Word: gymnasted
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...peak of his powers or over the hill? Japanese Gymnast Koji Gushiken, 27, competes in a sport increasingly dominated by younger athletes. Yet the Osaka native began training four Olympiads ago. As a sixth grader viewing TV coverage of the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, he saw his countryman Sawao Kato win the gold medal in gymnastics and thought, "I have to do something like that." He took up gymnastics immediately, but his progress was slowed by two successive and serious injuries: a torn ligament in his left leg and a severed Achilles tendon. His appearance in international meets...
...meter medal may have evaporated with the Carter boycott. "But what can you do? The President is making the decision; he's somebody you never see. So you take it out on your family, on people you're around all of the time." Only 14 then, Gymnast Julianne McNamara could react to that boycott with youthful resilience, tell herself, "I'm an Olympian, and I'll always be," and sweat away another four years...
...usual, the competitors are rallying. "I wasn't going to the Olympics just to beat the Russians," said U.S. Gymnast Mary Lou Retton. "I was going because it has always been my dream." A good and brave line is managed by Lorraine Moller, the marathoner from New Zealand, who reasons, "They will be the only Olympics I might ever "know. Would you cancel your birthday party because a few relatives won't show?" American Gymnast Mitch Gaylord believes, "They will still be the Olympic Games. There's nothing bigger than that." As Naber says, "There are still...
...half a month's wage for the average urban worker) to have their eyes enlarged, their eyelids folded or their noses straightened. Men think nothing of putting down $5 for a permanent wave. Others spend $5 for disco-coordinated aerobics classes with Oriental Jane Fondas like former Star Gymnast Qi Yufang...
While spinning out the story of the Games, McKay avoids the cliches with which so much of television sports is infested, concentrating on small events in time, not the record-setting times in events. His own favorite moments tend to center on individuals like the Japanese gymnast at Mexico City in 1968 who competed with a broken kneecap. "Television has made it possible for the audience to identify with individual athletes," he explains. Every four years, McKay searches for something rarely seen nowadays, something that, ironically, has been lost in part through the very medium in which he works...