Letters to a Young Gymnast Read Online Free PDF Page B

The result was that I was chosen to attend the championships.
    Many people have criticized Bela Karolyi and his style over the past decades. But I have never known a coach who fought harder—or more loudly—for his gymnasts’ rights. There have been times when he has tap-danced along the gray line between right and wrong, fairness and injustice, but to know as a child that he is in your corner and to feel the warmth of his smile and praise is unlike anything else I have ever experienced.
    Bela was in rare form at the European Championships. When Club Dinamo decided they’d only use two of their three gymnasts for the competition, Bela attained the unfilled third spot for me. I went on to win four gold medals, including the all-around European title. Lyudmila Turischeva, the current world and Olympic champion, was beaten by a little girl who had put aside every negative emotion and simply concentrated on being her best. I was not lucky. No one can be that lucky in gymnastics. You have skills that you’re capable of doing, and you always know what you can and cannot deliver. If Marta were to say to me that I should do something a different way and I couldn’t do it in practice, then I wouldn’t be able to do it in a competition. Nothing fell out of the sky and touched me like magic as I swung from the bars or vault. Just as in life, everyone has things they can accomplish, and you put your skills in your bag and pull them out when needed. If they’re not in your bag, you can’t pull them out because you simply don’t
have them. The only pressure comes from losing concentration and slipping, not from performing skills you know you can deliver.
    I’ve always been tough on myself about mistakes. As a child, I used to take chances and risks, but I won’t anymore. I play the safe side of things now. Maybe that just comes with age. I think mistakes are a waste of time, but when I was younger, I believed that I had to learn by knocking my nose against the wall so I could tell the difference between good and bad by myself: I had a lot of bloody noses back then. But I digress and will tell you more about those mistakes later, if you are interested. First, let me get back to Ludmila.
    I will never forget Ludmila’s poise in defeat when she walked over to me at the championships and kissed me on the cheek. I still have the photograph of that moment because she was my idol. We couldn’t communicate—we didn’t speak the same language—but in that instant, I knew that she was a true champion and that I wanted to take some of her grace and make it my own. I believe you can take the attributes you admire in others and incorporate them into your own life. You can’t copy someone else’s gymnastics style and come out on top, but you can make yourself a better person by learning from another’s actions.
    In retrospect, I realize just how terribly disappointed Lyudmila must have been because the European Championships only happen every two years and she had won in 1971 and 1973. If she won in 1975, she would have been given the Challenge Cup for winning three times in a row. Later, I would be the first gymnast in the world to accomplish that feat—in 1975, 1977, and 1979—and to receive the Challenge Cup. But back then, I knew
only that I was happy and that I hoped the Romanian people could share in my achievements. Still, I thought the European Championships were something important but small, like getting a 10 on a mathematics test at school (a perfect score in the Romanian grading system). There was no media attention on me until 1976, when the walls of my tiny world were blown apart and spotlights and camera flashes left me stunned like a deer in the road.
    Dear friend, of course you have asked me about the 1976 Olympics. I had hoped you might be interested more in who I am now, and I’m tempted to give stock answers to a question that never seems to be