,” Olivia rolls her eyes. “I had an open tibia fracture. As in the bone did snap in half, and it punctured the skin. During a competition. There was blood legit everywhere and while I waited for the medics I was just staring at the bone wondering how it was possible I could have bones outside of my body. I was in total shock. The doctor didn’t know if I’d ever get full use of my leg back.”

 

Maddy guffaws. “Literally every word out of your mouth just now was a lie.”

 

“Was not!”

 

“I was there,” Maddy snaps before turning to the rest of us. “It was an ankle dislocation and she bled on the floor because she also stubbed her toe really bad.”

 

“It was way worse than that.”

 

“No. It wasn’t.”

 

“Save your energy for the gym,” Sophia yawns, pushing her chair back and standing up, only half-finished with her lunch. “I’m taking a nap.”

 

At twenty-two, Sophia is the oldest on the team, and we’ve taken to affectionately calling her Grandma because she’s always sleeping and talking about her hip pain. I can’t help thinking that most girls her age are recent college grads looking for jobs, drinking a ton of beer, and singing that Taylor Swift song repeatedly, and yet here she is, hanging out with a whole mess of immature weirdos.

 

“Mmm, a nap,” I yawn as well. “I’m exhausted. I think Vera drugged the chicken.”

 

“I’ll walk over with you,” Sophia offers. She won the Olympic all-around gold in 2012. I was only eleven then, and developed the biggest girl crush obsession, so I’m a little terrified of casually hanging out with her even though she seems like the nicest person alive.

 

She’s also the person who technically beat me for a team spot. It’s technically not her fault, but I can’t help secretly despising her a little.

 

“How’s the farm treating you?” she asks as I toss my paper plate and empty cup of water into the trash.

 

“Not too bad!” I lie. The two-a-day practices yesterday and Sunday almost killed me. Our workouts here are shorter than our workouts at home, only about four or five hours total compared to the seven or eight hours I spend each day at MGMA. But at home, there’s a lot of downtime, and Natasha makes everything pretty relaxed.

 

Here, we’re working our asses off nonstop, like when you set your Oregon Trail pace to “grueling” and everyone dies of exhaustion not even halfway to the Willamette Valley. Every muscle in my body is screaming out for me to give up this sport and spend the rest of my life watching TV on a cloud of pillows. The ice bath is my new best friend, and I want to sleep twenty hours a night.

 

“I’ve been coming here for a decade, literally, so feel free to reach out if you have any questions or just want to vent,” Sophia says, genuinely kind and supportive. “Trust me, I’ve been through it all.”

 

“Gee, thanks!” Gee? Am I Bobby Brady?

 

“No problem. World and Olympic team camps are the hardest part of being at the national level, and it never gets any easier, no matter how long you’ve been doing it.”

 

“What’s your secret?”

 

“Sleep,” she grins. “Sleep where you can, when you can.”

 

“Is that even possible with Maddy as a roommate?” I hope she doesn’t think I’m being too gossipy or bitchy, but she rolls her eyes.

 

“Don’t even ask. Seriously, I have my earbuds in with a nature sounds app playing thunderstorms every second I’m with her so I can tune her out. I prefer crashing thunder to her voice.”

 

“Sounds accurate,” I laugh.

 

“I was actually hoping to room with Ruby, and I thought Vera might stick us together since we’re the oldest, but she has something up her sleeves with keeping Ruby and Emerson together at all times.”

 

“Really? I never thought about that.”

 

“Oh, yeah, there’s a total psychological game behind Vera’s room assignments. They’re as much about the competition as anything. Ruby and Emerson are so stubbornly competitive, they probably make a contest out of who can brush their teeth the longest or something. I can picture both of them at the sink for hours at a time, refusing to relent so they can say they’ve won, even if they’d be winning the stupidest battle of all time.”

 

“I’m pretty sure I’ve seen that exact situation play out in the MGMA locker room.”

 

Sophia laughs. “The two of them feeding off of each other like that, they’re gonna be out of control competitive when they get to Rio. They’ll just keep pushing each other to be even better because they both want to win. No one will be able to touch them.”

 

“What about you and Maddy?”

 

“Either Vera’s mad at me for making so many mistakes this summer and she wants to punish me, or she has a master plan that involves me teaching Maddy to not be the worst person on earth. You and Zara, though, you seem to be getting along great.”

 

“We are!” I grin. “She’s awesome. I didn’t know her much at all and now we’re like best friends.”

