Final Season

(sequel to “The Victorian”)

in International Gymnast

Everyone expected me to win and I disappointed them. The school paper ran a story about the meet with the subheading “Phelps Upset in Nationals.” A few friends approach me on campus with long, consoling faces, while others are delighted at my defeat. I hadn’t thought this far ahead when I chose to keep the Victorian for myself, but it’s additional payment I owe for my triumph to remain forever unrivaled. Like the Kung Fu Master needing to prove nothing–my greatness enhanced with my secret—I have found a more enduring victory regardless what the standings say. With the Victorian all my own, no other ring man will ever reach such heights.
There are no workouts in the weeks after Nationals as we let injuries finally heal following hard months of training. The rest helps my shoulder and soon I’ll put on a shirt without pain. I give more attention to my girlfriends and hit the books so as not to risk academic probation again next year. Flowers bloom and, in the trees, leaves grow out of branches. I stretch a lot and pop a few handstands every day, but those afternoons away from the gym soon leave me restless. I’m happy when spring practice begins and time passes easily with something to look forward to. Final exams approach, then it’s summer.
I make a quick visit home, my kid brother seeing me as the greatest hero no matter what happened in Nationals.
“You’ll win next year, Tee Jay,” he says bravely. “You’ll see.”
I want him to know I’ve risen above all that, about how brief is such victory, but he wouldn’t understand. Before Dad has a chance to jump on me about my plans for the future, I return to campus where Coach finds me a summer job through an alumni with the State Traffic Bureau. Each morning in my stick-shift Corvair I drive the dusty backroads, along the corn stalks and rows of soy beans, indicating on a map what road signs are where. I finish by noon, swim in the reservoir, then sun myself like a turtle on a rock.
For a few hours each afternoon I hit the gym. Some teammates are taking summer school classes, while others, like me, just stay down at school for the workouts and freedom from home. The hot weather keeps us loose though we tire if it’s humid and sweat falls to the mat like large raindrops, hitting the mat with an audible ‘snap.’ As always, the end of summer comes quickly, then school resumes in the busy frolic of registration week. Tan from his fishing trip, Coach calls a meeting. Griffin got fat over the summer but Stern smoked cigarettes to keep his weight down. Two guys from last year’s team graduated, Kruk flunked out and transferred schools, so unless the freshmen are sensational it looks like another dismal year. I’m voted captain which doesn’t mean much except I shake the hand of the opposing team captain before a meet, then begin my final season.
Already I feel the pressure that I’m expected to win Nationals, but I’ve done my best, better than any ring man will ever do, and so make my peace that a season of victories and the once-coveted title do not lay ahead. Though I keep my ring work sharp, throwing the same routine I threw at Nationals, I branch out a little and help the team fill weak spots on parallel bars. I played with bars back in high school, and once the skin under my arms toughens l have fun. There’s no pressure to win anything on bars, they hurt much less than rings, and besides, you’re always tossing release-regrasp moves like a straddle-cut catch or a Healy twirl. For a second it’s like flying in air, holding nothing and nothing holding me, then catching the bars again so lightly without even looking. I put together a nice little routine. Nothing as great as I throw on rings, but nothing to be ashamed of either once the meets begin.
I win rings in the first few competitions but lose again to Hatch at Iowa. He’s introduced to his home crowd as the reigning National Champion which angers Coach but doesn’t bother me really since he is. I knew all along Hatch would beat me, though for one wild moment I almost popped a Victorian just to show him who’s the best. But I hadn’t tried one in months and wasn’t sure if I could still hit it, and since I kept it secret all this time, showing it now seemed wasted.
After the meet, Hatch and I shake hands at the chalk tray. He’s real friendly since he’s beaten me twice in a row now, but I give him his little victory, for in my heart I know the truth and that’s enough.
“When you start working p-bars?” he asks.
“Always have a little,” I reply. “And the team was hurting.”
He nods momentarily as the smile dissolves.
“But it’s not really a team sport, is it?”
We both shrug into silence, then shake hands again until the Midwest Open a month away.
