Thirty women entered the Olympic aerials in Lillehammer, Norway. We perform two
different jumps in the semis, and the top twelve cumulative scores advance to the
finals the following day. By chance, I was the last to go.
I felt I was going to be number one.
And then I let something bad happen
Beginning my Olympic career with a layout somersault followed by a full twisting
somersault, I was eager to "Go for it" in front of the cameras. I shot down the
mountain, hit the flat and then the kicker…
fly over once, now flip and twist,
open up for the great landing. Yes!
After the first round, I was leading. A CBS television camera captured me grinning,
with my index finger pointing to the sky. The symbolism was obvious. I felt I was
going to be number one.
And then I let something bad happen.
I began thinking about how great the gold medal would feel. I was looking ahead
at a moment I hadn't even reached yet, and took my eyes off the one directly in
front of me, the one most important at that time.
I was so "amped" by my first jump, that I started thinking about winning in the
finals. I pushed the rotation too hard on the second qualifying jump, over-rotated,
missed my feet, hit my back and came back up, but the damage was done. The low scores
on that jump dropped me to 13
th place, .57 points out of the finals.
I had squandered my chance to win an Olympic medal.
The woman who qualified 12
th (and just edged me out of the finals) was
the defending World Champion and the only woman attempting a triple somersault in
the Olympics. She was Lena Tcherjazova from Uzbekistan, and she went on to win the
gold medal the following day.
Sometimes it's possible to be too focused on the final goal, that we take necessary
attention off the intermediate steps. If we're looking too far down the tracks,
we may stumble when we otherwise wouldn't.
The crash pulled muscles away from my ribs and I coughed blood for two days
That summer, I was attempting a "Lay-Tuck-Full" (a triple with a twist, and that's
not a cocktail order), when I caught an edge on the in-ramp, throwing off
my timing. I did the triple without the twist, and hit the water
flat on my back.
My whole body stung, right through the "dry suit." The crash pulled muscles away
from my ribs and I coughed blood for two days. That crash may have been the beginning
of a long and protracted problem with my back.