Word: retton
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...lurches along grotesquely behind, and the picture-memory of the spectators develops into a composite of both images-the terrific and the terrible-much more touching as an entry than either could be individually. The happiest circumstance, of course, is when they take turns. First U.S. Gymnast Mary Lou Retton rejoiced as Rumania's Ecaterina Szabo sighed, then a couple of days later Ecaterina laughed and Mary Lou made a petulant face. The athletic world, like the real world, is seldom so equitable. Fairness is not really the essence of sport...
...came down to Retton on the vault in the final event. As she waited her turn, her personal coach, Bela Karolyi, leaned across the photographers' barricade from his seat in the stands and showed her a piece of paper on which the arithmetic had been done: score a 9.95 to tie Szabo for the gold, score a 10 to stand alone as all-around champion. Anything less would mean the silver. He bent down to hold and shake her shoulders; she nodded intensely...
...tense silence that fell, one could hear her feet drumming the runway, then she leaped onto the springboard and pushed her handspring high toward the banner-draped rafters. She twisted, turned and landed without having to move so much as a toe to keep her balance. Neither Retton nor Karolyi nor the crowd needed a judge to tell them it was perfect. Without waiting for the 10 to flash, Retton ran to the barricades for a quick embrace with Karolyi, then, strutting the pigeon-toed linebacker's walk that more than anything else reveals her power, she hopped back...
...Retton, in fact, is the exemplar of what Bela Karolyi calls "the new kind of gymnast." Says he: "She's strong and powerful and athletic; not a little flower, a little flyer." Karolyi, who discovered and trained Comaneci and presided over the early development of Retton's principal rivals from Rumania, Szabo and Agache, knows a trend when he sees one. In his 4-ft. 9-in., 92-lb. dynamo, he knows he has found a star...
...Retton seemed fated for gymnastics since she was a toddler in Fairmont, W. Va. "I was one of those hyper kids, always jumping up and down on the couch and breaking things," she says. In self-defense her parents sent her off to an acrobatics class. At first, she went to the gym just once a week, but, she says, "I just got better and better, and so the people who ran the acrobatics class decided to start a gymnastics club so I could train to see if I could keep improving." By 14, she knew she could strike...