I’m a runner. In no way am I a professional athlete or anywhere close. I don’t do very well on teams either, so I wanted to choose a completely individual sport with minimal human interaction. Running seemed like my cup of tea.
I also like running because the risk for serious life-threatening injury is so low. About the worst that could happen when I go out for a run is that I trip over a crack in the sidewalk and tweak an ankle or skin my knee. A Band-Aid and an ice pack, and I’m good to go.
But for most other sports, especially gymnastics, the risks are far more serious.
On Feb. 27 I watched as University of Kentucky gymnast Shelby Hilton landed on the back of her neck coming out of a series of tumbling moves while she performed her floor exercise in the Stephen C. O’Connell Center.
Generally, I am not a religious person, but at that moment I prayed for Hilton and her family.
While I try my best to keep the skin on my knees intact, Hilton and her teammates, along with every other practicing gymnast, are risking their lives by participating in this sport.
The worst that could happen during a gymnastics routine is that you break your neck.
After Hilton stopped her routine and medical staff raced over to help her, the crowd at the O’Connell Center was silent.
It took more than 20 minutes for medical personnel to place a neck brace on Hilton and wheel her off the floor to a waiting ambulance. In those moments, the ESPN cameras panned over to Hilton’s teammates.
I’m not sure if the cameras caught them at the wrong moments or not. Whatever the case, they did not seem upset.
They were talking and smiling almost as if nothing was out of the ordinary. It was like the potentially life-threatening accident suffered by one of their teammates was an everyday occurrence.
I was shocked.
As a sports fan since the earliest days of my awkward adolescent years, I’m accustomed to the rituals that follow when a player is injured during a competition and is unable to get up under his or her own power.
In football, members of both teams take a knee on the sidelines out of respect for the injured player. In basketball, teammates surround the player until medical staff is ushered over. In soccer, injuries are so frequent that players actually complain about them to the referees. Injuries don’t go ignored.
But gymnastics is not like any other sport. There is a very good reason why there are so few gymnasts in the world. Not everyone can do what they do, and not everyone should.
Just think about it: Gymnasts do back flips off of 4 inches of wood. They soar as high as 15 feet in the air over stick-thin fiberglass bars.
Not to mention the dreaded vault, where gymnasts propel their bodies into the air and hope to God their blistered feet touch the ground on the other side.
Gymnasts are by far the world’s most impressive athletes. This explains the reactions of Hilton’s teammates after her fall.
They weren’t being inconsiderate. I’m not a gymnast, so I could be wrong, but sometimes I feel like gymnastics is 10 percent physical and 90 percent mental.
It seems to me like the gymnasts who perform the best every night are the ones who are always on top of their game mentally.
Of course Hilton’s teammates care for her well-being, but by dissociating themselves from the accident they were saving their own necks.
To be unfocused or afraid in gymnastics is like crossing a busy street with your eyes closed. They had no choice but to focus their attention on the remainder of the competition.
There is an ugly truth about sports: They can save lives as well as end them. In gymnastics, a career could be over in a heartbeat, but that is a risk gymnasts are willing to take.
Personally, I think I’ll just stick to my tweaked ankles and skinned knees.
Erica Brown is a UF journalism junior. Her column appears on Mondays.
