She didn’t want it to end this way. No one did.
Jordyn Wieber stepped out-of-bounds on her second tumbling pass, and when she struck her finishing pose at the end of her routine, the young gymnast’s smile faded quicker than a cloud of chalk dust.
Wieber’s Olympics officially ended Tuesday at North Greenwich Arena with a seventh-place finish and a score of 14.500 on floor exercise, her lone individual event final.
LONDON – She didn’t want it to end this way. No one did.
Jordyn Wieber stepped out-of-bounds on her second tumbling pass, and when she struck her finishing pose at the end of her routine, the young gymnast’s smile faded quicker than a cloud of chalk dust.
Wieber’s Olympics officially ended Tuesday at North Greenwich Arena with a seventh-place finish and a score of 14.500 on floor exercise, her lone individual event final. Although disappointed, she said she wouldn’t let it detract from the big-picture part of it all: The 17-year-old DeWitt High senior will travel back to Michigan late next week with an Olympic team gold medal – a first since 1996 for the U.S. team – that she won just more than a week ago with teammates Gabby Douglas, Aly Raisman, Kyla Ross and McKayla Maroney.
But there’s an injury update: Wieber likely will be returning in a protective walking boot.
Wieber, the defending world all-around champion, was far from 100 percent healthy during the London Games. She had been dealing with pain in her right heel since the Olympic trials, and her coach, John Geddert, mentioned in interviews last week that she also had been experiencing pain in her lower leg.
In an interview with the Free Press on Tuesday’s concluding day of gymnastics, David Wieber – Jordyn’s father – described the injury as a stress fracture.
“Her shin has not healed,” he said. “She said she’s been in a lot of pain when she practices, but she said not when she’s competing.”
Rita Wieber, Jordyn’s mother, said: “I want people to know what a brave girl she was. God bless her. She didn’t want to lose her chance. She was there for the team. She withstood all that pain for the team.”
A spokesperson for USA Gymnastics said there had not been a confirmed diagnosis of Wieber’s injury – she hasn’t had an X-ray or MRI – but Geddert said the unofficial diagnosis came from the “X-ray eyes” of team doctor Larry Nassar.
“He’s right 99 percent of the time,” Geddert said. “She’s had soreness. And now there’s a lump there. So it’s all the signs of a stress fracture. She’s going in a boot tomorrow.”
Asked if Wieber would have competed with the injury had it not been the Olympic Games, Geddert said: “If this wasn’t the Olympics, she wouldn’t have gone out there today.
“It’s the Olympics, so, it is what it is.”
Geddert said Wieber’s right heel and lower leg had been bothering her since the pre-Olympic training camp. But his gymnast described it as “not too bad – doing a lot of icing and therapy and everything.”
Geddert said: “Obviously, we can’t dwell on it. You to deal with it – it’s the Olympic Games. It would have taken wild horses to drag her out of here. She’s not going to not compete. So I didn’t want to dwell on it, she didn’t want to dwell. We rested it as much as it could. We shut her down on landings. We didn’t do as many numbers as we normally would.
“And, obviously, it takes its toll, you know, coming down the stretch. She wasn’t as polished as she normally is because she couldn’t train. I’m very proud of her team performance because she really dug down deep there and pulled out a great team performance.”
Geddert, though, said he didn’t want to use any suspected injury as a reason she wasn’t at her best at the Olympics. The gymnast finished with the fourth-best total score in qualifying for the all-around, but since she placed third on her team behind Raisman and Douglas – and only the top two go – she didn’t advance onto the Olympic all-around final.
Douglas returned a few days later and captured the all-around gold medal – considered the biggest individual prize in the sport of gymnastics – following in the footsteps of Nastia Liukin and Carly Patterson, winners in 2008 and 2004.
“She didn’t look anything like she has looked in the past,” Geddert said of Wieber. “It’s not because she stopped training. She just had a little bit of limitations. I’m not making excuses, folks, I don’t want to get into that. It is what it is. There’s some great champions out there and I don’t want to draw away from their accomplishments.”
Geddert, who also served as head coach of the U.S. women’s team in London, added: “I think in her mind, she knows she missed out on some medals that she could have had. I’m sure that’s going to sting for a while and we’ll see where it takes her.”
Describing her emotions as “pretty much up and down every day,” Wieber said coming back and winning team gold after failing to advance to the individual all-around final “was amazing.”
“It’s a little bit of a disappointment overall, but at the same time, leaving with a gold is all that I can ask for,” she said. “It’s so cool to be part of that team.”
Wieber wasn’t the only gymnast who had an off-day during event finals Tuesday.
Douglas fell off the balance beam, taking seventh.
Meanwhile, Raisman had the biggest wrap-up day, taking gold on the floor exercise and bronze on the balance beam.
Her bronze came when she moved up from fourth when the U.S. filed a protest on her score. She then won on a tiebreak over Romanian Catalina Ponor.
Last week, Raisman had just missed a medal in the all-around, finishing with the same score as Russia’s Aliya Mustafina, but dropping to fourth on a tiebreaker.
Raisman, who’s Wieber’s best friend, leaves the Olympics as the most decorated of the Fierce Five (or Fab Five, depending on your preference).
What’s next for Wieber? Tuesday night, she planned to see her family at a gymnastics celebration at USA House.
After Sunday’s Closing Ceremonies, she will head to New York with her teammates before returning to DeWitt.
She said she was not in a hurry to make a decision regarding her competitive career. She plans to attend UCLA in the fall of 2013, but she can’t compete collegiately because she turned professional last October. Wieber, though, could be involved with the college program as a volunteer assistant coach. Geddert, though, hopes that Wieber will continue competing through the 2013 world championships.
“She’s a senior in high school,” he said. “I think she has another good year before she goes off to college. Worlds is certainly a realistic goal for her. Not fulfilling her dreams here might add a little fuel to the fire.”
