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Sport - Olympic Games

Pressure keeps Shawn Johnson going

A. Joseph Antony

She has been beaten by arch-rival Nastia Liukin on the rare occasion

Fish swam in the parking lot of Liang Chow’s Gymnastics and Dance Institute in June. Less than a week remained for the U.S. Olympic trials and barely two months for the Beijing Games.

Knee-deep water indoors from the flooding Raccoon river forced Chow, a former Chinese national gymnast, to shift star pupil Shawn Johnson’s training to Iowa State University, about 30 km from her West Des Moines home.

The pint-sized powerhouse, standing 4’ 8” tall, rose to the challenge.

“It was kind of scary, but I think it made me stronger because I had to train at a different gym. Now I think I can handle anything,” the sprightly 16-year-old said.

Topping trials

Sure enough, she topped the trials, just as she had in the US Nationals, the Pan American Games and the World Championships at Stuttgart, Germany in her first year of competition as a senior.

If the last mentioned event is seen as a dress rehearsal for the Olympics, the USA walked away with the team title, sidelining gymnastics super powers China and Russia. The weight of expectations will be all the more heavy on Shawn’s slender shoulders.

For, over the past seven editions of the summer games, only Ukraine’s Lilia Podkopayeva went on to clinch an Olympic gold after winning a World championship. Arch-rival in the all-round section, Nastia Liukin is the only gymnast to have beaten Johnson on the rare occasion. Compared often to Mary Lou Retton, America’s first women’s all-around champion, Johnson shares space with basketball great LeBron James in Coke’s ‘Bring home the world’ campaign in five languages. Last year, Iowa Governor had declared October 17 as ‘Shawn Johnson Day.’

School, a getaway

For the Valley High sophomore, school is her getaway from gymnastics, which entails four-hour workouts on weekdays and six hours on Saturday.

Mental choreography prior to competition makes her visualise every routine, right until she mounts each apparatus, where poise is the password and a weeny wobble the difference between gold and silver.

Her forecast for Beijing: There’s going to be a lot of pressure. It’s that kind of stuff that keeps me going.

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