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Katelyn Ohashi Joins Usa Team Again

T here's a reasonably skillful chance y'all've already seen the video of the American gymnast Katelyn Ohashi'southward flooring exercise from a quad come across in Anaheim last weekend. The 2-infinitesimal clip of the UCLA senior tumbling and swaying and launching her 4ft 10in form into the air to a frenetic mashup of 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s hits became a viral boom virtually immediately after it was posted to the team's Twitter feed and has since racked upward more than than 40m views and counting.

Virality is an unpredictable cocktail and the widespread entreatment of the 21-twelvemonth-erstwhile'southward routine, which earned the sixth perfect score of her collegiate career and helped the Bruins to a kickoff-place finish over California, Michigan State and UC Davis, is not down to whatever one ingredient. Her technical skill and extraordinary athleticism are obvious – the double layout with a carve up is a kicker rarely seen on the college level – but inappreciably unparalleled. Her charisma and showmanship are palpable but not without precedent, nor are the nostalgia-drizzled musical choices of Ike & Tina Turner and Globe, Wind & Fire along with the Jackson 5 and Michael and Janet Jackson.

The secret sauce, it seems, is the unbridled exuberance on display, both in Ohashi's performance and the febrile reactions of her teammates watching from the sidelines and hanging on every pace and manoeuvre, which altogether offers a welcome advert for a sport that's been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons over the past 2 years in the United States: gymnastics is fun.

The pitchwoman could hardly exist more appropriate given Ohashi'southward particular journey. The ane-time prodigy had been earmarked for Olympic distinction as a 14-yr-old junior gymnast later on capturing iv gold medals, including the all-around title, at the U.s. national championships in 2011. Simply even as she fabricated an apparently seamless transition to the senior level by winning the all-around at the 2013 American Cup – edging no less than future Olympic hero Simone Biles for top of the podium – the Seattle native found herself breaking down both physically and mentally.

She underwent surgery the following month that sidelined her for the rest of the year, followed by some other surgery for a fractured back and a alarm from doctors that she might never be able to return to contest. Ohashi's auspicious senior debut wound up being the concluding run into of her elite career. Her well-documented reflections on her get out while ambivalent are flecked with a sense of relief.

katelyn ohashi
Katelyn Ohashi, left, competing at the Pacific Rim Gymnastics Championship in 2012 where she won the gold medal in the balance beam, the floor exercise, and the uneven bars. Photograph: Ted S Warren/AP

Shortly after Ohashi accepted a scholarship offer to compete at UCLA under longtime motorbus Valorie Kondos Field, the former classical dancer who has transformed the Bruins into ane of the nation's nigh decorated programs. College gymnastics, which operates under different and far more attainable rules than in the Olympics, is a step down from the elite circuit, but engenders a team-oriented environs where Ohashi has rediscovered the joy of enjoying the sport on her own terms and thrived. She shared the private national title in the floor exercise at last year'southward NCAA women'southward gymnastics championships while helping the Bruins to a seventh squad crown.

Last calendar week's prune is not the outset collegiate floor routine to go viral. It'southward not even Ohashi'due south first: her floor exercise from last year's Pac-12 championships was viewed more than 80m times on Facebook lone. But information technology's hard to recall an entry from the surprisingly robust YouTube subgenre of collegiate floor exercises that's made such a mainstream splash, earning shout-outs from Jesse Jackson, Kamala Harris and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Ohashi has made the media rounds in the calendar week since and leveraged the occasion to bring attending to the body shaming that she endured during her elite career.

"In the gym, exterior of the gym, on the internet, so information technology'south something that yous can never actually escape," Ohashi said Th on ABC'due south Good Morning America , where she read one of the poems that she wrote to help cope with the pain. "As a xiv-yr-sometime, it'south kind of hard to cope with, because you're still developing every bit a person, and so everything actually impacts you."

At a time when the US and U.k. are up against their ain depressing maelstroms – and the parochial space of gymnastics in the erstwhile hasn't fared much ameliorate – leave information technology to one of our smallest athletes to give the world the big pick-me-upwards it and so desperately needs.

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Source: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/jan/18/katelyn-ohashis-perfect-10-reminded-america-life-could-be-fun-again-gymmastics

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