The Open is the first major competition of the year, half-way through season just before Christmas Break. Hatch will probably win and I hate losing to him again, but if I hit my routine and take home the silver medal I’ll be satisfied. It’s good seeing old friends and competitors at The Open, and one treat is that Sweats doesn’t fly off high bar. His real name is Dixon but called Sweats because he’s always nervous in competition and blows his routine because of it. “Don’t sweat it, Sweats,” we tell him, but no matter how cool he hits in warm-ups, he’s as jittery as a freshman when he’s up, palms so sweaty all the chalk in the tray couldn’t give him a good grip. When he loses it he sails like a bird that just got shot before crashing to the mat in a heap. That night old Sweats holds on for the finish and everyone is happy for him and real surprised. But the big surprise comes later, on rings.
It starts normally enough. A few unknowns look good, and someone tries a triple fly-away dismount but undercuts and ends on his nose, eating mat. “Lats” Davis from Wisconsin is up, powerful and graceless as always, then he hits one position where I think he’ll pass through on the way to a front lever, but he stays there, arms out at his sides, belly to the rafters, holding the Victorian. My stomach drops and I’m off the bench in amazement, unable to believe what I see as his teammates cheer wildly, the crowd joins in, and Davis finishes to a standing ovation.

For days after The Open I feel drained as if a valve has been turned and all my strength escaped. My stomach is knotted, I can’t eat, and Davis floats through my restless sleep, the crowd in raptures as he holds the Victorian, my greatest prize and now my greatest loss. My parents think I’m depressed because I blew my routine that night and didn’t even place in the top five, but I can’t tell them the real reason, about this joke that’s been played on me.
Dad took this chance to kick me while I’m down.
“This is your last year of college,” he says one morning at the breakfast table. “Your mother and I would like to know what you plan doing after graduation.”
I don't know what I’ll do and he knows it; we’ve been through this a million times.
“It’d be different if there was professional gymnastics,” he says, sitting back meditatively in his chair. “You boys work so hard for so long, but once school ends so do your careers.”
“How about coaching?” Mom offers hopefully, but I’m not interested, and while this worries Mom it irritates my father.
“Well you better decide on something soon. After this year you’re not on scholarship anymore.”
I drive to my old high school where practice during Christmas Break is always a big deal. Old teammates show up and Coach loves that his own boys can learn from us college guys just the way we did at their age. I don’t feel like working out but go anyway, otherwise everyone will think I’m hiding after my disastrous performance at The Open. Besides, I know Davis and the Victorian will be the hot topic and don’t want to hear about it, but what’s there to do? Quit gymnastics? What else is there?
High school always appears the same no matter how long I’m away. Hallways polished like lacquer, odors of perfume and bubble gum beneath the stairwells except near the art classrooms where it smells of paste. The locker room is smaller than the one at college, but the stenciled slogans in school colors above bulletin boards never change: “If You’re Not A Winner You’re A Loser,” and “No Guts No Glory.” Once inspired by such saying, they seem to mock me now as I change into a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, snap a lock on a cage and drag myself to the gym.
“Tee Jay,” Coach calls when I enter.
A half dozen heads look over, then he leaves the kid he’s spotting on high bar, hand outstretched, his face beaming. He’s much younger than my coach at college, muscular and lean like he’s still in training, still with a flat top. We talk for a moment about how things are going, then he says apologetically, “I saw you at The Open.”
“Not my best set.”
“It happens,” he says with a shrug. “You’ll hit next time,” then his eyes brighten and I can see it coming: “How about Davis?”
“Yeah, how about him.”
“Thought I’d never see the Victorian.”
“Thought the same myself.”
“Great move.”
“The greatest.”
He smiles and we nod into a silence where I want to scream.
Gordy approaches and we shake hands, then “King” Kahn’s beside me and we’re all slapping shoulders as I try acting cool so they don’t think I’m psyched out by Davis and The Open. High school kids watch us, their eyes envious of these famous college guys like I was near Cooper and Pearl and Wolf.
I begin warming up, stretching a little, popping all my joints and waiting for the one deep in the base of my spine to pop like a knuckle under water. When it does, I know I’m loose. A gawking little freshman at the chalk tray watches, silly in his baggy shorts and handgrips too large for his skinny wrists. He moves away when I approach, and after chalking up I hit the rings where I swing a little to get the feel of the wood in my hands, of the suspension and play of the cables–but these rings in this gym feel like home. I toss a lofty dislocate, pulling hard and sailing over the rings, hitting a handstand perfectly. Way up there I hear the same fluorescent light still buzzing and that freshman kid whispering, “Wow!”
