The Obligatory Olympics Blog

Originally published four years ago, on August 11, 2008...

I remember the moment when my Olympic dreams died.

I screamed in protest, crying as I ran out of the gym.  I had just stepped outside when my gymnastics coach appeared in the doorway, having chased me, and angrily yelled, "You step out of this gym and you're leaving gymnastics behind!  I don't think you want that!"

I was nine.  I had been doing gymnastics for only a few months.  And she was wrong.  I did want that. Seventeen years later, I have yet to regret my decision to walk out of that gym.

Despite being as inept at (and interested in) school gym activities as the next pre-pubescent female, I discovered a surprising talent for tumbling when my parents enrolled me in gymnastics in the third grade.  I did an aerial cartwheel without a spot on my second lesson.  I had mastered the round-off back-handspring by my fourth.

The owner of the gym used to give me private lessons after my regular lessons, something I went along with because it meant more tumbling; his ulterior motives soared right over my 9-year-old head. He also kept moving me into more difficult classes, and at an alarmingly fast pace.  The gym taught up to level 8 ("Elite") and I was in level 4 ("Pre-Team") within a month of starting.

But level 4 was where I got stuck.  Though I could do more handstand pirouettes than anyone on the Elite team ("Did she just do eight?!" I remember a coach screaming.  "Keep going!" he yelled.  And I did), I couldn't do the splits, or a cartwheel on anything higher than a low beam, or propel myself over a vault if my life depended on it.  My first level 4 class was four weeks after my very first lesson, and some of the girls I trained with had been doing gymnastics for years.  None of them could do aerial cartwheels...

All of them could do the splits. 

What no one told me at the time was that the owner of the gym and a couple of his coaches had talked to my parents about fast-tracking my training to get me into contention for the Olympics.  Sometimes, when I get on one of my existential kicks, I think about the multiverse theory, and wonder if there's a Becky Heineke out there who's 5'2" and has an Olympic gold tacked on her wall...

But I kind of don't think so.

Over in this 'verse, I quit before my first competition (practicing for which was the source of the tantrum that ultimately ended my gymnastics career).  I didn't want to compete.  I've never wanted to compete.  If my coach had yelled, "Fine!  We'll put you back with the level 1 people and let you do cartwheels all day!" I'd probably still be doing gymnastics.  But she didn't.  She mistakenly assumed that I had a drive for athletic competition when, in reality, all I really had was a lack of fear of falling on my head.

And so ended my bid for Olympic glory.  Which I didn't even know about at the time.  It wasn't until years later that my mom mentioned the Olympics to me...and it wasn't a dream of my own making, but the dream of the well-meaning but ultimately overly-excitable coaches at River City Gymnastics.

At regular four-year intervals, I watch the women's gymnastics team during the Summer Olympics in honor of the competition I so desperately wanted to avoid in elementary school.  And I notice how gymnasts never smile or look happy until after a routine is over.
 
But I must admit, the tumbling still looks fun...