Balance This

I love the Olympics. Summer and Winter. But I'm biased, because I used to be a gymnast. A young, starry-eyed gymnast who dreamt of being the next Nadia or Mary Lou. The women's gymnastics are always my favorite, and this year is no different. These girls are amazing. What they can do on the floor with their tumbling is incredible. What they can do on the balance beam defies logic. Take it from someone who knows how hard it is to just do a damn somersault on that 4-inch-wide piece of wood without going ass over teakettle. Never mind the chaffing you get from the beam. It's like a four-foot fall to the floor!

Here are two routines - by Shawn Johnson and Nastia Liukin - from earlier competitions. They're the same routines they performed in Beijing. When you're finished watching, pick your jaw up off the floor. To give you an idea of just how far gymnastics has come, and how much the difficulty has increased, check out the video of Nadia Comaneci's gold medal winning beam performance from 1976 below. Something tells me these girls were doing that routine when they were ten or eleven years old.

Enjoy!

Nastia Liukin on Balance Beam




Shawn Johnson on Balance Beam



Or you can watch the video in high quality on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qQq9lhNwHA and click the"watch in high quality" link in the Rating block, below "Views".

Nadia's 1976 Gold Medal Beam Routine