Though I work out every day, my heart’s not in it. I hoped back here, with my old coach and teammates, that I might lose myself in the joy and effort of exercise, but it’s no use; the Victorian–and Davis now linked forever with the move—hangs over me thicker than the cloud of chalk dust drifting to the rafters. I am without the energy or care to keep working, even here in the old gym where my playground fantasies turned into gymnastics.
As a kid I ran fast and played a good second base, but my real feats happened on the monkey bars, gliding from one to the other like Tarzan on the vines, my hands well calloused at the age of ten. I could swing my swing higher than anyone as my toes nearly touched the sky, then I’d scamper up the jungle gym, leap off one bar, fly through the air and catch another bar, flipping back to earth with a penny drop. One night I watched a movie about a man on trapeze learning the triple. It starred Burt Lancaster, and he did flips and walked on his hands along Paris streets with Tony Curtis walking on his hands beside him. I wanted to run off and join the circus, but then, my first year in high school, I wandered in this gym where guys held handstands and swung on bars and rings hung from the rafters. Back then, it was all such fun.
After practice I hang with Gordy and Kahn at Burger King talking gymnastics and munching Pepsi-flavored ice. The topic eventually rises about what happens when we graduate. Kahn will enter med school, Gordy’s a business major with options, but I don’t like thinking about life after gymnastics because nothing seems very interesting without it. I always pitied those retired jocks pushing Mister Coffee or Lite Beer, their best days forever ended, life never so sweet after their final season. Once I wanted the national title, but I traded that so the Victorian would be only mine. Now, I have neither. Feeling very low, wanting some attention, some affection, I drive to Ava’s.
We were sweethearts back in high school and still play with each other a night here and there when I’m home. She’s cute and pink and I like her. Her mother greets me at the front door, asking how’s college and gymnastics and everything, but Ava isn’t there.
“She’s working at the Jewel on Dempster,” Mrs. Mathews says while pointing through the living room wall, “but should be off soon. Would you like a coke or glass of milk?”
I thank her, saying I had to get, then head for the market and park across the street. Time passes, the sky darkens, and I listen on the radio to all the rock Christmas songs. When Ava leaves the employees entrance and walks across the parking lot, I start my engine and drive towards her, but she hops into an idling, powder blue Tempest, gives a swift kiss to some guy behind the wheel before they speed away and I face the opposite direction so she doesn’t see me.
For New Year’s Eve I hope something happens–a party or a night with the guys—but nothing does. I end up watching the ball descend in Times Square as my kid brother and I knock back orange soda in shot glasses. After the last practice before Christmas Break ends, Coach has all the guys over to his house for pizza. We run films of the last Olympics, then run them in reverse for laughs. It gets late and night falls early, but Coach asks me to stay a minute and we’re alone in his den after the other guys leave.
“You okay?” he wonders as we sit on the sofa.
“Yeah, why?”
“Something’s not right.”
“Like what?”
“You tell me.”
Turning from his concern, I stare at the empty, greasy pizza box.
“Still feeling bad about The Open?” Coach asks. “Think you can’t beat Davis come Nationals now that he’s got the Victorian?”
I know he’s trying to help, but I just don’t feel like talking about it.
“Nationals aren’t over,” he says, “you got time,” then his voice turns husky. “And no one’s unbeatable, especially Davis. Once judges see the Victorian a few more times it’ll be just another big trick. It’s going to take more than what Davis throws to win Nationals.”
Just then his wife peeks in, wondering if we need anything. She’s real sexy for a woman over thirty.
“Winning isn’t everything,” I say after she’s gone.
This gets him thinking as he kicks his feet up on the coffee table and considers.
“You’re right,” he finally replies, “but it sure feels good.”
He’s smiling real proud, like he’s remembering when we took the State Team Championship a few years ago. But after a moment his smile fades and he’s looking at me, serious and concerned.
“But you really don’t know that, Tee Jay. You never won anything really big for yourself. Last year Hatch edged you out in Nationals. That shoulder injury kept you from winning State back in high school. You must be hungry for it. Even when you were that little freshman who couldn’t reach the rings you wanted to be national champ. Don’t you still?”
He leans forward, takes up his glass and chews on a piece of ice. I think of myself back then, a skinny kid with pictures of ring champions taped in my gym locker, my bedroom; I even carried in my wallet one of Albert Azarian holding an Olympic Cross.
In English class we read a play about a man selling his soul to the devil, and I would have done the same for the walnut plaque with the gold plate.
