His competitor is Chinese.
If I have one complaint about the Chinese athletes, it's that they often seem soulless. Perhaps that's because the talented youth are taken from their families and made to live in sports facilities where they train hour after hour after hour.
Ryan's mom is his biggest fan. She drove him to meets at 5:30 in the morning for six long years years. Look at how proud she is. She can't believe her son is a shoo-in to win Olympic gold. She certainly did the right thing leaving him at the Tallahassee Gymnastics Camp when he was thirteen.
It must be intimidating to the other athletes to see Ryan warming up. What can they be thinking? They all know he's in a totally different league, head and shoulders above the rest. They're not wondering who's going to win: they're wondering who's going to come in second. If you take Ryan's worst scores over the last six years and average them, he'd still win the gold by a mile. There is absolutely no danger of the Chinese stealing this medal from him.
Oops. Slight bobble there. Looks like a case of nerves. Oh no. Oh no.
This is totally unlike Ryan. This is incredible, just incredible. The judges awarded him just 71.26365 out of a possible 97 given a 3.82 degree of difficulty.
The Chinese guy got more. And that's it. The Chinese have won.
Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Still, this is a win-win for Ryan. He's shown the world he's a brilliant athlete, and he's a great role model for kids. And I'm not bringing this up just because of the way things turned out, but at some point we need to talk about performance-enhancing drugs.
