Eight Days in August

This blog post is a rare departure from my singular focus on all things tennis, but then these are rare times we’re experiencing.

08.08.08. Few of us will ever forget that date in history, or these numbers: Eight one-hundredths of a second. Eight golds in eight events. Fewer still will soon forget these names: Michael Phelps. Nastia Liukin. Dara Torres. Just a few of the U.S. hopefuls to achieve greatness at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

The Games kicked off with the most magnificent—if also allegedly unreal in places—opening ceremony ever witnessed on the eighth day of August. Eight days later, history had been made, and I had been forever altered.

The Michael Phelps story, the biggest of these Games, was certainly compelling, as it played out over the course of eight days. It was very difficult not to look—a bit like trying to avert one’s eyes from a highway disaster that has just occurred. To me, though, the real story was Jason Lezak’s herculean effort to keep Phelps in the hunt for his Olympic-record eight gold medals, edging out boastful Frenchman Bernard in the final, freestyle leg of the 400 meter team medley. Making the turn at 50-meters, Lezak trailed the world-record holder by almost a full body length. But with his teammate’s historic quest in jeopardy, Lezak did the seemingly impossible, pulling even with Bernard with less than a meter to go and touching the wall first—by a mere eight one-hundredths of a second.

And what to make of 41-year-old Dara Torres, swimming in her fifth Olympic Games, having missed the 1996 and 2004 Games? She swam in spectacular form, missing the gold medal in the 50 meter freestyle by one one-hundredth of a second. The clock cannot measure it any closer than that. A real trooper and team player, even in defeat, Torres immediately went back in the water to lead the U.S. to a silver medal in the 400 meter freestyle relay. In all, she swam in three events, earning silver in each. Incredible.

However, when it comes to the Olympic Games, the very fact that it occurs only once every four years lends a larger-than-life element to each event and to each competitor. There is a suspense that pervades the site and hangs in the air before each crack of the starting gun or blow of the whistle. It is this suspense and the grandeur of the moment that can produce a cathartic experience for me. And I am rarely moved to the way I was watching the women’s individual all-around gymnastics event. Only four such moments come to mind in all the years I’ve watched professional tennis.

The 1975 Wimbledon final, when Arthur Ashe defeated the heavily favored Jimmy Connors with a brilliant strategy and near-flawless tactics. The French Open final, 1983. Yannick Noah wins his nation’s title and Grand Slam, beating the heavily favored Mats Wilander, and then weeps openly. The 1995 Davis Cup final in Moscow. Pete Sampras collapses on the red-clay court after defeating Andrei Chesnokov and winning all three matches he played to give the U.S. a 3-2 win over hometown favorite, Russia. The U.S. Open quarterfinals, the following year. Pete Sampras’ overcomes the effects of dehydration, vomiting on court, and a match point against him to win a five-set thriller over Spain’s Alex Corretja in what would be one of his most famous career-defining warrior moments.

Truth is, very few sporting events offer the level of suspense and drama that gymnastics’ all-around does. No other sporting event, save perhaps the decathlon, asks so much of its competitors. No other event demands that the athlete demonstrate such a diverse array of skills in such a short time. The floor exercise couldn’t be more different than the uneven bars, the balance beam than the vault. And the athletes must go from one directly to the other, with very little time to recover, reflect, regroup or retool. The pressure simply accumulates, greater and greater with each successive routine or apparatus.

Watching the U.S.’s Nastia Liukin seize the gold medal from favored compatriot, Shawn Johnson, was a moment to behold and to treasure. Forget for a moment that Miss Johnson was the 2007 world champion and was the U.S.’s best hope for a medal. Forget that the flexible young Yang Lilin, from China, would make all of her routines look easy. Or that the U.S. had never placed more than one female gymnast upon the medal podium. Forget that a poised and matured Mary Lou Retton, the 1984 Olympic gold medalist in the all-around, gazed on from the stands.

What made this moment extraordinary was the way in which Miss Liukin went about her business. Throughout the evening she had a look of calm that yet betrayed her determination and strength of mind. She didn’t look or act like an underdog. After the uneven bars, she trailed Yang. Moments later, she stuck her landing on the vault, showing she was a serious contender. Then Liukin performed a near-perfect balance beam routine, culminating in a picture-perfect dismount that was identical to her vault landing, putting her in the lead. In the final apparatus, the floor exercise, with the pressure on and now leading the reigning world champion in the floor exercise, Shawn Johnson, by a slim margin, she performed with the grace and self-assurance of an Olympic champion. Johnson followed with a brilliant performance of her own, a more muscular acrobatic performance that brought her the silver medal.

Standing on the medal platform together, it was evident that both young women felt overwhelming emotion. Pride in themselves, though visible, was momentarily overshadowed by pride for their country and for each other. What really got to me, though, was observing Liukin passing through a series of competing emotions, each fully capable of bringing her to her knees in a heap of spent energy. I could see in her eyes and on her face the years of exertion, of disciplined training, of dreaming and hoping and waiting for this moment, all washing over her like baptismal water, both cleansing and freeing her. The weight that she had borne for more than four years was now lifted from her shoulders, yet instead of relief there was a kind of sadness that lingered there, as in experiencing a great loss.

It was too much to handle, and as she trembled with the effort to remain poised, to keep from weeping openly, I felt a welling up inside me. I would bare, in the safety and privacy of my living room, what in that moment she could not.


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