“Then be national champ," he says, sitting up like he’s sore about something. “Go get it. Your body follows your head, remember? I use to tell you that about shoots and twisters, but it applies to winning, too. If you think you can’t, you won’t. But if you think you can,” then he leans back in the chair again, “you just might do it.”
Again that smile appears on his face.
“And when they give you the gold,” he adds, “you’ll know for the rest of your life that on that day you were the best in the country.”
His eyes stay on me for a moment, then he nods and looks away and I nod and look away, then we walk to the front door. Coach shakes my hand and wishes me good luck at Nationals, his words still rolling in my brain even as I drive home. I realize that somehow I lost my original goal, the national title dimmed in the luster of the Victorian. But I had pursued the move so that I might win the title, and though now I had to share the Victorian with Davis, first place is shared with no one. Suddenly the moon is tossing flips along the phone lines, then I say good-bye to my parents, promise my kid brother I’ll return with the title, and head back to school determined to have what I wanted all along.

The first practice after Christmas Break is light and lazy. Most guys haven’t touched a piece of apparatus since The Open two weeks before, and Coach enters the gym wearing a New Year’s hat. But me, I’m all business with a singular goal: to regain the Victorian, and I start working for it that first day.
After loosening up, I hit rings with the cross machine, each end of the inner tube between my hands and the rings, the slack across my back. It gives support as I lean into position, body outstretched as I build the needed strength. The team’s mildly curious, but they saw Davis throw the Victorian so after a while workout continues uninterrupted. Only Coach says anything.
“Just pace yourself,” he mutters seriously near the chalk tray. “Nationals is still two months away,” then adds with exaggerated disappointment, “and it seems I just lost a promising parallel bar man.”
For a quick shot of power, I hit the weight room after every practice for reps on my triceps and delts. The place smells like a dirty sweat sock as wrestlers grunt through squats and let out barbaric screams while pushing for one more rep. No pain, no gain. I grab a pair of dumbbells, find a corner, then I’m sweating and grunting along with them. By the time I shower, my teammates are heading up the hill for dinner. I’m sore the next morning and worse the morning after that, my triceps feeling too big for my skin. I push through the pain and the repetitions continue and strength comes quickly like always with weights. Soon I don’t need the cross machine at all.
Nothing else matters but throwing a routine as great as the one I had a year ago. At night I study some but only enough to get by, and I make the ultimate sacrifice, the one edge you can’t give your opponent because maybe he made the sacrifice too: no girls.
“They take your strength,” all the coaches tell us, “they take your concentration. They keep you up all night, you’re tired the next day. During Season, forget them. Date Rosie Palm or Mary Five-fingers, but remember boys, no jerking off the night before competition.”
There are meets, sometimes two, every weekend. Teams visit us or we travel there, long bus rides and nights in cheap motels with the railroad embankment behind our windows. My parallel bar work deteriorates, then abandoned entirely, but rings look great. Except for that early loss to Hatch, then the disaster at The Open, I am undefeated.
Work on the Victorian continues and I train until my hands burn and my shoulders feel pounded with a sledge hammer. After practice, after weights, I soak in the hot, swirling whirlpool that leaves me limp and dizzy, then lay my bad shoulder beneath a heat lamp, un-convinced by the trainer that healing light waves soothe the injured tissue. Nothing helps and nothing will unless I rest it, but after Nationals I can rest all my life, so I accept the pain and the damage it means. When I head up the hill the cafeteria’s closed, so I eat alone at a diner and leaf through the latest copy of Modern Gymnast, knowing that the next issue will carry colored photographs of me. Back in my room, too tired for studying, I stretch a little and sleep early. My girlfriends stopped calling weeks ago.
Finally the day arrives when I know the Victorian is mine once again. A simmering power flows like heat through my body, and while loosening up I close my eyes and work to see myself holding the move. Gathering strength with each deep breath, I approach the rings, call to Coach who turns just as I kip to support, then lay back mightily into the Victorian. I float on my back, eyes raised to the rafters, pressing on the rings with such power that my body remains still. Muscles strain to the limit and it feels like spikes are driven through each elbow, but I hold position for the full three seconds and more.
So bring on Davis, bring on Hatch, what I throw on rings no gymnast will match. I’m ready, alright. Let’s go.

