Tragedy for Paul Hamm; Joy for Raj Bhavsar
Posted on 29 July 2008 by admin
What a bittersweet day yesterday. Raj Bhavsar finally ended up with the opportunity to compete in the Olympics. Paul Hamm’s gymnastics career came to a crashing halt.
In the aftermath of Hamm’s announcement came the usual Monday morning quarterbacking and hindsight. International Gymnast’s Dwight Nomile wrote a nice article about yesterday’s events.
Apparently many folks had a feeling Hamm wouldn’t be able to pull off his remarkable comeback from injury. Nomile was one of them. Perhaps he didn’t want to jinx things by expressing it before Monday morning. They were asking for the impossible. How could Paul Hamm suffer such a debilitating injury and come back just a short two months later? After all, Hamm injured one of a gymnast’s most important tools, his hand.
A hand takes a lot of time to heal, since it bears most of the weight of a gymnast’s livelihood. How could Paul’s hand possibly endure the torquing and twisting required to execute one of his world-class parallel bar routines? On top of that, to compensate for Hamm instinctively favoring his recovering hand, other parts of his body, namely his shoulders, had to take on a much larger share of the burden. While his teammates were afforded the luxury to ramp things down after the nine-day camp in Colorado Springs, Hamm had to ramp things up. His body couldn’t take it.
He probably could have put up some good numbers in Beijing, but his soul wouldn’t let him. He did the right thing. He took one for the team. If Paul Hamm couldn’t be the best in the world, he wasn’t about to let down his teammates. Paul Hamm made the gutsiest decision of his career, and the most altruistic.
The end result is that Raj Bhavsar ends up with a tortuously long-awaited opportunity to compete for gold. Only six U.S. gymnasts every four years are afforded that opportunity. He is now one of those six.
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July 29th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
boooo i wanted sasha
August 1st, 2008 at 2:09 am
I resist contradicting your nice article about Paul, but in Paul’s analysis and his family’s it was determined that Paul would NOT have been able to “put up some good numbers in Beijing.”
If that had been the case, Paul would have remained on the team. The Hamm analysis was that the team was better off (in the net), with Paul off the team. It wasn’t his “soul” that “wouldn’t let him.” It was math & logic, along with his personal knowldege of the status of his hand, body and readiness.
A painful decision none the less. As I have written earlier…
“This was one of the most personally painful decisions Paul has ever had to make, and yet also one of the easiest. It was painful – very painful, for all the obvious reason. Consider what he had put into the past 18 months of training and where he was competitively on the day he broke his fourth metacarpal.
Yet, it was one of the easiest because he knew it was the right decision. He stood up, and with honor & dignity, did what he believed was right, and what was right. Paul is a man of honor, which is something he will have his entire life. I am proud of him.”
August 1st, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Hi Sandy — We probably should have clarified what we meant by “put up some good numbers.” Perhaps that was just wishful thinking on our part. The numbers obviously wouldn’t have been good enough to medal and to contribute significantly to the team. We agree with your comments on this matter. We also agree that he did the right thing and that he did it with honor and respect for his teammates. We are sad and disappointed that Paul will not be competing in Beijing… very sorry that he had the misfortune of suffering such a bad and untimely injury. He gave it his best shot. Thanks very much for your comments.