Stick the Landing

by Kate McMurray

  Anyway….

  Jake stared at the card for a long moment and then looked up and met Topher’s gaze. “I… yeah. Maybe I will. Thanks.”

  Which was probably the end of that, but it had been worth a shot. Topher smiled and patted Jake’s meaty bicep. “And if not, I’m scheduled to be at podium training tomorrow, so maybe we’ll run into each other again.”

  Jake raised an eyebrow. “Maybe.”

  Chapter Four

  TBC HAD a handful of Opening Ceremony tickets available through a lottery for employees. “I never win these,” Topher said as he sat in the broadcasting booth and filled in the online form the day after his interview with Jake.

  “Your odds are not that bad,” Natalie argued. “There are maybe only thirty people, tops, entering the lottery.”

  “For three tickets.”

  “Still.”

  Topher hit Submit on the form and then looked up from his phone. He and Natalie were in the press booth of the Palacio Vistalegre, the official gymnastics venue. The network had decided to pair them up to comment over podium training. They’d be live on the TBC website, not part of the television coverage, but Topher decided to take it as good practice for commenting later. Besides, he could play the gymnastics dummy to Natalie’s expert well enough, giving her plenty of opportunities to show off her knowledge.

  “Thanks to flight delays, our third chair, Sam Norton, is not here,” said Natalie. “He’s another retired gymnast. And he’s a hottie. Just saying.”

  “Are you trying to hook up with a gymnast? Or hook me up with one?” Topher Googled ‘sam norton’ while they waited for things to happen. It occurred to him that Jake Mirakovitch hadn’t been that short—within an inch or two of Topher’s admittedly not-exactly-towering stature. He looked at his phone. This Sam Norton guy was a hottie, but in a bland blond way. “I’m not opposed to this plan, to be clear.”

  “Just making observations. We’ll be on in a sec, so shut up.”

  Then the producer gave them the signal and they were suddenly on-air.

  Nothing was happening in the arena.

  “Hi, everyone,” Natalie said into the microphone. “I’m Natalie Pasquarella, and I’m here in the booth with former Olympic figure skater Christopher Caldwell. We’re live at the Palacio Vistalegre, the beautiful home of gymnastics competition here in Madrid. Welcome, Topher. How are you liking Madrid so far?”

  He’d hardly seen any of it, but he said, “It’s a lovely city.”

  “Are you excited for the start of the Games?”

  “Thrilled. I’m glad I get to see one of the early events. Can you tell me what we’re looking at?”

  Joanna gave him a thumbs-up. They’d discussed what to say before he’d sat down at this microphone, and he had a page full of questions to ask if there was a lull in activity.

  “Sure,” Natalie said. “Podium training is kind of like a dress rehearsal. It’s organized in rotations, just like the actual competition will be, and it’s the gymnasts’ first real opportunity to practice using the apparatuses that will be used during the competition. In most cases, we’ll see the gymnasts perform their routines exactly as they will during the team qualifying event tomorrow night, but nothing is scored and these routines don’t count. Really, it’s a lot of fun to watch.”

  Topher chuckled. “I certainly can’t argue with that. I had the opportunity to talk to some of the gymnasts yesterday. The men’s team seems ready to compete. Jake Mirakovitch told me he feels more prepared for this meet than any other in his career.”

  “That’s great. I expect him to do great things this week.”

  Natalie blathered on for a while about each of the gymnasts on the American men’s team while they waited for things to happen. Eventually the athletes started filing into the gym. The Americans, in their official red uniforms, were in a rotation with teams from the Netherlands and Great Britain. Natalie pointed out that both countries were fielding strong teams; the Brits had been on the rise ever since they’d hosted the London Games, and the Netherlands had a pair of Romanian coaches who were doing astonishing things with the program.

  “It really is a new era. The Romanians didn’t even qualify a team this year,” Natalie said, reading off her fact sheet. “Gabriel Antonescu and Petre Sala will be competing in the qualifiers for a spot in the event finals, but that’s it for their men’s team. Antonescu won a bronze on pommel horse at the last World Championships.”

