NEwxguy's WunderBlog

Aly Raisman captured the gold in the floor excercises and bronze in the balance beam,so she has had a really successful olmpics. Congratulations to her and all her teammates for a great showing over there.

After I had written about ayla raisman's success,I also started reading about the criticism of Mckayla Maroney,and her serious and sometimes pouting expressions. Before we jump all over these girls for not falling into the perfect image we expect our olympians,especially our gymnasts,can we please remember that these are just teenagers thrust in front of the entire world,I can't even begin to imagine the pressure.This girl is obviously very competitive and wants more than anything to shine on such a major stage,so can we allow her to not smile when she falls on her butt in front of millions around the world,or not acheive what she thought she should achieve. I read this article and it says it all.

Maroney isn’t the naturally smiling, ebullient Olympian. She doesn’t exude the warmth of Sanya Richards-Ross or outdoorsy ease of Kerri Walsh. Nothing about her serious, controlled persona says, “Hey, world, love me!” That’s a difficult thing for a lot of people in the world to accept in a female. It’s even more difficult for fans to grasp that an Olympic gymnast, a girl in the sport that’s historically given us sweethearts like Nadia Comaneci, Mary Lou Retton, Kerri Strug and Shawn Johnson, could be so flinty.

So when I wrote Monday of Maroney’s grace in defeat, it was not because, as one reader suggested, I was “high” when I was watching the women’s finals. It was because I saw something different. Yeah, I saw a girl who looked furious, too. But I also saw one who, to quote “Moonrise Kingdom’s” Suzy Bishop, was losing her temper with herself. Was she really snubbing her Russian competitor? Maybe, but did you notice how she barely let her own coach touch her? The girl who just a few days ago could confidently refer to her vault routine as “like, autopilot” had become, in a split second, the girl who fell on her ass. This was a move she’d executed perfectly 33 times in a row. And the one time it counted, she fell. She looked utterly stunned. As she said frankly afterward, “I didn’t deserve to win gold if I landed on my butt. I’m not disappointed about the silver; I’m disappointed about my performance.”

That’s the face I saw Sunday – the face of a fierce, tough girl whose fiercest, toughest competitor is herself. A girl who lost to herself and was tremendously disappointed. A girl who was mad, not at her medal or her competitors, but with McKayla Maroney. On Monday, no doubt in response to all the “bitch face” criticism out there, Maroney said on Twitter that “For anyone who thought I didn’t want to hug Maria and Sandra that’s not the case (: They are my friends, and I’m proud of them both! I wasn’t thinking straight and I totally forgot what to do, but don’t worry. I gave them both hugs after!! <3 Sportsmanship is so important to me and I hope you know i would never do that intentionally!! Please forgive me!!” She’s a 16-year-old who got up from the kind of shocking, public, humiliating disappointment that few of us can even imagine, and, with every camera in the world trained on her face, couldn’t plaster on a fake smile. That doesn’t make her a sore loser. It makes her real and human. No forgiveness required.
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Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years