But for all its popularity, gymnastics is probably the one sport that is as much unknown as it is known. Needless to say, the sport has done little to promote itself. I wrote a story a year ago about the demise of the men's gymnastics programs at schools nationwide. Ohio State's men's gymnastics coach Mile Avery said that most people know only the final score elements of gymnastics and could care little about anything else. Admittedly, I don't understand the scoring aspect that well, but I do know that you can go into a meet with 10 perfect scores under your belt and still fall off the beam or slide off the pommel horse.
Gymnasts practice the same routines over and over, but every performance is different.
Neither are gymnastics routines. Gymnastics is a mental sport in which a lot can cloud the mind of even the most dominant gymnast. When I saw U.S. gymnast Kristen Maloney hurt herself during her first vault attempt, I knew it would take double the concentration to perform the second vault. And that's even more dangerous, because if you don't have total focus, you can get severely hurt or even killed. Most of the media's emphasis on scores and Comaneci's perfect 10 is mainly the sport's fault.