Loud arenas are one thing; all the noises blend together and then fade to the background. A constant narration over what’s supposed to be a small, closed competition? That’s another thing entirely.
“They’ll start on vault, an apparatus where Chelsea Cameron, the defending all-around champion from Rio, will be able to set herself apart, right, Cindy?”
“Yes, Jim, but this is an evenly matched group of athletes. I’m telling you right now, we’re going to see the leaderboard shuffle over and over again before the competition is over.”
A timer rings out in the gym, and I guess that’s the sound for the end of warm-ups. As the weakest vaulter, I’m up first.
The gym is silent, so the mock-whispers from the broadcast booth ring out loud and clear. “Audrey Lee isn’t the strongest vaulter on the team, so she’ll have to maximize every tenth of a point in the one and a half twist she performs. The other girls will all be doing doubles or two and a half twists—the Amanar.”
I close my eyes for a moment and visualize a perfect vault, and then I’m running, a dozen steps, a hurdle into the roundoff, back handspring onto the vault, block fast and a one and a half twist with a small step to the side. I overrotated it a touch.
“A slight overrotation, but overall a good vault,” Cindy says, and I grimace before pulling at the tape on my wrists. I tape them differently for bars, where I need more support.
The judges are using an old-school flip board for the scores, and I nod to myself as a 14.2 pops up and is shown throughout the gym. That feels about right. That’s where Gibby always wanted my vault, especially if I couldn’t manage the double. He always used to say it like it was some kind of character flaw that my body would break apart if I added that extra half twist. My mind flickers back to trials in the trainers’ room and his words ringing in my ears: that he needed more from me to get on the team. Like I wasn’t trying hard enough.
I shake my head.Focus, Audrey, focus.I peek at the scoreboard set up in the corner beside the broadcasters, and it’s nice to see my name at the top.
“A good start for Audrey Lee, but if everyone else hits, that will be our lowest vault score of the day,” Jim chimes in.
Ugh. Really?
The problem is he’s right. For a few moments, my name is beside the number one, until Jaime and Sierra fittingly put up identical vault scores for their double twists, a 14.5 each, pushing me down into third.
Now the big guns come out. Our team has three Amanar vaults— it’s one of the reasons we’re the best team in the world. No one can match the kind of lead we’ll take if we hit three good Amanars in the first rotation.
Bam. Bam. Bam. Three vaults, three fantastic scores, and the leaderboard is right around where I thought it would be after the first rotation.
1.Chelsea Cameron
15.0
2.Emma Sadowsky
14.9
