Stan Geiger

Alicia Sacramone

I watched the lady gymnasts last night. I watched the men the night before that. I am amazed by gymnasts. I sit, slack-jawed, watching them do what no human should be able to do.

I was proud of the men. The team was beset with injuries, competing largely with alternates. Yet they managed to medal. It was almost like they willed themselves to a higher level.

The young fellow with the Russian name sealed the deal with a flawless performance of his spectacular routine on the pommel horse. Talk about pressure. He only had one event; one shot. He was the last to perform; he had to wait, and wait, and wait. With a medal on the line, with much of the world watching, he nailed it.

Well done, young man. Well done, all of you.

I was proud of the ladies last night. One member of the team was sidelined completely with an ankle injury. Another was limited to one event by the same. Yet our girls went out and took a silver medal. Beautiful.

And that in spite of the fact that the Chinese cheated. Deng Linlin is cute as a bug's ear, and she's very good. But if that girl is a day over 13, I'll kiss your booty.

Our girls were in the race for gold---until that fateful moment when Alicia Sacramone lost her mount on the balance beam. My heart sunk, but not because of the medal thing. My heart sunk for her.

What girls do on the balance beam leaves me in disbelief. I mean I'm not sure if I could walk across that beam without falling. How someone can get on that four-inch piece of wood and do handsprings and flips is beyond me.

Sacramone, I'm certain, has done her balance beam routine flawlessly a thousand times. Last night, she made a mistake. It is unfortunate that her rare mistake came at a most inopportune time. But anybody can make a mistake---especially when attempting something that very few people in the world could even think about trying.

Alicia busted her hump for years to get where she got. She had to fight through adversity to get where she got. But in one brief moment, her dreams of gold were dashed. And she knew it.

I'm sure she wanted to just go off somewhere and cry. But she didn't; she couldn't. The heart of a warrior won't allow such things. She got back on the beam and finished her routine. And then, fighting the tears, she did her floor routine.

A lot of attention is given to the glory and elation that comes with victory in athletics. Maybe we don't pay enough attention to the other side of the equation.

After it was over, I wanted to crawl through my TV screen and give Alicia a big fat hug. I also wanted to crawl through my screen and bitch-slap that sorry excuse for a reporter that unfairly singled her out for an interview in the immediate aftermath. The poor girl was clearly beside herself, barely able to talk, and blaming herself for losing the gold. And a reporter figured that would be a good time to put a 20-year-old heartbroken girl on national TV and grill her with questions. Pathetic. NBC should be ashamed of itself.

On the flip-side, that event stands as another testament to Sacramone's grit. She didn't run from it.

It seems that many times in team events there is one moment that stands out---and gets the blame for a loss. And that's nonsense. In this case, we had three girls in four rotations. That gave us a dozen opportunities to rack up enough points to outscore the Chinese. Our team came up a hair short. Was it one fall that did it? I think not. It would be right for Alicia to be disappointed; it would be wrong for her to blame herself. You win as a team; you lose as a team.

I'm speaking, of course, from the perspective of the girls when I use words like "loss" and "lose." When you consider yourself good enough to win it all and come up short, you call it a loss. From my perspective, however, it is silliness to call going up against the best gymnasts in the world and coming away with a silver medal a loss---especially when the team had injury problems and your primary competitor cheated. The team did a great job.

And you, Miss Alicia, don't you hang that head. Don't you do it. Not around this American. Because this American is proud of you.

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