My All-Around Dilemma

Take a look at this picture:

I am sure many of you are thinking OMGWTF HOW DID SHE WIN ALL-AROUND SILVER SHE DID NOT DESERVE IT! And you know? I thought the same thing. I used to lump her with Shawn and Vanessa, both of whom I don’t prefer.

Until I got to know a little more about ‘Stela’, as she’s called.

(…and yes, I admit that Shawn and Vanessa don’t deserve my continuous carping, either. I need to be more civil.)

If Steliana hadn’t won those medals that she did, she probably would’ve left gymnastics for good. I know some of you might think that’s a good thing–until you realize that gymnastics is basically all Steliana has at this point. (Those Romanians…) Not to mention that her family is dysfunctional, so her real ‘family’ are the girls at Deva (she was particularly attached to Ponor, and cried when Ponor retired for the first time in 2006). She’s battled injury since 2005 (which some say is the reason why she has bad form, though I don’t believe that) and now has to bear the weight of the Romanian program; she and Sandra Izbasa are basically Romania’s best hope at this point in time, with Ponor gone.

Now I flinch every time someone says something nasty about Steliana because she was overscored/has crappy ugly form/etc. IT WASN’T HER FAULT, BLAME THE STUPID JUDGES WHO UNDERSCORED JANA KOMRSKOVA DAMMIT.

Yes, her vault and her uneven bars are gross, and her floor is boring, and her beam not OMGYAY, and she didn’t deserve the scores she got. But get them she did.

Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE beautiful, good form; this was why I favored Humphrey last quadrennium, and why I favor gymnasts like Liukin, Jiang Yuyuan, and Li Shanshan.

And I’ll be first to say that Nistor doesn’t have that. But she’s gone through just as much as any other elite gymnast; to say that what she does represents “everything that is wrong in gymnastics“, even if it is true, is also a tad harsh. I mean, people totally wouldn’t be saying that about her if she had been judged correctly. But since she got a silver medal for it, people are crying foul. IT’S NOT HER FAULT, PEOPLE. Steliana got her medals, perhaps undeservedly, but they are hers now and complaining won’t do any good.

Whatever. Maybe I’m just sick of seeing a nice girl like Steliana being verbally ripped to shreds because her gymnastics is bad.

So, even with her crappy ugly form, and everything gymnastics purists dislike her for, I’m still going to keep cheering for Miss Nistor. Of course, I really, really hope she cleans up and upgrades and all that nice stuff, but overall, I’m pulling for her to do well in Beijing because she’s a sweet girl and she deserves more support. With Sandra Izbasa (still) recovering from injury, Steliana’s got to carry the burden of the Romanian flagship alone. You have to give her props for that.

(Oh God please don’t let Ponor corrupt her after she retires.)

Some of you might think OMGWTF ARE YOU SMOKING. Yeah, I’m a sap. What can I say. And I did not mean to wax philosophical.

Carry on.