Gabby Douglas (AP)
LONDON — By the end, it turned into a thrashing, the kind of rout you might expect when the United States plays Tunisia in basketball, not anything remotely resembling the U.S. facing Russia in anything, ever, at the Olympics.
By the end, there were Russian women stumbling and slipping and sliding all over the mats of the North Greenwich Arena, weeping their way off the floor, distraught at how rapidly these team finals had gotten away from them, and there was nobody to console them, just stone-faced coaches and blubbering teammates.
By the end, the Americans had seized this gold medal with both hands, and seemed somehow deserving of a medal stand that soared 10, 50, 100 feet higher than anyone else’s. They’d made the Russian Bear look so small it should be re-named Boo Boo. With the rest of the world falling into place somewhere below.
“To win by five points [5.054] in a game of tenths?” John Geddert said. “That’s a backyard butt-whuppin’.”
Geddert is the coach for Jordyn Wieber, and everyone arrived at the arena yesterday assuming this would be a referendum on Wieber’s psyche, her character, her confidence. The brightest American gymnastic star in years, Wieber struggled in Sunday’s preliminaries and failed to qualify for tomorrow’s individual all-around, leaving North Greenwich in tears.
“It was upsetting,” she would say. “It’s still disappointing. But I knew that we still had an opportunity to come in here and win a team gold, and whatever sad feelings I may have had were outweighed by the image of that.”
Whatever residual grief lingered in her heart, she needed to immediately shed, because she led off the American lineup, the first woman on the floor for the vault competition. Eighty-four feet away, she could feel a rhythmic chant of support building as she dashed toward the spring, and she did well: a score of 15.933, the third-best total on the day.
Third-best total on her team, as it turned out. The Americans were out the door quickly, and nobody made the point more emphatically than McKayla Maroney, probably the least-heralded member of the five-woman squad. For when it was her turn, Maroney didn’t just nail it, she took breaths away all across the arena: 16.233.
“That,” Bela Karolyi said, “was the greatest vault I’ve ever seen.”
Karolyi has been the sport’s eyes and ears for close to 50 years, first in Romania, later on these shores, always speaking his mind, always telling the truth, even when the truth hasn’t served him well. His wife, Marta, coaches this team, but Karolyi is never far away, prowling its outskirts, a gymnastic gadfly.
“You cannot do a vault better than that,” Karolyi said, his grin as wide as the Danube. “It was perfect. And it should have been scored perfect.”
“They should rename the vault the ‘Maroney,’ ” Geddert said.
The Russians would tighten the match after the second rotation, drawing within .399, but up and down the American roster — which included Gabby Douglas, Aly Raisman and Kyla Ross — they never felt threatened after the strong start.
Then the U.S. performed flawlessly on the balance beam — where so many overall championships go to topple and fizzle. And by the time they finished with a flourish on the floor exercise, the Russians were slipping on banana peels and their coach was plotting a coronation.
“This,” Marta Karolyi said in a cracked voice, “is the greatest team of all time.”
It was bold and brazen, and it was precisely the kind of thing her husband would say, especially audacious because the only other American team worthy of the conversation is the 1996 team best remembered for Kerri Strug’s ankle and including all-time greats such as Shannon Miller and Dominique Dawes and Amy Chow.
And, it turns out, it was irrefutable.
“Absolutely,” Bela said. “It is better.”
So out of the debris of Sunday’s tears, this team found a moment and they found each other. They were asked about nicknames, and mostly they laughed, though they seemed weary of the usual suspects: Fabulous Five, Furious Five, Fantastic Five.
“How about ‘Fierce Five?’ ” Maroney asked. “I like that. I haven’t heard that one before.”
Perfect. Because it took a fierce band of competitors to slay the bear and elevate the eagle, to make Marta cry and Bela beam.
The Fierce Five it is. Forever.