My school hosts the conference meet. The campus paper runs a story about it, the graduating seniors, and me in particular. “Lord of the Rings?” the caption reads beneath my picture. The empty stands fill to capacity, and when my name is called through speakers a great cheer erupts. As I approach the rings the gym is silent, then my chest fills and I jump for the rings like an eagle about to soar. I pull with straight arms and a straight body through a back roll to an iron cross, muscles like spun metal. After pulling to support and a perfect, effortless “L”, I press a straight-arm handstand, arms free of the straps. I stretch for the floor eight feet below as my toes point to the sky, then I bail for a giant swing. I push the rings in front of me and drop towards the floor like a belly flop, but when I hit bottom I take all that speed back upwards and return to a handstand, rings motionless, body without flaw. Once I lower straight-arm, straight body through the rings, I hit the pike and kip to the Victorian. My shoulders, elbows, the back of my arms all feel stabbed with scalding pins. The skin along my neck feels like it’s ripping. Wild applause reigns upon the stunning moment, then I lay away and toss a double-back flip high into the crowd’s tremendous thunder.
Coach embraces me even while my arms are still raised. Teammates come halfway on the floor throwing high-fives. Even a few competitors congratulate me. For many minutes after awards for rings are given, the meet is delayed while my Alma Mater bestows a final, unleased tribute and farewell.
“Was it worth the trouble?” Coach yells through the crowd’s acclaim.
I wave to the stands and the cheers increase, and I almost cry because I’m so happy winning before the home crowd for the last time, and almost cry because all this is nearly ended.
“What trouble?” I ask Coach, then grasp his hand and raise it with mine as the gymnasium explodes into fireworks of applause.
I rest Sunday, and take it easy for the next few workouts. I stay with the basics, throw a few combinations and two good routines each day, then Thursday morning the team boards a chartered Trailways and we ride all day and into night. Some guys read, others sleep, while a few in the back seats crack jokes and farts. The dark Nebraska land rolls past the windows and it’s late by the time we find the motel and bed down.
Preliminaries begin early the next morning. The crowds are small compared to the huge audience at Finals tomorrow night, and the coliseum seems even larger with all the empty seats. It will be a long day, with dozens of gymnasts on all six events, the top ten going on to Finals. Though there’s no such thing as a sure thing, I know that if I hit my set like I’ve done all week, no ring man will touch me. Hatch looks tight and worried during warm-ups. He’s probably heard by now that I too hold the Victorian, and besides, no one’s ever repeated as national ring champ. But Davis is the one I’m after though his eyes avoid mine, and each time I hit rings he walks away, already knowing he’s beaten.
“It’s not your day,” I tell him at the chalk tray.
He keeps chalking up, eyes averted, then says, “Maybe not yours either,” and heads back to the rings.
The hardest part of prelims is staying sharp during the long meet. Half the day and three events pass before rings even begin. I can’t get too relaxed otherwise I’ll never get it up when I need, but if I’m too active I’ll burn out. It’s a time when conditioning matters. A small gym has been set up off the main arena, and every so often I leave the bench and hit the room for a few swings and handstands just to keep loose. Competitors come and go, serious and alone, and when I return to the floor I ask our team manager, “Who’s in the lead?”
He scans the column of figures, then follows with his finger along one line across the page.
“On rings,” he replies, “Arakawa, UCLA.”
“Never heard of him. Did you see his set?”
“No. Horse was running at the same time.”
I sit on the floor and straddle my legs, peel an orange and watch the rings competition. After all these years, I still love watching this sport, the grace of movement, of perfect balance, the moving form so elegant and strong. There’s a moment where I forget the meet and competition, grateful that I too perform such wonders, lucky to have the feel of it.
Once Davis walks on the floor and his name is announced, I know I’m up soon. To prepare myself, I stretch toward a smooth rhythm, breathing deeply, my routine passing slowly through my mind. I check my toe straps, my taped wrists, work my bad shoulder in circles a few times, and pop handstands, always handstands, stretching my body, releasing tension, working the blood to my brain so I won’t see the sparks before my eyes. I watch Davis awhile, his strength moves impressive. Cross pull-out, press inverted, the Victorian, of course which gets the crowd applauding. But he works like a bull dog, while me, I’m as pretty as a cat. I chalk up while his scores are raised, Coach beside me.
“Just hit your set,” he whispers casually. “It’s just another day at the office.”
