Life in the Cheese Drawer

so during this olympics, i like to wax eloquent about the olympics. i’ve already made a stink about human rights in russia, and i would like to look a little more into the IOC, but let me take a break from serious stuff and share my favoritest olympic moment.
[as an aside, if you want to see how i feel about primetime olympic events, i am a pretty vocal tweeter during events. you can follow me over @prairey on twitter. i mostly tweet through skating events, but i will also comment occasionally on snowboarding, skiing, skeleton, etc…]
back to the task at hand. i’ve seen some pretty intense skating upsets. michelle kwan never winning, the kerrigan/harding mess, oksana bayul winning over that whole mess, elvis stojko never winning. but my favorite moment came during the summer olympics.
the gymnastics team event is to the summer games as skating is to winter for me. and in the wallace household, you sat your butt in the living room and watched and cheered the olympians (i care about NO OTHER SPORTS).
in 1996 in atlanta, shannon miller was the big name, but there’s only one name you remembered after the team event. it was the final rotation for the US, the final athlete, and the points were so close that there was no room for error. kerri strug got ready for the vault. bela karolyi, former soviet coach, was the coach for the gymnastics team (and i think he should be EVERYONE’s coach, really). kerri did her first vault.
and didn’t stick her landing.
she got up and was limping. OMG.
we were so close to beating russia, and now our last hope was injured. aahhhhh.
she took her place for her second run, sucked it up and ran. vault, and wonder of wonders, she STUCK THE LANDING. you could not believe the uproar in our household. amazing! bela ended up carrying kerri off the mats.
this was brought up to me all over again because there is a commercial running during this olympics that shows this, and i get goosebumps all over again each time i see the commercial.