Bad air day
It just didn't fall into place for team captain Sacramone
BEIJING - She just kept apologizing because there was nothing else to do. Alicia Sacramone didn't know how she fell off the beam, didn't know how her feet came out from under her on the floor. All she knew was that she'd made two big boo-boos with an Olympic gold medal on the line and there was no way to turn back time and change the scoreboard.
"No one else made mistakes, so it's kind of my fault," the Winchester, Mass., gymnast said after she and her teammates had to settle for the silver medal behind China in yesterday's team final.
Sacramone wasn't the only American to make mistakes. Both Shawn Johnson and Nastia Liukin stepped out of bounds on floor after she did. But hers were the most obvious and they came at the worst times, at the beginning of the last two routines with the United States behind but within striking distance.
"She kept telling us she was sorry," said Liukin. "It's hard to know what to say."
It was harder still because Sacramone is the captain, the team's high-voltage spark plug and social director, the 20-year-old big sister who'd rallied them at last year's world meet in Germany and clinched the gold medal herself with a stirring floor performance.
"People do fall and we've all been through it," said Johnson.
This time, though, it happened on the world's biggest stage. "I think everything just got the best of my head," said Sacramone, who still has a good chance for a gold medal in Sunday's vault final. "I got nerves on the beam and I carried it to the floor, too."
The week hadn't gone well for the Americans from the start. Just before they marched out to the podium for Sunday's qualifying round, Samantha Peszek, their steady table-setter and Sacramone's best buddy, had rolled an ankle in the warm-up gym and had to be scratched from all but one event.
Her rattled teammates finished second to the Chinese and Sacramone missed making the event final on floor, where she had a good chance to win a gold medal. "We all tried to pretend Sam didn't get hurt," Sacramone said. "Obviously, it didn't work."
It would be different yesterday, team coordinator Martha Karolyi predicted, when the team's top three gymnasts would go up on each event with all three scores counting. Most often, that would be Johnson, Liukin, and Sacramone, who'd won 14 world medals among them. Sacramone would be up on three, and two of them - vault and floor - were her specialties.
Her vault, a solid 15.675, was the third best of the day behind Johnson and Chinese world champion Cheng Fei. Then, Sacramone had to wait nearly 45 minutes while she sat out uneven bars and the Chinese performed on beam. The last thing she needed was a delay before she went up, but she got one. Waiting for the board to flash her name, Sacramone felt herself getting antsy.
"I was eager to do my routine and get the show on the road," she said. "The judges held me up and I let my nerves get the best of me. I snapped pretty crooked on the [spring] board. I had one foot on the beam and I stepped back, but there was nothing for my foot to stand on."
Sacramone struggled mightily to stay atop the 4-inch-wide length of wood, but gravity took her down. Though she finished the rest of the routine solidly, the damage was done, since a fall carries a mandatory deduction of eight-10ths of a point.
"She lost concentration," Karolyi shrugged. "It never should happen, but it happened."
Sacramone, blinking back tears, tried to gather herself on the bench. "I told her, 'Alicia, turn the page and go to the floor,' " said Karolyi. The fall wasn't fatal. Cheng, the Chinese captain, also had fallen and the US team actually won the rotation when Liukin and Johnson hit rock-solid routines.
When they moved to the floor, the Americans trailed by only a point and they had the two best performers in the world, Johnson and Sacramone, going up. But Sacramone couldn't turn the page, couldn't forget her fall.
"It was hard to get out of that funk," she said. "It definitely affected me on floor."
Floor is Sacramone's best event, the one where she'd won her world title and that shows off her speed, power, and personality. So she was more shocked than anybody when she went down on her second tumbling pass.
"I remember thinking, 'I can't believe I'm on the floor right now,' " she said. Her sitdown, plus her subsequent step-out, hung Sacramone with a 14.125. With that, the gold definitely was out of reach.
This time, Sacramone sat down, buried her face in her hands, and shook her head in bewilderment. How could this have happened twice?
"It's heart-wrenching when you know you're representing your country and you gave your heart and soul," empathized Johnson. "She's overcome so much. No matter what, she's our team leader and team mom."
It wasn't the end of the world, her teammates told her. They still had silver medals, matching the best US effort at an overseas Games. Johnson and Liukin could go 1-2 in tomorrow's all-around and their captain may yet find her gold medal at the end of a vaulting runway. It just wasn't there yesterday.
"I think everybody knows you always have good days and bad days," Sacramone said. "I just wish today was a good day." 