The all-around difference between Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson
Liukin, the Olympic all-around gymnastics champion, appears to want to stay competitive. Her U.S. teammate Johnson, who was favored in the event, contemplates taking a break.
BEIJING -- This is the difference between being the women's gymnastics all-around gold medalist and the balance beam gold medalist:
All-around winner Nastia Liukin held a small post-Olympics news conference at a palace in a garden. Balance beam winner Shawn Johnson did hers in Interview Room No. 4 at the main press center and shared that room with men's high bar silver medalist Jonathan Horton.
Liukin, 18, of Parker, Texas, leaves these Olympics with five medals -- a gold, three silvers and a bronze -- and with the feeling she will be back competing at least for the 2009 world championships.
She is going home Thursday, and a welcoming party is being scheduled for her at the Dallas airport. She will be on the Jay Leno show next week and has begun participating in several new ad campaigns. Her image is on Visa ATM machines in the athletes' village, and she is talking about competing in the 2009 world championships and adding to her total of nine world medals.
Johnson, 16, leaves with four medals -- a gold and three silvers -- and a road map of her future that doesn't necessarily contain competitive gymnastics.
She is planning some shopping, a trip to the Great Wall and a march in the closing ceremony. She will probably take this semester off from high school, the first of her junior year, so she can participate in a planned gymnastics tour. But after that Johnson seems lukewarm about competing.
"It's hard to think about four more years," Johnson said. "After not winning the all-around, it hit me pretty hard, not that I got the silver, but just all my emotions came out. I was training to win gold. I'm just proud of myself that I kept my head up."
And maybe, despite all the discussions about the inclusion of possibly underage Chinese gymnasts, Bruno Grandi, president of the international gymnastics federation, had a purpose in stressing his desire to see the artistic side of the sport given as much weight as the technical side.
Grandi gave his speech on the day before the women's competition started, and those words sounded a little hollow when he also was adamant that his federation had no willingness to investigate well-sourced allegations that three of the Chinese female gymnasts were younger than the requirement that an Olympic competitor needed to turn 16 sometime during 2008.
But he said he was worried about whether his sport had turned too far in the direction of acrobatics over elegance. "I fear the sport is moving too far away from its good balance," Grandi said.
