Eric Adelson Aug 8, 2016, 6:34 AM
RIO DE JANEIRO — Four arduous years came down to one precarious wobble.
Aly
Raisman needed a strong balance beam routine to beat Gabby Douglas and
qualify for a chance at the Olympic all-around medal she barely missed
at London 2012. She had already given what she called the best meet of
her life when she teetered on the edge of a fall that might have left
her to watch someone else live her dream.
“Usually
she doesn’t do that wobble,” said Mihai Brestyan, Raisman’s coach. “She
surprised everybody, surprised me, surprised herself.”
Yet
Raisman gathered herself on that beam and completed the rest of her
routine flawlessly. She dismounted. She raised her arms. And she
qualified for the all-around – with a score of 60.607 to Douglas’
60.131. A fall would have cost her a half-point deduction and perhaps a
spot in the final.
Gymnast Aly Raisman earned a spot in the all-around competition at Sunday’s qualifying meet. (AP)
“It
definitely was my goal,” Raisman said afterward. “The media kept asking
me, and I was trying to downplay it, because I didn’t want to add to
the pressure, but it’s something I think about a lot.”
Brestyan
told Yahoo Sports that the all-around medal was “50 percent” of the
reason Raisman came back at all. (He said the other 50 percent is a
secret.) She had to go through eight months of purely physical training,
and then came the incremental tinkering she would need to not only get
to the level of 2012 but also one extra level to beat her teammate on
Sunday.
Much
has been made of Douglas’ comeback from all-around gold, but Raisman
came back from the most crushing of defeats — a tie for bronze with
Russia’s Aliya Mustafina in which she lost the tiebreaker.
How
close was it in London? With only their three highest apparatus scores
used, Raisman lost 45.933 to 45.366 – almost the exact same margin that
boosted her past Douglas on Sunday.
“I
love both of the girls,” said 2008 Olympian Shawn Johnson, “but Aly is
here with a vengeance from 2012 and she deserves that spot.”
Raisman’s
importance to the team as a whole can’t be overstated. She is known as
“Grandma,” a reference to her age (she’s 22 and she doesn’t do
Snapchat), but her leadership among teenagers is very much a part of her
job.
Douglas
has struggled in several ways over the last few months, Simone Biles is
so dominant that it’s intimidating and Laurie Hernandez is still new to
this level. There are some who believe Hernandez should have been given the chance to compete for the all-around spot
instead of Douglas, and that surely didn’t ease any nerves that were
already brewing among athletes who the world is watching so closely.
Raisman was captain in 2012 and is captain again at these Summer Games,
and that’s for a reason.
But there’s also the personal journey she’s on – one she didn’t have to take.
“I’ve
been working so hard,” Raisman said. “It’s been a rough last year and a
half. People think it looks easy. It’s taken me three years to complete
that vault the way that I did. Training three years to get to that
point.”
If
the wobble turned into a fall, especially after such impressive
performances on the vault and the uneven bars, it’s possible Raisman
would have had to live with wondering if she really did get better from
18 to age 22. Now she knows.
“When
you make the Olympics, you’ve reached the peak of your sport and the
peak of your abilities,” Johnson said. “To go further than that is an
incredible mental challenge.”
That
is perhaps Raisman’s greatest gift, and it’s very rare. “It’s the
determination to succeed,” Brestyan said. “She’s not necessarily the
most talented kid on the team, but she’s the hardest worker on the team,
that’s for sure.”
Biles
is still the runaway favorite in the all-around. Her performance on
Sunday, in her first Olympics event, was shake-your-head stellar. Still,
Raisman’s evening, when put in the context of what happened in 2012 and
since, is just as impressive.
Grandma may not win gold, but she earned her golden chance.
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