Sarah Hughes Reprise

My most recent post, on the uneven bars, reminded me that one of my first essays as a blogger also involved the Olympics. My introductory post on Lionel Deimel’s Web Log is dated February 9, 2002. Thirteen days later, I wrote about Sarah Hughes’ performance at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics.

That February 22, 2002, post could not benefit from the archives that are Wikipedia and YouTube. Ten years later, however, I can update my post to take advantage of those sites, and I have now done so. The performance of Sarah Hughes in the long program is the greatest Olympic performance I have ever seen, and I want to share it with others who may not have seen it.

Women’s gymnastics is wonderful to watch, but, however great the athleticism they display, performances can never achieve the pure grace possible on ice skates. Balance beam and floor exercises are invariably episodic. Vault and uneven bars performances do exhibit greater continuity, along with unbelievable physical accomplishments, but they seem incapable of achieving the sheer beauty that ice skaters can display.

Read my updated post “Sarah Hughes,” and watch her spectacular 2002 performance.