Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Maroneygate


Mode of distraction: Olympics obsession.
Distracting me from: Everything for the last week.


I don't have time to justify my blog absence given how long this post turned out to be, but suffice it to say I’ve had lots to distract me from this, my favorite mode of distraction. Right now, I have a bone to pick with the country at large (actually, I have several, and the femur of those bones is the gay marriage debate, most recently highlighted by the fucks behind Chic-fil-A, but that’s not the bone I’m highlighting in this book-length post, so bear with me, because I need to get it off my chest anyway).

The relevant portion of the 2012 London Olympics for me—gymnastics—has come and gone with the appropriate share of tears, triumphs, surprises, heartache, and really fabulous athleticism. Some of the best gymnastics I’ve ever seen has been on display in the last week, between Kohei Uchimura occasionally finding his stride from last year’s Worlds and demonstrating that he really does belong on the list of all-time greats, to the USA women putting up the single best team performance in Olympic competition history, to the Russians proving that in spite of the trick-favoring Code of Points floor exercise can still have captivating choreography, there was a lot to celebrate.

But perhaps the most readily available example of how quickly you can go from hero to villain lies with USA gymnast McKayla Maroney. In the span of a week, she had an entire country (and here begins the hyperbolic nature of this post, and it won’t stop) celebrating her vault and spreading around pictures of the judges whose mouths were literally agape at the sheer magnitude of her vault, one that has not ever been matched by a woman, ever. And in that same week, she became the face of poor sportsmanship, gymnastics’ mean girl, a living example of karmic retribution, a piece of shit that barely deserved the silver she got (sounds hyperbolic, but then you haven't seen Twitter...).

So what happened?

It’s what always happens with gymnastics. It’s the number-one, most-popular sport every four years, and in the other three it’s about #17. No one (hyperbole!) knew who she was before she showed everyone what perfect looked like in 2012 in the team finals. But everyone got on board pretty quickly and caught up with her story: she was here to compete vault, and she was far and away the best in the world. That’s really all you knew, and all you needed to know—and wasn't enough to overcome a smirk at the wrong time.

But that doesn’t really cover it. She’s been performing the Amanar (lawl that the general public now knows what that is because of her) vault better than anyone else in the world since 2010, as a junior, when she was 14 years old (a mere year after she learned the vault in the first place). She has been predicted to win the Olympics on vault since then, and has earned every piece of that hype. In all her competitions on vault, she hasn’t been outscored nor outperformed (and in gymnastics, sometimes those are different). In her first major international meet, the 2011 World Championships, she astounded the gymnastics world at large with her vault (no hyperbole), won the event final handedly (in fact, could have fallen there and still won), and was poised to only get better the next year.

Cue untimely injuries. A bad back plagued her in the early part of the year, then after the first day of Nationals—the qualifying event to the Olympic Trials—she had a bizarre fall on floor in which she hit the back of her head so hard she broke her nose (wut) and suffered a concussion, unable to continue the competition. After being examined and told she couldn’t compete, she returned to the arena to cheer on the rest of the athletes and await her fate to see if she could be petitioned to the Olympic Trials. She was. She was cleared to train exactly one week before the biggest competition of her life, she hit when it counted, and made the five-person squad.

Cut to London, where she dismounts the beam in training and “splits” a bone in her toe. She doesn’t train for most of the week leading up to the actual Olympics, has to withdraw from performing her beautiful floor routine, and is now here solely because she is the best vaulter in the world. Her Olympic experience is reduced to five vaults.

One of them was the best vault of her life, the other was her worst—the only time she had fallen in a vault competition in two years. Right before she fell, NBC spent actual minutes dissecting the perfection and superiority of her vault—even compared to the men’s Olympic all around champion, the aforementioned future legend Uchimura. Not only was she the most sure-thing gold medal in gymnastics, men or women, I can’t think of another instance in which a single athlete was so otherworldly superior on one event to anyone else (and if this blog posts demonstrates anything, it’s my embarrassingly deep and knowledgeable love for the sport)—not Nadia, not Nastia, not anyone (no hyperbole).

But she fell at the wrong time, in front of the world and everyone competing with her who were just hoping for to medal beneath Maroney's (and, likely, excited just to watch her vault at all, because gymnasts at that level appreciate great gymnastics). She got second place, with a fall, by 0.112. As she walked off the podium after her fall, her coach said (according to reports), “There goes your gold medal.”

