Letters to a Young Gymnast Read Online Free PDF Page A

conditioning the body and the mind are two different things, and at age nine, my mind wasn’t a steel-tight drum. What Marta didn’t understand that day when I fell off the beam was that no matter what she said to me, I said worse to myself. I was frustrated, furious, humiliated, and determined to never have those kinds of mistakes plague me again. I came in thirteenth at that competition. In the end, my low score on the beam actually won the competition for our team, but I still felt miserable. I’d disappointed everyone, especially myself.
    You asked in your last letter if I ever wanted to quit gymnastics, and that’s a fair question. The answer is, never in the early days. Never. Gymnastics was fun. Bela
had a vision of bringing all his experience in boxing, rugby, handball, and general athletics to gymnastics. He believed we could have the team spirit of rugby players, the toughness of boxers, and the aggression of handball players as well as all-around strength. Due to his size, he was a great spotter, and out of that grew respect and trust. The spotter is the person who keeps a gymnast learning new skills from getting hurt. If a gymnast knows that his or her spotter is dependable, that gymnast will have the courage to try more and more difficult skills without fear. With Bela, I always knew he wouldn’t let me hit the ground or an apparatus. Plus, his attitude was light and easy compared to Marta’s, so I really enjoyed working with him. Later, though, our relationship would change.
    But I am getting ahead of myself. On the heels of failure came my first success, at the 1972 Friendship Cup. Our team’s gymnasts were only ten years old. All the gymnasts from the other countries were in their late teens and early twenties. Bela and Marta hadn’t even known how much younger we were before we arrived at the competition because they’d never seen the Soviet gymnasts, let alone the Czechs or Germans, compete. We walked into the arena, tiny little girls with pigtails, facing the likes of Lyudmila Turischeva, a long-legged and unbelievably graceful gymnast from Russia.
    Today, Bela says that he always had a theory about copying. He explains that if, as a coach, you copy the style and training of the best gymnasts, your own gymnasts will never be as good—they’ll be almost as good but not quite there. They will run behind but never catch up. If, however, you create gymnasts with unique styles, they will have a chance to outshine all others. I
believe Bela’s theory is true in life, too. Trying to be someone else may get you through the door, but being unique will get you noticed!
    The Friendship Cup competition pitted the little girls against the big girls. We weren’t as seasoned as some of the Czechs and Germans. Most of us had been training for years but had not been in as many competitions as gymnasts such as Tourischeva. But we concentrated and fell back on all the practice, training, and emotionally and physically demanding hard work we’d put in, and we exploded like fireworks. As a result of our conditioning, we had fantastic power and technique and performed skills never seen in gymnasts so young.
    Bela and Marta had trained us to be professional regardless of the level of competition. We were so used to our busy routine during meets—stretching, visualizing each event, performing, and helping teammates prepare by measuring the location of the springboard for vaults—that we didn’t have time to get nervous about the more experienced competitors. In the end, I won the all-around gold at the Friendship Cup. The team won the silver. We had done the unthinkable, beating the best international gymnasts in the world.
    For me, winning has never been about standing up on a podium and having a medal draped around my neck. I used to look out at the audience and see all the people clapping; I watched Bela and Marta’s smiles; I kissed the cheeks of my fellow