The text message from Brittany Galla after Alicia Sacramone's fall on floor said it all:
"What the fuck? Seriously."
After the exhilaration of the US men catching beautiful release skills, sticking dismounts, and skirting through pommel horse with a triumphant finish by Alexander Artemev to win the bronze medal, hugging and shouting in joy, tonight was quite the opposite.
Tonight, the stony-faced US women sat silently after finishing the meet, watching the grinning Chinese women smile through stumbles on floor that proved to be meaningless.
Yes, the silver is indeed an accomplishment, and yes, the Chinese had the mathematically victory even with a theoretical 1.6 added to the US score.
But it's one thing to know for certain that you could have done no better and quite another to recall every hesitant landing, each missed handstand, and two unsalvagable falls.
But chins up, USA. You'll likely live to compete another day. For all the talk of "experience," not one member had competed in an Olympics before. You are all innocent.
And nothing could be as bad as the Sydney Olympics, anyway.
As an aside, I appreciate the sagacity of Holly Fitzgerald: "You should be out there, I KNOW you wouldn't dare step or land out of bounds during your floor routine and you would have kickass accompanying music as well." :-)
And at least Danielle, Beth, and I were able to practice our full turns and cheerleading routines during the commercials!
I'd love to see Jonathan Horton stick his landings all the way through the all-around final; why not add another bronze? The Shawn Johnson-Nastia Liukin one-two punch would be fantastic. I appreciate Nastia's artistry, but I'd love to see Shawn win just so that I can finally believe that it IS possible to hit just about all of the time. I'm also not particularly sold on Cheng Fei. I'd much rather see spunky Jiung Yuyuan win some hardware, regardless of how old she really is.
Ahh, yes, we are all innocent...
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