ALY RAISMAN: 5 THINGS I LEARNED ABOUT MYSELF AFTER DISAPPOINTMENT
Aly Raisman’s experience at the 2015 World Gymnastics Championships last month in Glasgow was exhilarating but bittersweet. While the U.S. women’s team easily defended their world title from 2014, Raisman, a two-time Olympic gold medalist from 2012, struggled to regain her form in the individual competition at her first worlds in four years. She talked to us about what she’s learned about herself from this “bad meet.”
Feeling my legs hit the mat was unfamiliar – and unexpected. Bars is the one event where if all goes well, your upper body does all the work and you lower body doesn’t feel anything until you land your dismount. Yet there I was, mid-routine, on my knees on the mat, after missing my release move.
Aly Raisman slipped off the bar on this Tkatchev release move, effectively ending any hopes of qualifying to the individual all-around.
I was horrified, and more than a little heartbroken. That fall, which happened in the qualification round at worlds, meant that I likely wouldn’t advance to the event finals in the individual all-around. I’d already made a small mistake on floor, so combined with the fall on bars, my chances of being one of the two U.S. gymnasts to make the all-around were all but gone, and I knew it.
The most important thing was the U.S. team was in first place, a considerable margin ahead of Russia and Great Britain. We went on to win the team gold, which was just amazing. Individually, however, I was done.
I’m not going to say I wasn’t disappointed by my personal performance, or that it didn’t sting. But even your setbacks – maybe especially your setbacks – can make you stronger. With that in mind, here’s what I learned from the Glasgow experience, and how it will make me stronger as I head into the Olympic year.
I need to do it for myself.
Deep down somewhere, I’ve always been afraid that if I didn’t compete well, everyone – my coaches, my teammates, national team coordinator Martha Karolyi – would be disappointed in me. Since I took such a long time off and worked so hard to get back into shape and get prepared for this meet, I felt more pressure than usual to do well going into this worlds. And I let that get to me to the point where I was so worried about having a good meet that I overthought it. And when you get cautious in gymnastics, you often make mistakes.
And you know what? When those mistakes happened, nobody was mad. Nobody was disappointed. On the contrary, everyone was so nice. My teammates provided hugs and encouragement. My friends texted tons of support. Martha said she wasn’t mad at all, but hoped that the “normal Aly” would return for the team final.
Lesson learned: I need to do gymnastics because I enjoy performing, and because I want to win (I’ll admit it, I do!) You can’t go into a routine simply hoping that you won’t mess up. You also have to remember that you’re human, and you can’t be at your best all the time.
I can look to others who’ve been there before.
My best friend and London Olympic teammate Jordyn Wieber went through a similar situation at the Olympics in 2012. Jordyn didn’t have the greatest day in qualification, didn’t make the all-around final, and then had to pick herself up like nothing had happened because she needed to perform well in the team final.
I learned in Glasgow what that experience must have been like for her. I did what she did three years ago at the Olympics: tried to channel all my energy into doing well in the team final, fighting to prove that I could do everything I was capable of when it really mattered. Jordyn succeeded, and in Glasgow I tried my best to do as she had done. At the end of the day, the team is what matters most.
Aly Raisman looked to former teammate Jordyn Wieber’s experiences to rally after her mistakes, and helped the U.S. team win its third consecutive world title.
Relaxation techniques can really help.
Since returning from worlds I’ve begun to see a sports psychologist, who has introduced a few breathing techniques that will hopefully help me control my stress levels in competition in the future.
I’m also trying to clock out and distract myself when I’m not in the gym, which is really hard! All gymnasts are perfectionists to some extent, and during the runup to the Olympics it’s easy to go into a bubble where nothing else but the Games exists. It helps to remember that resting mentally is as important as resting physically.
Every meet is a learning experience - if you let it be one.
Being judged on the international circuit is generally a bit different than being judged by American judges. My scores at worlds gave me plenty to think about, and plenty to work on back home. In Glasgow I learned that my connections need to be a bit tighter on beam, that I need to control my power better on vault, and that my execution could be better in general. It also taught me that when things don’t go right, I need to fight harder to keep my cool.
After it was over, my coach Mihai Brestyan remarked that my performance in Glasgow, particularly in the qualifications, would have been a great practice. I think he was right: as a trial run for Rio, it couldn’t have been better.
There’s good luck, even in bad results.
It’s not a bad omen to finish in fifth place at the world championships the year before the Olympic Games. I barely had time to walk out of the arena before I was inundated with tweets and messages congratulating me on my good fortune in having landed in fifth place. Let me explain: At four of the past six Olympic Games, the woman who ended up winning the Olympic all-around title finished – you guessed it – fifth either in qualifications or in all-around finals at the worlds the year before the Games. So with this result, I join Olympic champions Gabby Douglas (London 2012), Nastia Liukin (Beijing 2008), Andreea Raducan* (Sydney 2000) and Tatiana Gutsu (Barcelona 1992). That’s pretty good company to be in!
While obviously this is mostly a fun fact, I’ll take it. It’s better to believe that luck is on your side!
*Raducan was stripped of her all-around gold after testing positive for a banned substance that was in cold medicine she took right before the women’s all-around final in Sydney. But to many, she remains the true all-around champion of that Games, even if her name is no longer in the history books.
