A Look Back in Time (I)

“The Five Left Standing”

NBC gymnastics commentators love drama (Elfi Schlegel said so herself), but when it comes to the World Championships in 2003, at Anaheim, California, turns out that everybody in the American media loves drama. Case in point:

Eddie Pells, AP
“The sick, hurting, disheveled American women won the gold medal at the World Gymnastics Championships.”

Ugh. Nice sentiment, but just…ugh. The article made it sound like the girls who did go out and grab that gold medal were sick, hurting, and disheveled themselves. Which would have been super dang cool, had it been true. (Well, maybe Hollie Vise was. Disheveled, I mean. Losing her number, I mean really, come on Hollie…) But nope; Carly, Chellsie, Tasha, and Terin, at least, looked perfectly healthy and not-disheveled the last time I saw the broadcast.

Drama aside, though, the advent of the “Five Left Standing” (also known as the “Fantastic Five” at the Boston Globe) was an important development for USA Gymnastics. Not because they won gold, but (in my amateur opinion, thanks so much) because it featured the rise of Chellsie Memmel and Carly Patterson (and to a much smaller extent, Terin Humphrey).

Chellsie struts her stuff in Anaheim

Did I mention that Chellsie made up that “band-of-brothers (in this case sisters)-we-are-the-champions-my-friends” nickname?

With Courtney Kupets out with her famed Achilles tendon injury (thank you NBC and your soppy-yet-addictive fluffs), Carly and Terin had a chance to shine on their own without being in her shadow. Carly threw down a good performance, challenging the grand Diva Khorkina herself. As for Terin…well, she didn’t quite. She got underscored on her floor routine. Which was the only thing she did. (Echoes of Debrecen 2002…personally, I think Terin suffered quite a bit of underscoring during her elite career. Oh the sorrows of being underrated…)

Chellsie, on the other hand, “didn’t need no Courtney” to get herself up there. (She needed Ashley Postell, actually.) She proved herself on her own; even I was impressed. Too bad she fractured her foot before the Olympics. But then, if she had gone to Athens, she likely wouldn’t have been World Champion in 2005. Who can say?

I think that the judging at Anaheim 2003 was rather skimpy and suspect, as Anaheim hosted the first championships to feature the “3 up, 3 count” of Death. Adding to that stress, the judges decided to be all HAY LETZ LIEK OVERSCORE 1 PPL ON THE TEAM N UNDERSCORE TEH OTHERZ!!11!! I mean, seriously, Team Final? “Future Golden Girl” Carly recieved a higher score for a less solid vault than Tasha Schwikert’s more solid vault did. Same with Carly’s power routine vs. Terin’s graceful floor routine.

Then again, FIG has been dealing with scoring complaints for as long as they’ve been in existence, so I shouldn’t exacerbate Their Highnesses’ patience by carping more about it. The last time people did it, FIG killed the perfect 10 and made gymnastics’ scoring so much more confusing to the casual observer.

Overall, as a USA gymnastics fan, I was pleased to see Terin, at least, get a medal. (I always root for the underrated ones; Hollie, Carly, and Chellsie were pretty hyped up by the time it was over, but Terin got none of that.) It must’ve kind of sucked for her in Debrecen, when Courtney, Ashley, and Sam Sheehan all got medals, and she was the only American who didn’t (we see the same thing with poor Jana Bieger in 2005 Melbourne; but then, like Terin, Jana got her own back the next year).