Once my name is announced I approach the rings, get the judge’s nod, then begin a most splendid routine. I fly through wondrous giant swings, a free fall straight and true that carries so high it seems I’ll never cease rising. I sail to a handstand perfect and still, and a radiant power churns through my body. I lay back into a straight-arm pull to an Olympic cross, reverse the motion and kip to the Victorian to ignite the air. Cheers assail me as I drop through and cast a double-back off that I stick on a dime with nine cents change. My scores reflect my triumph, Davis not even near.
Hatch is up next, working beautifully as always and certain to place, both of us wanting this victory too and the edge it gives the leader going into Finals.
“Way to go, Tee Jay,” Coach says after Hatch’s scores confirm what I already know. He turns to the team manager busily adding totals.
“Let’s hear it,” Coach says. “Who’s the one to beat?”
The manager does a few quick tabulations, then double-checks the figures. He raises his eyes to Coach, then turns to me.
“Arakawa,” he answers.

Alone with Coach in his motel room, we talk while the others guys sleep. He saw Arakawa’s set and I wanted to know why he beat me. By only twenty-five hundredths of a point, but enough to win the title if we hit like that tomorrow.
“He had no big tricks,” Coach mutters, “no surprises.”
“So why’d the judges give it to him?”
“It’s a funny sport," he answers with a shrug, “you know that. Tonight Arakawa, tomorrow night maybe you. Just hit your set and the let the judges decide.”
“But I hit my set and the judges decided.”
Coach nods wearily, his nod wears out and then he smiles a little.
“Something about the way that kid works, though,” he says, “something,” and he struggles for words, “special.”
An emptiness drops from my heart right to my stomach because I know I can’t beat him.
Coach catches himself drifting and returns to the moment.
“Don’t sweat it,” he says hurriedly. “Get some sleep and be ready for Finals.”
Don’t sweat it, I laugh after leaving the room. Get some sleep. Sure, just try it. I wonder how Arakawa’s sleeping. Probably great. All he needs is to hit like tonight, while I have to hit better though there is no better to hit; I threw my best stuff and lost. Try taking it easy after that.
At breakfast I have no appetite, and with Finals not until that night I have the whole day to drive myself crazy. A few teammates and I wander the Nebraska campus, then end up in the Student Union playing video games as my eyes snap to every Asian I see. By mid-afternoon a storm gathers and I watch the rain fall on the wet, somber buildings. My heart races and I want to head for the gym and one more workout, one more chance to make up that twenty-five hundredths of a point. But time’s run out, so I drag myself to the coliseum as if my clothes were soaked by the rain.
Gymnasiums look beautiful at major competitions. Banners hang from the rafters, and clean, blue mats lay beneath each piece of apparatus. Already the stands are filling with spectators as The Wide World of Sports crew set up cameras and take light readings. The locker room is quiet as we change into our uniforms in the private frenzy of preparation. Anyone who’s gotten this far has his own ritual, the same process done again and again before every meet. I strip down, slip on a jock, then step into my snug jersey with the gold crest, pulling it tight and seamless between my legs. Only then do I unwrap my white, creased pants with the elastic stirrups and a loop for my big toe that gives a perfect, pointed line. Once in my pants, I tape my left wrist, then my right, always in that order, left, then right. If I make a mistake and tape the right one first, I unwind the tape and start over.
I follow the same order that night, but it’s a struggle concentrating. I keep worrying about Arakawa. I check my hair and jersey straps in a mirror, and though my uniform looks alright my face seems twisted, like it’s been pinched in the center. All my life I’ve waited for this moment, and now that it’s here I hate going out there only to lose again. Already I imagine people seeing me second best for the second year in a row, but what can I do? Sit this one out? I enclose my shoulders cape-like with my warm-up jacket, then head for the floor.
I try looking cool and unaffected, but my body won’t loosen when I stretch, as if the cold, damp day seeped through my skin. I’m watching for an Asian in the yellow and blue colors of UCLA, and as the rings finalists move toward the apparatus for warm-ups, I spot him, hair straight and black, legs too short like most Japanese. When he takes his turn, he pops a dislocate shoot-hand, then bails for a giant swing. He works well and free, but my giants look just as good. There’s nothing so special about him except for a faint, soft smile when he’s up there. If I had the lead I’d smile too. Hatch and I exchange a gloomy handshake, the floor is cleared and the meet begins.