How much time would it take you to come to terms with that? A millisecond? You better hope so, because that’s the time American (and worldwide) viewing audiences gave 16-year-old McKayla Maroney to gather herself and behave in one of the only two acceptable ways for female gymnasts: bubbly and happy (e.g., Gabby Douglas) or fragile and heartbroken (e.g., Jordyn Wieber). McKayla's more stone-faced nature (whether she does great or poorly, and even the term "stone-faced" is a bit of an hyperbole) doesn't play as well to the background of the Olympics trombones and trumpets.

But there she is, in a whirlwind of humiliation and disappointment and sadness (and probably physical pain), and she gets lost. Sandra Izbasa, the Romanian victor and ever the class act, wins and holds her mouth in shock and empathy as she hugs Maroney, who minutes previous could be seen almost crying. After the hug, her look goes vacant, and she gives bronze-medalist Maria Paseka of Russia the literal cold shoulder.

And then NBC is done. They’ve found their new angle on McKayla Maroney. No more Phillip Phillips “Home” music montage for her! She just shat on her silver medal and every vaulter in that final, and probably every Olympic athlete (hyperbole!).

Meanwhile, accounts of people who were actually in the arena (and McKayla herself), say she went on to give proper hugs and congratulations to the medalists, posed for pictures with her silver with a smile. She also then went on to the media room and answered exhaustive questions about her performance, staying for the maximum time (it is common that others in extreme disappointment answer minimum questions, if any, and leave to grieve). She says only that she is disappointed in her performance, not her medal. She doesn’t blame the toe or the equipment or the judges—she blames poor timing on a vault she always trains and competes well. Oh, and in case you’re interested, she cried.

But no one gets to see that. They see another millisecond: the moment on the medal stand in which she undoubtedly smirks again—in disbelief, anger, embarrassment, whatever. And that is what we call media gasoline (also enough fuel for this tumblr, which, in spite of myself, is fucking hysterical—Maroney herself retweeted it).

So, now what? Now, in addition to feeling the (unnecessary and unwarranted, and entirely speculated by me) shame of “letting down” USA and USAG by doing something she has never done before, she is feeling the wrath of a country brought together by the media’s need for a villain. She has sent three tweets and a Facebook message desperately explaining that Izbasa and Paseka are friends of hers, that she is proud of their performances, and that she hugged them; and that she was so lost in her disappointment she didn’t know what to do. She ends with “Please forgive me!”

What does she need to be forgiven for, exactly? Reacting? Not crying? Not smiling? Not landing the vault? Not winning gold? Not loving her silver right away (“Silver is actually pretty sick!” she’d go on to tweet later that night)?Not behaving at her absolute best self after the most disappointing moment of her gymnastics career?

In some ways, it’s not the general population’s fault. They’re fed only a fraction of the story, and then—in typical groupthink fashion—run with it as they’re told, single-minded, judgmental, and disinterested in anything straying from the narrative of McKayla “Regina George” Maroney. Not even the Internet can break up that kind of momentum.

And I find all that almost as heartbreaking as her sitting down the vault in the first place (but not quite, because I generally care little for the collective thoughts of people, and she deserves to be Olympic champion for no other reason than she is the best vaulter in the world), because it's surely the last thing she needs.

McKayla leaves London with one Olympic gold medal, one Olympic silver medal, all the reason to be proud of herself in the world, and a chip on her shoulder in the shape of North America. I hope for her sake she can retain her patented toughness, realize that this overreaction is bigger than her (and has increasingly less to do with her actual reaction), grow from the situation appropriately (because, let’s be honest, there are athletes out there who have handled the same adversity better, and that level of sportsmanship is a beautiful thing to watch, and those athletes should be commended—but they’re not the ones getting the attention, after all), and—selfishly—I hope she continues with gymnastics. She could add a half twist to the Amanar and have a vault all her own. She could show the world (or the 137 people who would watch the 2013 World Championships, anyway) what she’s capable of on vault and floor (and, hey, maybe the all around—if she does that new vault and hits her floor, all she’d have to do is clean up the other events a bit and she’d be a real threat) once again. Or just show me, because I think she’s pretty magical to watch, and at 16, she could have a lot of great moments ahead of her.

Besides, if she makes it to the Olympics in 2016 and does well, she can be NBC’s hero again. They live for that shit. 

Oh, and she has this and the rest of you don’t: