Kerri Strug famously vaulted the U.S. Gymnastics Team to gold on an injured ankle. The story is the making of...well, the Olympics. Basically, for the vault event in Women's Gymnastics, the competitors have the option of vaulting twice. Unless one scores a perfect 10, it's nearly always worth the second attempt (and very few do - Mary Lou Retton managed it under extreme pressure in the 1984 Olympics (here), but you try it!). In 1996, Kerri Strug fell during her first vault. That's when she injured her ankle. Her score of 9.162 left the team gold in question, as one of the top Russian competitors Roza Galieva did not perform well enough in her final floor exercise to beat the "Magnificent 7," as the US Team came to be known, even without Kerri's second vault. But nobody knew that yet, and when her coach, Bela Karolyi, told her that they really needed her to nail her second vault, she did. I watched it live. You can watch it here. 9.712 clinched the gold medal for the American team, and though the injury prevented Kerri from completing the individual competition, her vault has gone down in history as one of the shining Olympic moments of grit and determination, not to mention spunk and poise (read the play-by-play drama here). I tear up thinking about it, and it's fifteen years later (well, I've always loved gymnastics).
But how far is too far?
Should Kerri Strug have been willing to vault through the pain? Well, she was eighteen, and this was, after all, the Olympics. None of her teammates was surprised that she took the challenge. But should Coach Karolyi have asked Kerri Strug to vault, knowing that she was injured? Some would fault him (some did fault him, though not Kerri) for pushing her too hard (to be fair, he didn't know how badly she was hurt). But those who fault him are not training for the kind of perseverance that Olympic excellence demands.
The tricky question is determining when to "go for gold," and when to accept the "B-" (so to speak). There is little better than excellence (!), and slackers in general need not apply, but outside of the Olympics, a balance is surely warranted. Constant striving is admirable, but the very effort of it takes a less than excellent toll. Kerri Strug made Olympic history, but she herself had to come to terms with her disappointment in not winning Individual All-Around Gold (she did).
Not an easy line to discern. More to think about another time.
No comments:
Post a Comment