 

“I think as the youngest ones here, and as first-timers, Vera wanted you guys to figure this whole thing out on your own and help each other through it. Not that we’re not all here to guide you along, but it makes you more resourceful competitors if you’re not treated like babies. I was twelve my first time here, and at my club gym, I was the only non-teenager at a level higher than eight. All of the older high school girls in my advanced training group treated me like their baby sister. Then I made it here and everyone treated me like I was twenty. It was a shock, like, why isn’t everyone telling me how adorable I look in my leo?! I demand attention! But I had to make sense of it all on my own for once, and as talented as I was, that was something I never got to learn back home. I never knew I needed it, and it helped me so much.”

 

“I’m definitely the baby sister at my gym. I get super anxious about everything and you know how there are dogs that warn their owners before they have seizures or whatever? Ruby was basically my anxiety dog. She always knew when I was freaking out before I started, and she knew exactly what I needed to calm me down.”

 

 

“Which is great,” Sophia interjects. “She’s an incredible friend. But sometimes you need to go through things on your own if you want to come out stronger on the other side.”

 

“I thought you guys were napping?”

 

Speaking of Ruby, she comes bounding out of the cafeteria and practically skips over to where we’re parked on the benches outside the dorms. I have no idea how she has this much energy on a regular day, let alone after a killer week of training.

 

“Just chatting first,” Sophia says, stretching her shoulders. “Amalia’s a much better conversationalist than Maddy.”

 

“My brother’s pet frogs are better conversationalists than Maddy. I’m actually gonna go nap as well. Or try to. I might just watch Grey’s Anatomy. I’ve been trying to binge it all summer and I just got to the ep with the shooting. I’m kind of dying here. If I miss the mock meet later today, you’ll know why. See ya!”

 

She bursts through the doors into the dorm and Sophia shakes her head. “I can’t keep up with her.”

 

We follow Ruby into the hallway at about half her pace and I begin fumbling for my key card.

 

“See you later, Amalia,” Sophia waves. “Thanks for the chat.”

 

“Sure!” I’m grinning from ear to ear as I enter my room. I close the door softly behind me, and lie down on my bed, the thin white sheets feeling cool against my perpetually sweaty skin.

 

It’s been a week of extreme highs and lows, but befriending Sophia tops everything. If someone had told eleven-year-old me that this would be my future, I would have actually died from excitement and I never would’ve made it to fifteen.

 

I close my eyes and try to give my body at least a little bit of rest before tonight’s mock meet, but as usual, I can’t turn off my brain. Candy Crush it is. That’s relaxing, right?

 

***

 

“You need to be at a hundred percent today,” Natasha warns us before we compete. “It’s only vault and bars, so without also having beam and floor to focus on, these two events need to be perfect. That’s Vera’s angle. If she gives you half the workout, she wants to see you go twice as hard.”

 

“Why do we have to work even harder after making teams?” Ruby whines. “I’d love to save my slowly crippling body for when it actually matters.”

 

“Vera needs to know that you’re always going to be on. You earned the spot, but if you start giving fifty percent, you don’t deserve to keep your spot. Vera wants warriors. Robots. She wants you to work harder than you ever thought possible while making it look effortless.”

 

I yawn and roll my neck, which is a bit stiff after staring at my phone for an hour. I may or may not have spent $4.99 of real money on extra Candy Crush lives.

 

“Am I boring you?” Natasha muses.

 

“Sorry,” I mumble meekly, my face turning red. “Bad nap.”

 

“No excuses. You more than anyone need to prove yourself.”

 

“I’m not even on the team.”

 

“Thanks, Captain Obvious. But if someone gets hurt, you want to be the one Vera calls on. You kick Charlotte and Olivia’s asses in this sport. Do you really want one of them going in as a replacement because you decided to give up?”

 

“No,” I whisper.

 

“Come on, Amalia. Get it together.”

 

I turn my back to my coaches and teammates so they don’t see the tears spring up in my eyes. Get it together? I had it together all year and I got nothing. I’m over it.

 

“Line up!” someone yells, and we obediently run to the mat in front of the vault judges. All eight of us will compete together, in the order Vera’s currently considering for the Games. The actual team lineup goes first, and then it’s alternate time, Olivia, then Charlotte, then me.

 

We stand perfectly still at attention for the judges, and then rush through warmups, each of us hitting a timer and then our competition vaults before going up for real. I bounce out of my timer to save my knees and ankles on the landing, and when I hit my warmup Amanar, I decide to bounce out of that as well.