  A PA fiddled with the screens in front of them. The official Olympic feed was shown on six screens, one for each apparatus. A seventh screen showed the raw TBC feed, which was a dry run for the official primetime feed later. There was also a window in front of them from which they could see the action on the floor. It was overwhelming and confusing; there were six apparatuses set up with several groups of men at each, fiddling with screws or putting on hand guards or chalking up, and the sheer amount of activity made it hard to know where to look.

  “For this broadcast,” Natalie said, “we’re going to focus mostly on the Americans, and we’ll show some highlights of other athletes in between. The Americans are starting on vault, so let’s go there first.”

  The British men vaulted first. Topher didn’t have a lot to contribute beyond sounding dazzled when a gymnast stuck a landing or to suck in a breath through his teeth and say “Aw,” when somebody missed.

  “There’s less waiting around now,” Natalie added. “There are no judges scoring. This really is a run-through of each vault, each routine. But it’s interesting to see who is looking relaxed, who seems tense, which gymnasts are bringing their A game.”

  “Yeah,” Topher said. “It must be nerve-wracking to know these rehearsals are airing on TV, though. We used to do practice skates prior to competition, but we never let anyone except the coaches film them.”

  “Eh, most of these guys are used to performing with lots of people watching.”

  Topher couldn’t help but think of Jake again. Topher had interviewed a few of the other guys from the men’s team, but something about Jake had stuck with him all day. Well, Jake’s physical attributes were part of that equation, no doubt, but Topher had sensed something more in Jake. An old pain lingering under the surface, maybe. The curse of being the athlete destined to let everyone down. Of having the weight of expectations on one’s shoulders and a history of crumbling under it. To hang on to that nagging feeling that one wasn’t really as talented as everyone said, after all. To say Topher related to that on a primal level was understating it.

  The American team had sent TBC a list of who would be performing which routines in which order. Topher also had an explanation of the rules, which Natalie was supposed to squeeze into the commentary between other things. She hadn’t managed to do that yet, though. So as the last British man chalked up and talked with his coach, Topher said, “The makeup of these teams might look a little different than what audiences are used to.”

  “Yes,” said Natalie. “There’s been a rules change since the last Olympics. The top teams can qualify up to six gymnasts. No more than four of them are the all-around gymnasts. They can also bring in two specialists. How many men qualify depends on how the team placed at the last World Championships. The Americans qualified a full six-man team. But the way it works is that four gymnasts compete on each apparatus—oh, let’s watch Smithfield vault. It’s, oh, that was gorgeous. Little hop on the landing, but that’s a tenth. Really nice. Anyway, four gymnasts on each apparatus. During the team competition, the lowest score is dropped.”

  “So we’ll see four American men on the vault.”

  “Yes. Hayden Croft is their vault specialist. I believe he’s going last in this rotation.”

  “Yes,” said Topher, looking at one of the many pieces of paper in front of him.

  “Anyway, four compete on each apparatus, the top men on each one qualify for the event finals, and the best overall teams will advance to the team final.”

  This was all very complicated. Toph
er had a chart in front of him, and he still didn’t entirely understand it. But he said, “Okay.”

  Perhaps sensing Topher’s confusion, Natalie said, “Okay, here’s how this will all happen. Podium training today. We’ll see all six rotations, so you’ll get a feel for how this will go later. The men’s qualifier starts tomorrow. The top teams advance to the team final. Only the total team score matters in the team final, but individual scores matter too, because the top individual gymnasts who compete on all six apparatuses will advance to the all-around. There, the best overall gymnast will be crowned. The qualifiers also allow individual gymnasts to qualify for the event finals, which will occur next Saturday. That’s a one-and-done kind of thing. Eight athletes compete on each apparatus, the best wins a medal. Does that help?”

  “So, wait, the event finals are last? Seems a little anticlimactic.”

