When Stoughton gymnast Frederick Richard grabs the high bar for the all-around final at the Olympics tomorrow, he won’t just be thinking about the medal on the line. He’ll be thinking about the very real possibility of flying off of a steel pole from more than 9 feet in the air.
When Worcester’s Stephen Nedoroscik mounts the pommel horse for the individual event finals Saturday, he won’t just be thinking about making or blowing his country’s only shot at a medal in an individual event. He’ll be thinking about the possibility of his grip slipping while his body continues to rotate, wedging his back into a stiff wooden frame before falling to the ground, head first.
There are few sports where the fear of injury — even death — is ever present. Gymnastics is one of them. That’s why I love it.
And that’s why I quit it.
“I think Jeremy is dead,” my 12-year-old brother said to our mom one Sunday afternoon in 2011.
I’d just tried a move called a “Jaeger” on the high bar: in the middle of swinging all the way around frontwards, you let go, do a front flip, catch the bar again and start swinging in the opposite direction.
I swung my body around the bar.
I let go.
I did the flip.
I reached out to grab the bar again — and nothing was in front of me but air.
Gravity pulled me straight down onto the big metal bar beneath my stomach, folding my body in half like a flip phone. I landed on the mat 10 feet below with the wind knocked out of me worse than ever before.
It’s a moment I come back to when I think about why I quit the sport during my freshman year at UC Berkeley after competing nationally for nearly a decade.
It’s also a moment I come back to when I watch gymnastics at the big games.
There’s nothing like floating through the air. Time stops. You don’t really hear anything. Cheers from your teammates become wambs and whaas, muted as if you’re listening from underwater. Nothing’s on your mind except your next movement, but your body’s usually already another step ahead of you.
You’re invincible. There’s nothing like it.
There’s also nothing like landing on a steel pole, mid-flip, with a crowd watching.
After a minute or so of lying on the mat, trying to catch my breath, I got up to finish my routine. My teammates cheered. The whaas and wambs became “yeahs!” and “woohoos!”
I was glad I could get back up. And my little brother was happy I was alive. But as the story goes, once I stood up, the first thing he said to my mom was, “Jeremy’s alive. Can I get a snack?”
That feeling of being invincible has a nasty sidekick, a feeling of intense mortality. It’s a double-edged sword that some thrill-seekers love. For me, it was a bit much.
Every four years, I get a kick out of watching the sport with uninitiated viewers, who have no idea why a Tkatchev is so much more difficult in a layout position than straddle. I love explaining the weird new scoring system that’s rendered the famed “perfect 10” meaningless.
But it’s worth noting — especially in a sport that’s literally dying at the collegiate level — that these men aren’t just performing. They’re not just overcoming a fear of injury.
They’re defying death.