 

“Nice landing,” Maddy scoffs.

 

“Are you my coach? It’s the warmup.”

 

“Whatever.”

 

Maddy’s in an extra bitchy mood today because Vera has her second-to-last in the lineup instead of anchoring. Lineups in team competitions are usually set up to build from the weakest to the strongest routine so the scores build throughout the rotation. With Zara last up on vault instead of Maddy, Vera is pretty clearly saying that Zara’s the better vaulter without actually having to speak those words out loud.

 

“She’s right, that was a terrible landing,” Natasha scolds. “I know you’re choosing the most important moments of our collective lives to turn into a teenager, but can you please reschedule your rebellion? Just put it off by a month.”

 

I roll my eyes and slump to the floor, not even bothering with my iPod. When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose, and I’m throwing all of my meet traditions out the window. I don’t care.

 

This is the first time I’ve actually watched one of my meets in forever, and I’m kind of excited to pay attention and see where everyone stands.

 

Sophia, who doesn’t vault anymore, scratches by touching the apparatus and saluting the judges, but the rest of the Olympic lineup goes up and nails one huge, beautiful, stuck or near-stuck Amanar after another, until Zara caps things off with her Cheng, one of the hardest vaults in the world.

 

Other big teams may have one Amanar apiece, boosting their overall vault scores a little thanks to the crazy difficulty, but nothing compares to four vaults all bound to reach 15.7 or better in qualifications. That gives us a huge boost right off the bat, leaving a lot of ground other teams have to make up later on.

 

From Emerson up first down to Ruby, then Maddy, and finally Zara, we are unbeatable on vault and I can’t help feeling a surge of pride even through all of my pent-up angst.

 

Olivia and Charlotte go after the team, which is kind of anticlimactic as they both only have Yurchenko doubles, which are difficult in their own right but not compared to what we just saw.

 

Finally, it’s my turn. I take a deep breath after I salute, but it’s mostly so I have air in my lungs for my passive aggressive sigh before I run.

 

As a gymnast who normally has a million routine rituals, it’s kind of shocking even to me that I don’t care enough about doing any of them tonight. I’m the most relaxed I’ve ever been in front of Vera and the judges, so I’m simply just going to do the vault. That’s it.

 

I think it’s going to be a mess, but the thing is…it’s kind of one of my best vaults ever. Once I hit the table, muscle memory kicks in, forcing me to squeeze my legs tight and jerk my arms in as I rotate through the two and a half twists. My rage strength gives me a stronger push off the table than I usually get, leaving me with more than enough room to get the flips and twists around. I drop to the ground, plant my feet, and throw my arms up. Perfect.

 

“Amazing,” Natasha says, slowly making her way over to me for a high five after I finish. I try to mirror Emerson’s levels of blasé, like, who cares? So what if I’m one of the best vaulters here? No big deal, I always nail the crap out of that thing.

 

But secretly, I’m really excited about how incredible that felt, and I can’t help my face muscles literally turning my frown upside down, a smile creeping up from the corners of my mouth.

 

“It’s seriously a shame this team can’t have six members,” Sophia shakes her head. “That is a team finals-worthy vault.”

 

“Can you get Russian citizenship real quick?” Ruby adds. “They’d kill for a vault like that.”

 

I can’t help blushing a bit at all of this praise, but the score — a 16.0 — is bittersweet. It’s the best vault score after Zara, and I’m thrilled, but it also stings knowing that it literally doesn’t matter.

 

We move to bars, where I’m again going last. This time the rotation order has Zara going first, meaning she won’t go up in qualifications, where only four routines are allowed on each event. Because Sophia doesn’t train vault or floor, the other four get lineup spots on both events by default, but on bars and beam, Vera had to decide who got the boot.

 

If you don’t do all four events in qualifications, you can’t attempt to reach the all-around final, so even though Zara is better than Maddy on bars, Maddy will get the lead-off spot in Rio because Vera wants her vying for an all-around spot.

 

Honestly, it’s unfair, but Zara doesn’t care.

 

“I could show up, vault, and do nothing else all competition and be totally happy,” she had told me after finding out her vault and floor specialist role with the team. “I’m lucky just to be going.”

