Word: gymnastically
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Somewhere in the Olympic Village as the partying picks up pace, it is not hard to imagine a 14-year-old girl crying. Her name is Roza Galieva. She is the gymnast from the gold-winning Unified Team who successfully fought her way to the coveted all-around competition, only to be robbed of her chance. Her coaches, in their unified wisdom, decided that one of Galieva's teammates, Tatiana Gutsu, was more likely to bank gold even though she had flubbed during the earlier team competition. So they exaggerated a knee injury to bench Galieva, made a quick substitution...
...competition had a different feel entirely. Early in the week, the Unified Team waged a spectacular last hurrah. Its gymnasts occupied four of the top five spots, and its sixth gymnast beat the best performer from the U.S. team. In a sport where differences are measured in thousandths of a point, the Unified Team twisted and spun to gold with more than five full points to spare over China and Japan. Coming a night after the women's tense team competition, the exuberance of the men's unified effort was a welcome relief. Teammates cheered and hugged and seemed...
...other U.S. coaches bickered all the way to Barcelona. "The coaches hate each other," said someone close to the team. "Sometimes the girls feel as if they can't talk to each other because their coach will get upset." Word leaked out of the Olympic Village that the gymnasts were under strict regulations: no phone calls or leaving their rooms without permission, no unauthorized food. Small wonder that each gymnast performed her routine, looked anxiously to her personal coach for feedback, then turned inward to focus on the next event. In Olympics of old, the stony- faced Americans might have...
...days later when Galieva miraculously came down with a "knee injury" -- thus clearing the way for Gutsu to compete -- it should have revived cold war cynicism. Instead, few rival coaches batted an eye. Indeed, just two weeks before the Olympics, a Pennsylvania gymnast named Kim Kelly, who had fulfilled the competitive requirements to make the U.S. team fair and square, was dropped from the squad by the American coaches to make room for another athlete they felt had greater potential. Kelly considered filing suit, then opted instead to show up in Barcelona, her presence a quiet rebuke of a selection...
Harrison travels to Rumania a few days after the 1989 revolution to seek out Comenici's family and past. She stunningly juxtaposes the vitality of the awakening nation with hardened gymnast's artificiality...