Mon, Dec 28, 2009 page18

• FEATURE : Beijing Games helped gymnast see potential

  GROWING UP From being the junior member of the US team at last year’s Olympic Games, Bridget Sloan is now considered the best all-around gymnast in the world

  • NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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  When the gymnast Bridget Sloan watches herself perform at last year’s Beijing Olympics, she cannot help laughing.

  “I’m always like, ‘Oh my gosh, I look like I’m five,’” Sloan said earlier this month in New York, on her way to a gymnastics exhibition in Connecticut. “But a lot of things have changed since then — a lot.”

  “People always come up to me and say, ‘Hmm, you look different; you don’t look like you did at the Olympics.’ And I don’t, thank God. I don’t feel the same, either,” she said.

  Sloan, a 17-year-old high school junior, was the youngest member on the US women’s gymnastics team in Beijing. She had just turned 16 and was the final gymnast chosen for the six-woman squad that was the gold medal favorite.

  In Beijing, Sloan competed in the shadows of stars like Nastia Liukin, the gold medalist in the all-around, and Shawn Johnson, the Olympic champion on the balance beam. Among veterans like Chellsie Memmel, who was 20, and Alicia Sacramone, who was 22, Sloan was the newbie.

  But not anymore.

  In what seems like a blink, Sloan — who helped the US women win an Olympic silver medal in the team event — not only has become a veteran on the national team, but she has also risen to the top of her sport.

  This year, she won the national championship in the all-around and claimed the world title, too. At the world championships in October, she beat her teammate Rebecca Bross by just 0.05 points.

  “While some other girls decided not to continue after the Olympics, Bridget realized there was a big opportunity for her and never stopped working, and that’s what impresses me the most about her,” Steve Penny, the president of USA Gymnastics, said.

  “While we’re trying to shape the team again, Bridget has been a steady force. Her maturity is 180 degrees from where it was two years ago,” he said.

  In 2007, Sloan was an alternate at the world championships, but she always sensed that she would make it to Beijing. In the third grade, she wrote about being an Olympian in 2008.

  Knee surgery in March last year did not stop her. The torn cartilage in her knee was just a hiccup in her training, Sloan said, but that challenge was nothing compared with what awaited her at the Olympics.

  In Beijing, two of the team’s gymnasts — Memmel and Samantha Peszek — could not compete in the team event because of injuries. That meant the squad’s remaining four gymnasts had to compete in all four events, with all four scores counting. Suddenly, the focus was on Sloan, the least accomplished of the bunch.

  “Bridget is the silent and deadly type,” Sacramone said. “We had faith in her that she could deliver.”

  And deliver she did. Her performances helped the team qualify for the final, where the US lost to China. Sacramone said Sloan’s confidence noticeably grew tenfold that day.

  Sloan has called it the defining moment in her life.

  “Nobody knew who I was before that day,” she said. “But after that, everybody knew who I was. I was Bridget Sloan, the Olympian. I’ve kind of come out of my shell since then. I can honestly say that at the Olympics, I grew up.”

  Sloan is now considered the best all-around gymnast in the world. At national team training camps, she is the go-to person when younger gymnasts seek advice. She gives them pointers like how to deal with the national team coordinator, Marta Karolyi.

  She warns them: “If you’re not 10 minutes early, you’re late. That’s Marta time.”

  But at home, Sloan is a typical teenager. In Pittsboro, a town outside of Indianapolis with about 2,600 residents, she attends Tri-West High School. There, she said, she is not treated like a gymnastics star. She recalled one of her teachers finally noticing how good she was in the sport.

  “Ooh, I Googled you,” Sloan recalled the teacher saying. “Look at you, you’re pretty good.”

  At school, Sloan’s typical outfit is a T-shirt, jeans and sneakers. She blends in.

  “I am just another kid,” she said. “I still have to park up at the middle school, not in the gravel parking lot closer to the school.”

  “The gravel lot is reserved for seniors,” she said, sighing.

  Over the last year, her mother, Mary, has noticed a marked change in Sloan, who is the youngest of four children. The girl who would climb out of the backyard by scaling the fence at age two had blossomed into a leader, she said, adding: “I feel like it just happened overnight.”

  When asked if she thought her daughter would stay in the sport and train for the 2012 London Olympics, Mary Sloan said: “I just want her to be happy with how she does, and what she does.”

  For Bridget Sloan, trying for the 2012 Games would mean excelling in gymnastics while trying to move on with other aspects of her life. She said she had not decided whether to go to college or to try for her second Olympics — or both.

  For now, she is trying to focus on living a somewhat normal life, she said, because she is “still just a kid.”

  Part of that life includes keeping in touch with friends. While in New York earlier this month, Sloan posted a note on her Twitter page, wishing happy birthday to Ivana Hong, another member of the national team.

  Sloan wrote: “We can go see R rated moves by ourselves now.”

  She ended the post with a smiley face.
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