Floor exercise is the first event–tremendous tumbling runs and fancy corner moves on the blue carpet with the spring floor beneath. Pommel horse follows, and Gordy repeats as national champ. He reaches down from the winner’s block and lifts the pretty blond who gave him the plaque off her feet with a victory kiss. The crowd loves it. I had figured I’d soon be up there too, but I guess I figured wrong. I still don’t know why. He looked great in warm-ups but not that great, and since Coach says he throws no big trick, how did he beat me? What’s he got so ‘special’? Soon I’ll see, for now it’s on to still rings.
The order of performance is set in reverse order from prelims: Hatch and Davis up before me, Arakawa after. There’s detectable energy on the floor and in the stands over this event, for the defending champion is in fourth place, two finalists throw the Victorian, and a virtual unknown has the lead. The first few ring men are unimpressive, then Kaplan from Nebraska does a press-inverted cross, pull to handstand and the home crowd applauds. His scores are fair but the fans boo, wanting higher. I stretch as Hatch performs, but my shoulder’s tight and my breathing won’t come regular. Arakawa’s off the bench, stretching too. I wish someone would do me a big favor and break his finger. Nothing major, nothing career-ending, just a finger.
“How you feeling?” Coach asks quietly beside me.
“Great,” I reply though he knows otherwise. Hatch finishes, then Davis is up which means I’m next.
“Listen to me,” Coach whispers urgently, one eye squinting like he’s taking aim. “If you go out there like this you’ll choke the way you did at The Open. You want that as your last performance? Is that how you want to be remembered? Don’t try beating Davis or Hatch or that Jap kid. Just hit your set like last night. It doesn’t matter anymore if you win or lose,” he says, leaning closer, “it’s how good you look.”
Davis dismounts, I take a deep breath and try walking smoothly to the chalk tray. I’m still all tight inside. The pumped excitement I should feel now isn’t flowing. Davis’ scores are raised, then my name is announced, and I realize my name will never again be heard in a packed arena, that I will never again have the chance to display with such perfection what I gave years to achieve. Thousands watch tonight, while millions will weeks later on television. Coach is right: what I do now will be remembered long after these awards.
I approach the rings where the head judge signals me as the strong, smooth rhythm flows through me at last. I mount with a pull-through to cross which I hold longer than the required three seconds, knowing I’ll take each move to the limit in this my final performance. After pulling to support, I press a handstand high above the floor, balancing merely on rings that hang in mid-air. Like a great bird launching off a crevice, I bail out for a giant swing, free and flowing, a wondrous sensation of flight that returns me to handstand motionless in the sky. I pull an Olympic, lower through the rings, then kip to the Victorian, molten elbows straining, holding for a final moment this most cherished move. Then I let it go, casting away before I soar in great loops, pulling high over the rings and then drop the double-back from a height I’ll never reach again.
Applause shatters the silence as Coach’s fist raises like in victory. Teammates swarm me, the cheers increasing once my scores are raised and I take the lead–with the exact same total as prelims. With Arakawa up now, the gymnasium is silent once again. My heart keeps racing even though my breath has returned, then he lofts a dislocate high towards the rafters, sailing to a handstand and immediately bailing for a giant swing so lightly his bones must be porous. His combinations are beautiful, his cross held level and long, and during every move, he smiles, but not cocky or strained like some guys do. It’s a smile of delight, like a kid at the playground. Through the sweet, silent music of his performance, I realize he still has something the rest of us lost once competition took the fun away. That’s what is so special about the way he works; he still does it first for the love of it.
Then he breaks–knees bending in a handstand—and every one of us aches to see it. A lapse in concentration, a minor flaw happening so quickly that you think you’re mistaken. But he bent alright and Coach turns to me, knowing I’ve won. Arakawa dismounts to a huge applause, smiling still as if that form break doesn’t trouble him at all. My teammates cheer at the sight of his scores and congratulate me again. Gordy appears beside me, then there’s Kahn. I look for Arakawa but can’t see him through all the guys around.
Awards for rings are made before the next event begins. First Kaplan, Davis, then Hatch mount the winner’s block. Then Arakawa. When my name is announced I strut onto the floor, shake hands with each guy–Arakawa with a slight bow—and I pass to the highest step. I’m handed the walnut plaque though I really shouldn’t be the one reflected in the gold plate. For an instant I nearly hand the award to Arakawa, but just then the photographers call my name as the cameras focus and I struggle for the face we should have in victory.