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This story appeared as a side bar in Sport's Illustrated coverage of the United States Gymnastics Championships.
(Okay, I made that up, but let's pretend, okay?)
The Best Gymnast You've Never Seen…
I was covering the United States Gymnastic Championships in Baltimore last week. That was my assignment and I did my job. In fact the article I wrote about them is elsewhere in this issue, if you care to take a look. There were about one hundred and fifty athletes competing in the men's and women's divisions and every single one of those talented young men and women there had worked for years, trained, often at great personal sacrifice to get to that level and in many cases even left their families to study under the top coaches somewhere across the country. And they were very good, make no mistake about that. The athletes who went home with titles and medals deserved them. They did and I offer them all my heartfelt congratulations.
The problem is that the best gymnast didn't win.
Okay, I said it. I said it and I meant it. With all respect to the young men who stood on the awards platform as the crowd applauded and an official shook their hands and hung a medal around their necks, the best gymnast didn't win. The best gymnast didn't win because he wasn't there.
Okay, you're probably asking, why wasn't he there? Missed his flight? Broken leg? It slipped his mind? Job conflicts? Better things to do?
He wasn't there because he wasn't invited, pure and simple. He wasn't there because, as far as I know, he's never competed and so he didn't qualify. He wasn't there because he probably hasn't reached the minimum age of sixteen required to compete in Nationals. He wasn't there because he may not be an amateur. He wasn't there because he would have blown away the competition and the judges and the audience and anyone watching TV. He wasn't there because a lot of the moves he does are so out of this world, so original and so damn hard they haven't been approved by the powers that be and without this kid to push the envelope, likely never will be. He wasn't there because no one knows his real name but I tell you, if he had been there, he would have knocked our socks off.
So who is he, this wunderkind?
Robin. Yes, that Robin, the back half of Batman and…
And yes, I'm serious. I saw him give a gymnastics exhibition a couple of months ago and so I know just how damn good this kid really is. No, there were no TV cameras there and I think I was the only reporter and the only reason I was even there was because I was tagging along with my brother picking up his son at a local gym. We arrived towards the end of the lesson and then Robin showed up, unannounced, just walked in as cool as you please, friendly, approachable and offered to show the kids some moves. He came across like a nice kid, in fact and it turned out he's been quietly teaching these twelve year olds for about a year with no publicity. Even my brother didn't know and his son is in the class. It was a secret, you see.
Robin threw some easy vaults first. Well, they looked easy for him, anyway. By that I mean the double twisting Tsukahara he stuck looked like he did stuff like that on his way to the kitchen to get himself a soda. That was a warm up, after that he started on the difficult stuff. He wasn't half bad on the pommel horse, throwing those Thomas Flairs better than old Kurt ever did and adding some kind of back flip at the end I'm still trying to figure out. Okay, I admit he was a little weak on the still rings because that iron cross he pressed into a flange and then up to a handstand actually looked like it may have moved the ropes a good inch or two. Needs a little work on that, I guess. The bars? Not half bad if you consider aerials on the parallels special. Does anyone else do them? I mean do them like he's using the bars like a launching pad and flipping himself six, eight feet above the apparatus over and over again, tuning a different trick each time? The floor show he gave still has me shaking my head and by the time he got to the high bar, which he even said—while he was laughing, mind you, was his favorite he was sailing onto some other plane of athletics.
You know when you see something that's really perfect how you just know it? That's what this was. He stood under the bar, jumped straight up, grabbed on and flew. A normal bar routine lasts about a minute or so, give or take a few seconds; this lasted maybe two, three, four minutes—I'm not even sure but I am sure that old Robbie was having too much fun to stop and so kept going around, throwing one aerials after another, reverses, grip changes, stalters, back flips, twists in mid air I'd never even thought of before and the final wind up to—and you just have to believe me here—a quadruple sommie to a stuck landing. That's four and a half turns, folks and I checked; only two people in the world can manage that and they both work for a circus in Russia. Now there are three.
And everything he did, every move was as close to perfect form as you're ever going to see. I was checking. Every move was crisp, every trick taken to the nth of amplitude, every hand, finger, toe point was dead on. Every single one.
In the car going home I asked my nephew and he told me that Robin shows up pretty often at their weekly class. He helps the kids with their moves and never shows off but last week he'd promised that he'd throw some routines for them the next time he came back and so he put on a little show. I'm still having trouble getting those pictures out of my head. The stuff he was doing was incredible—and he was having so damn much fun. You see the kids at the competitions and they're serious, tense, usually stressed. They're working. Robin was having a ball. And the other thing? He has charisma; when he's on the floor or the rings or the bars you're eyes don't go anywhere else. I don't know how he did it, but he has whatever it is really top performers have. He holds stage, as they say. My bet is that he could hold a crowd like nobodies business and that's worth it's weight in gold all by itself.
I sidled up to Robin afterwards as he was taking the time to sign autographs for some of the kids and to talk with them. He really is a nice kid. That's when he told me he doesn't compete, has no interest, that he does gymnastics because he likes them. Period. He also declined an interview, but I guess he does enough of them, and it was the most polite brush off I've gotten in a long time. He also asked me to keep the fact that he does the gymnastics tutoring quiet so he could keep doing it and I told him I would. No names, cities or addresses, Robin. I kept my word, son.
I said something to him about how he's probably Olympic material and he shrugged. I got the impression he knows that and I also got the impression that he doesn't care too much about another award to toss in a drawer. And that's a shame. You know that old story about a keeping your light under a bushel? He laughed, said something about how his light get flashed plenty, thanks and he doesn't need any more attention. Besides, if he competed then it wouldn't be just for fun anymore, just because he loves moving the way he does.
Okay, he may be right but I'm telling you straight; the kid is the best gymnast you've never seen. And that's a shame.
9/12/06