I Did It
“I did it.” This is what newly-crowned Olympic gymnastics champion Li Xiaoshuang wanted to say most after his victory here on Sunday night at the 25th Olympic Games.
Li scored 9.925 points by successfully completing his somersault tuck, becoming the first male gymnast ever to execute this maneuver in the optional apparatus finals. The program was extremely difficult. Failure could have been met by his head slamming the mat. Former Soviet Valery Liukin had once done this tuck in the team competition.
“all the gymnasts before me had pretty high scores and this was the only way out for me,” said Li. “I knew I could end up either first or last.” Li also won a bronze in the rings with a 9.862.
Grigori Misutin of the Unified Team scored 9.875 points to share second place with Japanese Yukio Iketani.
Right after his safe landing, Li rushed to his coach and former world parallel bars champion Huang Yubing. The two broke into tears and embraced each other after the final gymnast, Vitali Scherbo of the Unified Team, failed to surpass Li.
Li's gold was China's first in the floor exercises since 1984, when Li Ning won at the Los Angeles Olympic Games. Until the 1987 World Championships in Amsterdam where Lou Yun won the floor exercise, the event was dominated by the former Soviet Union gymnasts. “Though the floor is his specialty, Li still performed above his normal level,” said coach Huang, who shed from the award ceremony and watched it on TV at the back of the gymnasium.
“It's not an easy job,” Li said. “It's the result of my hard training. And that three backward somersaults was the first rime that I have done it successfully.”
“I want to thank my parents and especially my coach Huang who contributed greatly to my success.”
Li joined the national team at the end of 1989 and his highest international achievement was first place in the floor exercises of the Beijing Asian Games.
At last year's Indianapolis World Championships, he was the best non-Soviet gymnast in the all-around competition, placing fourth, though he failed to score higher than 9.75 points in any apparatus. He was only sixth in the floor competition. He was still so little-known that even with his World Championship achievement here at the Olympics, computer statistics erroneously listed him as having done badly competing in two women's events, the uneven bars and the balance beam.
Li said he learned a lot here in Barcelona, both in gymnastics and manhood. He said in the team all-around competition, he repeatedly got low scores, and did not get the amount of points he should get for the degree of difficulty and execution of routines. But he kept the complaints to himself.
Yet his execution in the floor final was so perfect that nobody doubted he was the gold medal winner.
The 18-year-old from Hubei Province said that his regular training was not only technical but also mental. He said to himself three times, “Start and leap, accelerate and land,” which he said was crucial in winning.
Li also took part in the 1990 Seattle Goodwill Games and finished second in the floor exercises, and is now regarded as the Chinese team's best all-around gymnast, especially after former best Li Ning missed both in the pommel horse and high bar finals Sunday night.