When scores are calculated in thousandths, a full point is a huge price to pay. But, if he touched me, even laid one finger on me when I could have actually caught the bar on my own, it was an automatic one-point deduction to my score. As my coach and spotter, it was his job to catch me if I fell. I was only thinking about the fall, but I can imagine the conflicted thoughts that were running through my dad’s mind. In the very last moment I knew I was not going to catch the bar or my dreams for that matter. While the fall looked and sounded worse than it was, we are taught to fall flat, to avoid landing on a limb and breaking it. One of the first things a gymnast learns is how to fall. My neck hurt and I later was found to have suffered a mild concussion, but I didn’t know that then. “I’m okay,” I told him, rolling my neck around. His first words spoke of his concern for me. My dad, who had been spotting me rushed over. After my body had absorbed the impact of the fall onto the hard mats, I pulled myself onto my knees. Then a lot of things happened very quickly. In that instant, I knew my gymnastics career was over. But about twenty-five seconds into the routine, I let go of the bar, flipped, twisted around, and when I came back toward the bar to grab it, I missed it and hit the ground hard, flat on my face. I started out well and felt very, very confident. My bar routine was very difficult, but it was one that I had done thousands of times. “Everything in 2012 hinged on two nights of competition. She recalled that evening in this excerpt: Liukin, now an NBC Olympic analyst, was competing on her trademark event and faceplanted on a release skill on which she also fell in her first national competition in 2002, when she was 12 years old. The comeback ended, for all intents and purposes, on a blue mat below the uneven bars at the Olympic trials in San Jose, Calif. women’s gymnast in 12 years to make back-to-back Olympic teams. In 2012, Liukin emerged from three years off and attempted to become the first U.S. Rather, what happened four years later proved more of an inspiration for the gymnast’s memoir, “Finding My Shine,” which went on sale Tuesday. Nastia Liukin says her 2008 Olympic all-around victory was not the defining moment of her life.
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