 

So it’s Zara going up first today to get a routine in just in case she ends up being needed, followed by the team lineup order of Maddy, Ruby, Sophia, and Emerson, which is pretty solid. It doesn’t come close to the Chinese lineup, and it probably won’t beat the Russians either, but Emerson is basically a guaranteed 15.5 if she hits, and both Sophia and Ruby can get close if they don’t have mistakes.

 

I watch the rotation closely, occasionally yelling out something like “come on, Maddy, you got this!” which is super rare for me, as I’m usually the one quietly hiding from the action.

 

Even though it’s just the farm, it’s nice to actually see my teammates “compete” in a sense. Ruby is killing it, her super difficult connections and big skills more than making up for the fact that she’s not the most naturally gifted long and lean bars princess like Emerson. As she winds up with a couple of giants before her full-twisting double layout dismount, I scream alongside everyone else, and then explode into applause when she sticks the landing.

 

“You watched!” Ruby gasps as we high five, and then she grabs her water bottle. “So?”

 

“Rio 2016 bars medalist,” I grin. “Seriously, I know Sophia and Emerson are gonna be tough competition there, and with only two from each country able to get into the final, you’re the long shot…but I honestly think you can do it.”

 

Ruby gives me a hug and we lean back against the wall to watch Sophia up next. Like Emerson, she’s one of those tall, thin, leggy gymnasts with beautiful lines and an elegance that makes her perfectly suited for bars.

 

Her routine is one of the most difficult in the world with a 6.9 start value, complete with a million combinations earning a ton of bonus tenths. I think almost all of her skills are connected to one another, which is very Russian of her.

 

Sophia competed watered-down versions of her routines for most of this year because she had low back pain and could barely bend in half, let alone pike through an inbar stalder, but she whipped out her full difficulty at trials and when I went back and watched the videos, it was hard to be mad at her for getting a spot over me. She was brilliant.

 

“You got this, Sophia!” I yell during her long wait before she can salute and mount. I can see the nerves on her face, but I don’t know why. She had a great warmup.

 

The head judge finally nods and Sophia gulps, slaps her hands together, and then glide kips onto the low bar to start her routine.

 

Right away, she looks off, with her inbar full coming super late. Instead of doing the pirouette on top of the bar, she’s still completing the turn as she’s already swinging down, causing her to miss the connection into her first transition to the high bar, a tenth now gone from her difficulty score.

 

“Come on!” Ruby screams, practically in my ear. “Control it, Sophia!”

 

Almost everyone is yelling support, aside from Maddy, who is hiding under what she calls her “time-out towel” after a bad routine of her own.

 

Sophia gets the next set of connections, a couple of transitions from low to high and then back down again, but from there she’s supposed to go right back up to the high bar in a stalder shaposh with a half twist. Instead, she kip casts out of her pak, and does the shaposh half on its own, losing another two tenths in bonus.

 

At least there are no falls or major form breaks, I’m thinking. If she went for those connections when her mind wasn’t fully there, she would’ve lost so much more than bonus tenths.

 

Just as this relief pops into my head, I can see her timing is way off on her layout Jaeger, causing her to get nowhere near the height she needs. She catches way too close, doesn’t get her dowel over the bar, and she groans as her fingers slip, causing her to fall flat on her stomach.

 

“It’s okay, Sophia!” We keep the support coming as she chalks up again. “Finish strong!”

 

Sophia cracks her neck, shakes out her limbs, and then mounts the high bar with a boost from her coach. All that’s left is her dismount, a super difficult stalder full pirouette straight into a double tuck with one and a half twists, but again she misses the connection, performing the skills separately, probably not wanting to take any risks. Even so, she lands the dismount a tad short, stumbling it around and putting her hands down to finish.

 

Ouch.

 

When she stands up, she smiles sheepishly at the judges, and then turns her back to them, making what I call an “I hate myself” face. We all high five her and say “good job” anyway when she comes back, but seriously, that was rough. She lost four of her seven bonus tenths and got two full points off in her execution for the falls alone. Take at least another point off for the little issues adding up, and what could’ve easily been a score around a 16 on a good day is now going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of a 13 or 13.5 at best.

 

“I’m glad I didn’t do that at trials!” Sophia exhales, resting against the wall. She’s playing it cool, but I can tell she’s definitely mentally rattled.

 

My own routine goes well enough. It’s nothing special, but it’s not a bomb, either, and my coaches look pleased.

 

In all, even with Sophia’s bars meltdown, today is a great first glimpse into how this team will perform in Rio. If Sophia can get over today’s fluke disaster routine, Team USA is gonna be tough to beat.