  “Nah. The top gymnasts on each apparatus doing their most over-the-top routines? It’s exciting!”

  Topher chuckled, enjoying the joy in Natalie’s tone. “Well, that does help some. I still may need you to draw me a chart later.”

  “Well, let’s watch what’s happening now. The first American up on vault is Jordan Weiss. He’s usually a pretty solid vaulter. This is a Tsukahara vault with a half turn. Let’s watch.”

  Topher knew a little about gymnastics. He’d taken some classes as a kid, and he’d had a coach that had used gymnastics-inspired drills and exercises to help Topher build the muscles he needed for jumping. But he didn’t know what things were called—he had no idea what a Tsukahara looked like, though he guessed it was named for a Japanese gymnast—so he tried to absorb what he could from the slow-motion replay. The gymnast, Jordan, ran down the… runway… then jumped onto the springboard, did a half twist, pushed off the vault table backward with his hands, and then did a nice layout in the air before hitting the mat with a perfectly stuck landing.

  “Not the hardest vault in the program,” Natalie said, “but beautifully done.”

  “Corey O’Bannon is up next,” Topher said, reading from the list. A blond guy was chalking up at the end of the…. “That mat they run down? Is it called a runway? That’s what I’m calling it in my head.”

  Natalie laughed. “It’s usually just called the run-up area, but I like runway better. Let’s call it that. Maybe gymnasts will start strutting down it instead of running.”

  “Put a little Naomi Campbell in their walk,” Topher said. “That’s how you vault stylishly.”

  Natalie giggled. “Anyway, here’s Corey.”

  They paused to watch.

  “Oh, little hop on the landing,” Natalie said. “But it looked good in the air. Jake Mirakovitch is up next.”

  Topher’s heart skipped a little. From the booth, it was a little hard to see Jake’s face, but on the monitor, the camera zoomed right in on him. God, he was gorgeous. His hair had been gelled within an inch of its life, probably so that it wouldn’t fly around too much when he was doing these skills, but it wasn’t the greatest look for him. Topher wanted to run his fingers through the strands and tease it out, make it wild, make Jake wild….

  He cleared his throat. “Jake will be doing a full-twisting Yurchenko,” Topher said, reading from the sheet. He was thankful that so many years of figure skating had helped him learn enough Russian, Japanese, and other languages to keep from tripping over some of these terms. Yurchenko didn’t quite roll off the tongue the way toe loop and Salchow did, but this wasn’t Topher’s first rodeo.

  “Yes. It’s his first of two vaults. Jake is planning to try to qualify for the event final, so he must vault twice and can’t repeat the same vault.”

  “All right. Let’s watch.”

  Jake clapped his hands together once, then stared down the runway at the vault table. He looked determined. Topher didn’t have the right vocabulary to describe everything—he assumed every move had a name he hadn’t learned yet—but he watched Jake carefully. Jake ran down the runway, then kind of cartwheeled onto the springboard, jumped from it, hit the table with his hands, then twisted in the air before sticking his landing cleanly.

  “Wow,” Topher said aloud.

  “Yeah. That’s the best I’ve seen him do that vault in a while. Let’s see if he can pull off the second one, which has a higher difficulty score. This one is actually called the Mirakovitch. It’s a variation on a Tsukahara vault, but he’s going to somersault in the air. Named for Valentin Mirakovitch, Jake’s father.”

  “That’s cool,” Topher said, imagining what it would be like to have a skating jump named after someone in his own family, maybe someone jumping a Caldwell instead of a Lutz. He wondered if Jake agreed it was cool or if he found it hard to deal with his father’s legacy.

  But Jake did the vault beautifully. He got huge height off the vault table, somersaulted in the air twice, and landed with only a little step.

  “Nice,” Natalie said.

  “Yeah, that was amazing,” Topher said. “I mean, I am, of course, a total gymnastics neophyte, but that looked really good. Can we see it in slow motion?”

