By Gil LeBreton
Star-Telegram
LONDON — Gymnast Aly Raisman, 18 years old, one tumultuous week wiser, summed up her Olympic all-around experience Thursday night.
“It’s a bummer,” said the teenager from the suburbs of Boston.
She was talking about the Olympic expediency of not rewarding both finishers in the case of a third-place tie.
But as a metaphor for the whole silly week, from having the night of her gymnastics life on Sunday to being a footnote on Thursday, a bummer is what it was.
True, her nasally young voice can sound like a dozen wailing cats, but I have grown to like Raisman at these London Olympic Games. She is tough. She gets it.
She didn’t run from the cameras and reporters Thursday after her disappointing ending. She stood there and tried to make sense of it, even as, cruelly, she could hear the “Star-Spangled Banner” being played for her teammate in the background.
“It’s a bummer that they can’t just let us both get a bronze medal,” Raisman said.
Say this for Raisman: She has caused us to delve into the arcane rules of international gymnastics more in the past six days than we would otherwise do in a lifetime.
First, thanks to Raisman, TV viewers learned that nations can qualify no more than two gymnasts in the all-around finals.
And now Thursday’s rules lesson, that bronze medal ties must be broken by adding the knotted competitors’ three best events.
That rule, in effect, penalized Raisman for performing better on the balance beam than her Russian rival, Aliya Mustafina, who fell off the apparatus.
Oh, well. Raisman gets it.
“I’m kinda more sad than I am angry,” she said. “I definitely know I can do a better beam routine than I did today.”
While performing a somersault on the beam, Raisman briefly lost her balance and put her hand down to steady herself. That one instant likely cost her the .001 of a point that would have broken the tie.
She still has a chance to win an individual medal at these Games.
Raisman will perform in floor exercise and, again, on the balance beam in next week’s individual events competition.
Planes, trains, alarm clocksAs always, I brought my little plastic alarm clock with me to London.
But I didn’t need to, as it turns out.
I’ve got an Airbus A318.
On its website, the University of East London appeared to offer a modern, dock-side campus in the city suburbs. I have no complaints, not even about the pillows, which a colleague correctly described as being “a potato chip with a pillowcase.”
Hey, it’s the Olympics. I’d sleep in a tent. (Note to my editor: Forget I even said that.)
From my fourth-floor dorm room at UEL — no elevator, 93 steps up from the sidewalk — I have a somewhat spectacular vantage point. Below me flow the waters of what was once a shipping channel for the Port of London. There are cruise ships filled with Olympic tourists anchored just down the pier.
From the maps and UEL brochures, I could see that there was a single aiport runway between the two parallel channels of the River Thames.
What I didn’t realize was that the London City Airport does a brisk and bustling commercial business, serving nearly three million passengers a year.
They serve them, it appears, right outside my dormitory window.
Beginning each morning at 6:30 a.m. By law London City Airport has restrictions on what size of aircraft can land and disembark. From where I sit, though, the planes all seem huge.
And loud. Loud enough, ironically, to make my little plastic alarm clock vibrate — at 6:30 a.m.
Also by law, the airport can only operate between 6:30 a.m. and 10 p.m. Mercifully, those hours are shortened on weekends.
If I close the window, my non-air-conditioned room becomes uncomfortably hot. If I open it, I’m serenaded every few minutes by Swiss Air and British Airways.
The first 200 or so times I saw the planes taking off, I thought it was cool.
Yesterday, though, I found myself on Google looking up the possible effects of three-week exposure to jet fuel fumes.
Hey, it’s the Olympics. I’d sleep in a cow barn.
On second thought, scratch that. My editor may be reading this.
The Games, brick by brickIf you have children, your feet are probably still scarred from stepping on LEGO bricks in the middle of the night.
LEGO has been around for more than 60 years, and its wonders have not been lost on the Olympics, it appears.
If you missed the women’s gymnastics competition, you can find a unique spin on it
here.
My one complaint is that it’s hard not to stick the landing when you have interlocking holes on the bottom of your LEGO feet.
Discovering London: Covent GardenIn search of the Olympic spirit — and, hopefully, a nice Italian restaurant — I took the London Underground to Covent Garden on Thursday.
As early as the 13th century, Covent Garden was a bustling marketplace for fresh fruits, vegetables and flowers. In 1666, it was one of the few markets to survive The Great Fire of London.
Today it’s been beautifully restored and thrives as a specialty shopping, restaurant and entertainment center. Street performers and cobblestone walkways abound.
The locals seem to love Covent Garden as much as the tourists.
There are more than 200 restaurants and cafes, I was told, within a 10-block area in and around Covent Garden.
How I picked one of the worste ones, I’m not really sure. Maybe I was swayed by the al fresco dining.
The meatballs tasted like little mud balls. The spaghetti was all fused together.
But as a backdrop to my dinner, I could see the locals and Olympic tourists alike, promenading through the Covent Garden Piazza outside of St. Paul’s Church.
There were Aussies chanting “Oi! Oi! Oi!” like Aussies, and Brazilians wearing green face-paint.
The Piazza was alive with the Games, without the heavy-handed sponsor presence of the Olympic Park in Stratford.
And on this 2,000-year-old site, it reminded me — weren’t the 2012 Olympics the ones that the Fort Worth-Arlington-Dallas area once tried to bid on?
At least we know how to fix spaghetti.
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