Warm-up for London

For the last few weeks, we've been warming up for the Olympics by watching the U.S. Olympic team trials for Track and Field, Swimming, and Diving. Yesterday, we got to see one in person as we attended the Men's Gymnastics team trial final at the HP Pavilion in nearby San Jose. We are quite familiar with this venue as this is where the San Jose Sharks ice hockey team plays.

My apologies for the picture. US Gymnastics policy states that pictures taken are for personal use only. Fine, I wasn't planning on selling them anyway. They go on to say that any camera with detachable lenses are prohibited as are cameras with focal lengths of more than 35mm. I guess that they were worried that I'd get great pictures of the tops of gymnasts heads from my prime vantage point halfway up the upper bowl of the arena. I hope that this is not the policy in London...

The top 15 gymnasts in the US are here to try to punch their ticket to London. They are competing on six apparatuses: High Bar, Pommel Horse, Parallel Bars, Vault, Rings and Floor exercises. The gymnasts are in groups of five. Each group compete on the same apparatus and then the group moves on to the next one. When we've attended Gymnastics at the Olympics, we've had a hard time following what is going on because six athletes are competing simultaneously. A cheer would go up in some part of the arena and a score would be posted, but we had trouble figuring out what was happening where. Today is much easier because even though there are three separate groups, only one athlete at a time is competing. The Floor exercises are going on directly in front of us and the Vault is on the opposite side of the arena. The Pommel horse and Rings are to our left and the High bar and Parallel bars are to our right. Surrounding all of the apparatus are the judges who are following every move. It appears every judge has a different task. For example, there are three judges seated on one side of the Floor exercise floor and others on the corners. The judges on the corners are watching to make sure that no one steps outside the boundaries during their tumbling runs. If anyone steps out, the judge raises a yellow flag to let the judges on the side (who are scoring the routines) know that a deduction is in order. There are also a bunch of people who are responsible for setting up each apparatus for each apparatus. Two people rush over and adjust the height of the Pommel horse to match each athlete's preferences. Another guy puts chalk dust on the parallel bars after each routine. Another guy is responsible for stopping any swing in the rings before each routine.

We know that people have come to these trials from all over the country. In fact, we heard that the coaches of the powerful Japanese team have come to scout the US team. But the thing that surprises me the most is how many kids are in the audience. Every gymnastics club in Northern California must be here in addition to a number of bigger clubs from other parts of the country.

After two rotations (each group completes the apparatus and then rotates to the next one), the race to London has devolved into a race not to not mess up. We see one athlete after another fall off an apparatus, especially on the Pommel horse where everyone seems to have problems. When someone falls off, they have 30 seconds to rechalk and then get back on. But the deduction is 1 point plus whatever skill they were doing at the time. This is a serious penalty because their maximum possible score will go from perhaps 17 (degree of difficulty plus 10 for the performance) down to maybe 15.5 - and it is really difficult to do a perfect performance after you've just been slammed into the mat from the top of the High bar. More typically, you score perhaps 12-13 points and lose 3+ points to the leaders. This can be enough to drop you one place in the standings - critical when only 5 of these 15 men are going to London.

It is really hard to be good on all six apparatuses. The two athletes having the best day are Danell Leyva from Miami, FL and John Orozco from New York City, NY. They finished 1-2 at the Visa National Gymnastics Championships three weeks ago and were both in the top three during the preliminaries on Thursday.  Even when they are not great on an apparatus, they are still scoring in the mid-14's or higher.

After the first rotation, we noticed that there are not five athletes in each group. The odd man out is Sam Mikulak, the NCAA champion from the University of Michigan. Sam had finished 3rd in the two rounds at the Visa Nationals and won the preliminary round here. It turns out that he badly sprained his ankle on the Vault in the preliminary. This is after a horrific injury last year when he broke both ankles during a Floor exercises routine. He does not want to risk further injury even though he knows that he is risking a nearly certain spot on the team by not competing.  It helps that both of Sam's parents are former gymnasts and his father is now on Orthopedic surgeon. Apparently father and son came to some sort of compromise because Sam does compete on the Pommel horse and scores a respectable 14.4 despite not being able to put full pressure on one foot.

Being injured seems to go with the territory in Gymnastics. Several of the athletes have heavily taped ankles and feet. In fact, it is not just the competitors. We see perhaps a dozen spectators walking around with those "exo-skeletons" knee braces that you often see skiers wearing after they have torn ligaments as well as a number of people on crutches.

The battle between Leyva and Orozco goes back and forth. After Leyva beats Orozco in the High bar, Orozco beats Leyva in Pommel horse, Rings and Vault to take the lead by perhaps 0.5 points (out of more than 350 points) going into the final rotation on the Parallel bars. Leyva scores a 15.850 to put the pressure back on Orozco and John can only respond with a 14.350 to pull out the win. We find out later than Orozco had severe hand cramps during his routine and could  not let go of the bar to make his release moves. But honestly, it was clear that both of these athletes were going to make the team.

The more interesting battle is between Johnathan Horton, Chris Brooks, Jake Dalton, Paul Ruggeri and C.J. Maestas - the guys on the selection bubble. US Gymnastics has announced that the top two will automatically make the team, but the other three places on the team, while taking the trial into account will also consider which athletes will give the US the strongest team in the all-around competition. This may bring Sam Mikaluk back into contention and knock another of these guys on the bubble out. So every performance is critical and the pressure is getting to some of them. Ruggeri gets a 13.100 on the Pommel horse in the 5th rotation and follows it up with a 13.400 on the Rings to finish 6th. Horton, gets a 14.950 on the High bar and a 14.600 on the Floor exercises, but managed to hold onto 3rd. On the other hand, Chris Brooks scores a 15.750 on the High bar and 15.300 on the Floor exercises to move up from 5th to 4th.

At the end, the President of US Gymnastics announces that Leyva and Orozco have made the team resulting in a standing ovation from the 10,000+ spectators. The other athletes will have to wait until tonight to see who the other three team members will be. And for us, we've only got one more month until London!

Some random observations:

No successful Gymnast can be allergic to chalk dust because they seem to bathe in the stuff. They put it on the hands (Pommel horse, Rings, High bar, Parallel bars), armpits (Parallel bars) and feet (Floor exercises and Vault) so that they don't slip during their routines.

We see a number of large groups of people all wearing the same shirts. These are the families of the athletes. For these people, the trials is a destination that they have been traveling toward for a very long time. It is one thing for an athlete to have enough love of the sport and drive to spend the countless hours in the gym required to make this dream come true. But for me, more impressive is the time, money and personal sacrifice that the parents and grandparents of these athletes provide to support their children's or grandchildren's dream.

If you ask most people about Men's Gymnastics, they think of Rings - the picture of a guy doing an Iron Cross where his arms are stretched out horizontally while keeping his body vertical to form a cross.  But I found the High bar more exciting. Most people would have trouble doing a Giant where you hold onto the bar and swing around with your body stretched straight out. Imagine doing it with only one arm. Or imagine letting go of the bar on the way up, doing a couple twists and turns in the air and then catching the bar on the way back down. I could not believe some of the routines that I saw.

Final Note: US Gymnastics just announced that Leyva and Orozco will be joined by Jonathan Horton, Jake Dalton...and Sam Mikulak on the Olympic team. Congratulations and best wishes to all of them in London.