Time Magazine for Kids
Gymnast Julie Zetlin is proud to be representing Team USA in London. Zetlin will be competing for a medal in rhythmic gymnastics. Time For Kids caught up with Zetlin for a quick lesson at the Road to London event in New York City. Watch the interview here. (read more)
Shawn Johnson glides through a conference room at Manhattan’s Sentry Center with grace and beauty. At the age of 20, she’s an Olympic gold medal winner, a “Dancing With the Stars” champion, and an inspiration and hero to thousands of young gymnasts across the country. As I watch her enter the room, shaking hands and smiling for photographs as she’s done so many thousands of times before, I look at her left knee.
It’s the elephant in every room she struts into these days.
“How’s it doing?” I ask, pointing to the knee that will ultimately make or break her 2012 Olympic dreams.
“It’s doing well,” she smiles with a nod. “Today,” she says. “Today, it’s doing well.”
Johnson, the winner of a gold and three silvers in Beijing in 2008, was expected to lead the US women’s gymnastics team to glory — the coveted all-around team gold it hasn’t won since 1996 — in London in 2012. But two years ago she tore her ACL in her left knee during a ski trip with friends. She was celebrating her 18th birthday, she took a freak fall on an easy hill, and her safety release didn’t come off. “My ski got caught in the snow, I fell over my knee and basically tore everything. It was awful.”
In an instant, the sure thing that was Shawn Johnson — four years older, four years wiser, four years better than she was in China — leading her team on to the mat in 2012 became a lot less guaranteed.
Now, she’s fighting for a spot on the squad. There are younger, hungry competitors — 16-year-old Jordyn Wieber, for one — who the media has already jumped all over in anticipation of the games. Whereas four years ago when she was the story and face of US gymnastics, now she’s not exactly the end-all, be-all when it comes to media coverage surrounding the team.
Shawn Johnson’s not done, though. Hardly. (read more)
Four-time Olympic medalist Shawn Johnson talks to CineSport’s Noah Coslov about recovering from two ACL tears on her road to the 2012 London Olympics. (read more)
Bleacher Report
Olympic glory is a one-shot deal and, as such, the Games make a perfect stage for clutch performances.
For most athletes, you go. You take your result, good or bad. You accept that four years from now someone younger, faster and stronger will have relegated you to competitive obsolescence. Imagine then the strength of mind it takes to perform at one’s best in the context of such finality.
Consider what the following American athletes had to overcome, both within and without, to become their very best selves when the moment demanded it.
Paul Hamm
Although it has been obscured in later years by the scoring controversy over his gold medal, there’s no denying Paul Hamm’s resolve in the most crucial moments of the 2004 men’s gymnastics individual all-around competition.
After a spectacular fall on the vault, Hamm stood 12th with just two rotations left. The podium was a long shot, much less Olympic gold. (read more)
Olympic medalist hopes to repeat success at this summer’s London Games
CBS News, CBS Sunday Morning
American gymnast Shawn Johnson was a Golden Girl at the 2008 Olympics – and she hopes to repeat that performance at this summer’s games in London.
Flying through the air makes her feel “like you’re invincible. Makes you feel like Superman and gives you a thrill. It’s like an adrenaline rush.”
It’s obvious that Shawn Johnson loves gymnastics, a sport she’s very good at: “It’s what I live for.”
At the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, she stuck her landings and struck gold on the balance beam, and additionally won three silver medals.
Now at age 20 – young by life standards, not so young for a gymnast – she’s hoping to compete in this summer’s London Games.
“A lot of the kids in here are 10 – so are you kind of like the old lady of this gym?” asked Rocca.
“Pretty much. I’m the grandma,” she laughed. “I’ve been through it and they’re, like, ‘Oh, she’s so old. How could she still do it?’”
Johnson still does it – every morning in her hometown of West Des Moines, Iowa, under the watchful eye of her longtime coach Liang Chow. (read more)
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