Olympic Gymnastics

When you think Olympics, you think Michael Phelps. Phelps has been plastered all over the past ten issues of Sports Illustrated. He has TV commercials on seemingly every channel. The guy is everywhere.

I simply don’t care for swimming, and not only because I’ve always sunk like a lead balloon. Its just a terribly dull sport to watch. Ultimately, swimming (albeit quickly) back and forth in a pool and breaking some record previously held buy a guy named Spitz doesn’t do it for me. You want tizzy-inducing, Olympic material? Lets talk about women’s gymnastics.

I had never watched gymnastics for more than two minutes before watching the women’s all-around competition. This is insane stuff! Shawn Johnson, Nastia Liuken and a couple of pre-pubescent Chinese girls flipped and bounced over a 4-inch balance beam as though it were a 4-lane freeway. Have you ever tried to stand on a balance beam, let alone attempt a back flip on one? I tried once during a 4^th grade P.E. class and it didn't end well..

Gymnasts should be recognized as the greatest athletes in the world, but they aren’t. And the problem lies in the Barbie-doll image cultivated within the sport’s culture. The athletes are spectacular, but they appear as caricatures taken from the same vein as the beauty contest winners from Little Miss Sunshine. This image, further accentuated by Johnson’s cuddly-chipmunk appearance throughout the Olympics, prevents many people from taking the sport seriously or from seeing the athletes as the impressive packages of power and grace that they are. What gymnastics really needs is a Dennis Rodman, someone with a little extra dose of bravado. A fiery, in-your-face gymnast could raise public awareness and simultaneously help to diminish the cute-as-a-button, sissy-Mary image the sport has acquired over the years. (While we’re at it, can’t you imagine Rodman in a pink leotard attempting a series of back flips off the uneven bars? Somehow, it doesn’t seem so far-fetched…)