Page 63 of It’s All in How You Fall
I relay this to Alex and pull up another gymnast who defined the early televised era—Olga Korbut. She’s also pigtails and sass but with the added bonus of her absolutely insane “Korbut Flip.” I search for her 1972 Olympics bars routine to make sure Alex sees the flip—a move so risky that Alex momentarily forgot he was chewing and nearly choked on some super-delicious Bruno’s crust.
“Did… she… back dive… off the bar?” he asks between hacks, covering his mouth with his wrist for a moment, eyes watering. I hand him his cup and he takes a long drink. By the time he’s cleared the offending crust and is breathing normally, I have the video skipped forward to a modern slow-mo capture that clearly demonstrates that, yes, she literally crouched atop the high bar, sprung up, and boomeranged back down to catch the bar before pinballing to and around the low bar and flying back to the high bar.
Alex sits forward, elbows on his knees, rewinding it and pausing it to the very moment she’s flying straight down before her body curves around to get fingertips on the bar. “That. Is. Terrifying.”
“Terrifying andbanned,actually.”
“Look at that.” He traces the line of her body. “If she misses, it’s a swan dive straight onto her head from—how many feet up is that?”
“The bar’s eight feet, but she clearly jumps higher while performing the Korbut Flip.”
“Jesus.”
“Okay, so now you can speak eloquently about the subject of Olga Korbut and her banned move.” I skip Ludmilla Tourischeva and just head straight for Nadia Comaneci and the 1976 Olympics. “Let’s watch some perfection, shall we?”
The second I begin typing her name, Alex is on it. “The girl from your shirt.”
“Yes! She got the first perfect ten in the Olympics, and then got six more.”
“I think I’ve heard of this.”
“As a jock who’s not dumb and also doesn’t have his head up his own butt, I’m sure you’ve inadvertently seen an Olympic-year vignette or two about great performances.”
“You’ve described me perfectly.”
“Okay, more perfection!” I cue up a video featuring Nadia’s perfect performances. Alex is still leaning in, watching on the close computer screen instead of the big screen behind it. His knee brushes mine. I expect him to adjust, but when he doesn’t, I don’t either, letting my skin warm with the contact.
When the video’s over, he doesn’t reset. He meets my eyes with utter awe. “That was incredible.”
It’s so nice that he can see it too.
The 1980s are all power and pomp from Mary Lou Retton and stoic conformity from all the Communist countries prized for their skills and artistry. We make a hard turn into the 1990s, and the Americans begin to control the stage like no other.
Kim Zmeskal. Shannon Miller. Dominique Dawes. Kerri Strug. The 1992 Barcelona team slides into the 1996 Magnificent Seven. Alex has seen Strug’s famed one-legged vault, but he hasn’t seen the run-up to it. So I find a video of Dominique Moceanu’s uncharacteristic falls that add to the tension of that famed moment.
“Afterward, the story became that the equipment wasn’t set up right—that’s why they fell,” I say, trying to tell the tale without getting so technical that I ruin it. “Rules kept Bela Karolyi off the floor, and he usually set the height of the vault and distance of the board for both of them. Not sure if it’s really true or if it was just plain nerves or even bad luck, but it’s what happened. In real time, on prime time, in the host country, which is super dramatic and incredible.”
“Wow. Yeah.” By now, Alex has heard the Karolyi name a few times—the famed coaches who trained Nadia and Mary Lou. They also trained several other big American gymnasts in the 1990s and ran USA Gymnastics before fading away to retirement as the Larry Nassar allegations came to light.
We move ahead to the early 2000s. Carly Patterson, Shawn Johnson, Nastia Liukin—Alex remembers my tank top from earlier this week too, so gold star!—into the Gabby Douglas and Aly Raisman era before the run-up to the dominance of Simone Biles.
“We could watch clips of her all day,” I say of Simone.
Alex jokingly scrolls down the sidebar on YouTube, where there are literally endless clips of Simone, her performances, training clips, tutorials, and just on and on. Alex scrolls as if he’s spinning the dice. “Here’s one that’s not just her. We’d get to it at like four in the morning if we let it play through.” He clicks on it—a video entitled “Best Saves!”
It starts with Kerri Strug’s vault, obviously. Moves on to fingertip saves on bars, and then, more than half the video is comprised of saves on beam. The beam burns pile up and I realize the education part of the night is over. And yet, even though Alex can now easily have a conversation with Sunny about gymnastics, it seems he’s not done either.
He’s really enjoying the incredible talents of these girls in real time. Even save after save.
Of course, with about a minute left, Chellsie Memmel flashes on the screen. “Oh! She’s had two kids and totally went back into training and competing after eight years of retirement, even in her thirties.” I scramble for my phone in my deep dress pockets. “Let me see—”
My vision narrows on the screen, because I realize exactly what move World Champion–era Chellsie is doing.
A standing Arabian.
I stiffen and glance away, hoping Alex won’t notice.
But of course he does. “What?”