  “Yeah, here’s the replay. Look at the air he gets off the table. He needs all that to complete the rotations before he lands.”

  In slo-mo, it was easier to see the flexing of each muscle. Jake’s calves were tight as he jumped off the springboard. His shoulders rippled as he pushed off the table. Everything in him seemed to compress into the somersault tuck. Then it all unleashed as he straightened out and hit the mat below. He hit it so hard, it was no wonder he had to take a step.

  “It’s like landing on one foot,” Topher said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “So, take a Salchow, for example. The skating jump, I mean. You take off from the back inside edge of your skate and land on the back outside edge of your other foot if you do it right. In competition you have to do it perfectly, and judges have those HD slow-motion cameras now, so they can tell if you’re not positioned correctly on landing, if you land on one edge, or if the wrong foot gets anywhere near the ice. I was just thinking that sticking a landing in gymnastics is like landing perfectly on the outside edge after a Salchow.”

  “That is a good way to think about scoring. The judges take deductions for minor errors in skating, right?”

  “Yeah, my understanding is that there are similar scoring systems for both sports now. Every move starts with a base score, and deductions are taken for any errors. So landing on the wrong edge of your skate, or in this case, hopping when you land a vault, will cost you.”

  “Exactly.”

  On the monitor, Jake grinned at a guy who must have been a coach, and they high-fived each other before the camera moved to look at Hayden Croft.

  “Hayden is going to do a vault called the Dragalescu,” said Natalie. “That’s a vault with a full point value of seventeen, higher than most of these other guys. If he lands it in competition, it’ll earn him a huge score. After he hits the table, he’ll do two somersaults, then straighten it out and twist around to land it.”

  “Do you have a gymnastics move named after you?”

  “Yep,” Natalie said with a grin. “Release move on bars. It’s called the Pasquarella.”

  “They should name some figure skating move after me.”

  “They really should. Anyway, I saw Hayden do this vault in a vault final a few years ago right after Dragalescu himself did it. Hayden looked better in the air but stepped out of bounds on the landing, which is a mandatory deduction. So he didn’t beat Dragalescu with his own vault, but it was close.”

  “This is a weird sport,” Topher commented.

  Natalie laughed. “Let’s watch.”

  Topher watched the screen as Hayden did a crazy series of acrobatics to hurl himself off the vault table high enough in the air to roll and twist before getting his legs straight beneath him and landing the vault. There’d been a time in his life in which Topher had been able to make his body do things like that, but those days were long behind him. H
e still missed competitive skating sometimes, but not the toll it took on his body.

  Hayden landed his vault. But if he hadn’t, at least he had thick mats to land on, and not a sheet of hard ice.

  “Hayden’s going to vault again,” said Natalie. “The second vault has to be from a different vault family. Hayden is also going to do a Mirakovitch here.”

  They watched. Hayden… looked good. Topher didn’t understand enough to know whether he did the vault better or worse than Jake, but Hayden did stick the landing with no steps or hops.

  “That was a hell of a start for the Americans,” Natalie said as the Dutch gymnasts got ready to vault.

  “Think they can keep it up?” Topher asked.

  “I guess we’ll see.”

  JAKE FIDDLED with his arm guards and watched the last British gymnast finish his parallel bar routine as Jake mentally rehearsed his own. Alexei talked to Corey about his skills and then stopped midsentence to scold Jake about holding his handstands long enough. Jake nodded, not wanting to antagonize Alexei, but he knew what he had to do.

  They were having a good meet, if podium training could be called that. Everyone had landed their routines so far. Jake’s high bar routine had been solid, so he’d thrown in a modified Kovacs, a release move he’d been working on in practice. And he’d nailed it.

  On the other hand, Jordan had been a little sloppy on rings and Paul had stepped out of bounds on floor, and everyone had made small mistakes on the pommel horse, but those were minor problems in the scheme of things. With one rotation to go—on one of Jake’s best events—Jake felt good.