The Boston Globe

John Powers

It’s not as if there was a master plan taped to the side of the balance beam a decade ago. Shawn Johnson turned up at the gym one day when she was 3 and has been in mid-air ever since.

“I never started gymnastics thinking I wanted to become an Olympian,” says Johnson, who’ll begin defense of her US women’s title Thursday evening at Boston University‘s Agganis Arena. “It was always just my passion and my love.”

Now, a few million handstands and twists and saltos later, the 16-year-old blonde mainspring from West Des Moines, Iowa, is on top of the world, the best gymnast on the planet’s best team, the favorite to win the gold medal in the all-around at this summer’s Games in Beijing.

Even in a sport where great leaps upward are common, Johnson’s ascent has been remarkable. From junior to senior national titlist in one year, then from US to world champion in three weeks. It’s all been as fast and blurry as a headlong dash down a vaulting runway, and there are times when Johnson has wondered what she signed on for.

“I don’t think anyone ever knows what they’re getting themselves into,” she says. “For me, it was just the thrill of the ride. It’s been the best thing I’ve ever done.”

Not that the ride hasn’t had its bumpy stretches.

“You remember the struggles and pain you had, when all the good had turned to bad,” Johnson mused in the “Champion” poem she wrote last winter. “When behind the scenes you crumbled and prayed for it all to simply just go away.”

Once the calendar turned over, Johnson began feeling the swirl and the squeeze that comes with being America‘s Girl in the Olympic year. Mary Lou Retton, Kim Zmeskal, Shannon Miller, and Carly Patterson can tell you about all that, about the teetering feeling that comes from competing in a sport in which medals are decided by a thousandth of a point and where your feet rarely are on the ground.

Nothing is guaranteed for Johnson, not even making the team in the toughest Olympic year to do it since the Magnificent 7 won gold in 1996. Of the two dozen competitors in the two-day senior event here, 10 are global medalists.

Nastia Liukin, the two-time former champion who’ll be Johnson’s primary rival this week, already has nine world medals in her trophy case.

Winchester‘s Alicia Sacramone, the Brown sophomore who captained last year’s gold-medal squad, has seven. Chellsie Memmel is a former world all-around champ.

“I think we’re the strongest team probably in history,” reckons Johnson. “I don’t think there’ll be anyone that can beat us.”

The Americans will be leaving home several gymnasts who’d be stars on any other team at the Games. Only the top half of this week’s finishers will go to Philadelphia for next month’s Olympic trials, where just the top two in the all-around are assured of Beijing tickets.

The other four will be chosen later at the traditional Houston boot camp, which the gymnasts will tell you is tougher and tenser than the trials. Odds are that Johnson will be one of the top two, both here and in Philadelphia, but she says she’s not obsessing about it.

“We don’t talk about placements or scores,” says Johnson, who easily won the title last year in San Jose, Calif. “The biggest thing is to make the team. Just get out there like any other competition, have fun and defend my title.”

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Posted in: Gymnastics, Press, Shawn Johnson |