Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 10, 1993 TAG: 9303100255
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DIANE SIMPSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
TRIALS OF AN OLYMPIAN
DIANE SIMPSON is a senior journalism and political science student at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. A rhythmic gymnast, she competed with the United States National Team from 1985-92 in four World Championships, two Goodwill Games, two Pan American Games and an Olympics. She is spending this quarter as an intern at the Roanoke Times & World-News.
The road to the Olympics is known for its peaks. But my journey included a few valleys, too.
At the 1987 Pan American Games in Indianapolis, the American flag was raised to the Star-Spangled Banner in my honor after I won two gold and two silver medals.
I was called America's new hope in rhythmic gymnastics: The United States finally had "a gymnast as skinny and long-legged as the Russians and the Bulgarians," a judge said in 1986.
But four years later at the Pan Am Games in Santiago de Cuba, I blacked out and laid on the floor shaking and numb from hypoglycemia and an electrolyte imbalance. I woke up in my suite's kitchen to see the American team doctor nodding.
While the coaches and judges were happy that I had lost 18 pounds for the meet, the doctor and I both knew my eating disorders could cost me a trip to the 1992 Olympic Games. Still, our three-woman team needed me in Cuba, even in my weakened state.
Two days and many Nutrament shakes later, I competed. I did not win the gold all-around medal or the individual medals that delegation members wanted. But I helped the United States to a team bronze medal.
Today, I'm a retired Olympian, adjusting to normalcy and trying to get a job in journalism.
My Olympic dreams started when I was 7, after watching the 1976 Olympics with my grandparents and seeing Nadia Comaneci score the first Perfect 10 in gymnastics. "I'm going to the Olympics someday," I said.
"You can do anything you want to do if you put your mind to it," Grandpa said.
I tried sports ranging from baseball to figure skating and soccer to gymnastics. I was teased at baseball practice for not being a boy; literally had cold feet at the ice rink; was pushed down at soccer because of my small size; came to fear the 4-inch-wide beam in gymnastics. And ballet and jazz dancing were not competitive enough for me.
When I was 13, I met Soviet Master of Sport Irina Vdovets at my gymnastics gym in Evanston, Ill. She introduced me to rhythmic gymnastics, a sport that combines the grace of dance and the athleticism of gymnastics and includes five hand implements, the rope, the hoop, the ball, two clubs and a ribbon.
Vdovets, who moved from Moscow to Chicago in 1978 with her husband, saw that I had talent but lacked discipline. "There is no democracy in this gym, Diane," Vdovets said in her Russian accent after I'd refused to do my routine again. I learned quickly that I did not have to do anything my coach asked, but that someone else certainly would.
From that time on, I trained or rehearsed my routines in my head through mental imagery.
My work paid off in the spring of 1985, when I shot from 22nd in the United States in 1984 to third at the National Championships. But after seven weeks of summer training in Bulgaria, I became brainwashed with the idea that to win, I had to be skinny.
In school, I made up gym classes and did extra credit assignments after competitions to make up for my poor attendance records. I studied hard because I had no chance of getting a college scholarship or of having a professional athletic career. And, unlike in most countries where the government support athletes, my family and I faced the financial burden of a privatized sport.
I landed one of two spots on the 1988 U.S. Olympic Team to go to Seoul, South Korea. I was in on cloud nine.
My teammate, Michelle Berube, and I stayed home during the opening ceremonies. The coaches and the American judges wanted us to stay focused on the meet and not on the celebration. But I felt cheated because I'd dreamed of marching with the United States Team into the Olympic forum, and I'd earned the chance.
We would not be medal contenders in Seoul. The Soviets and the Bulgarians had dominated my sport for decades. But I aimed to do well for my country by making the competition finals.
Unfortunately, I came down with what the U.S. Olympic Committee thought was food poisoning. Later I learned that I had a bleeding ulcer.
I competed and ended up out of the top 20 in 26th place.
In the closing ceremonies I marched into the arena with the best athletes from each participating country. There were gold medalists and last-placers. But everyone celebrated an event that joins humanity.
I went home from Seoul disappointed but ready to look ahead.
Old at 19
I started school at Northwestern University in the winter of 1989. After the applause of the Olympics, meeting President Reagan and performing in a 20-second solo while Kenny Rogers sang at the 1989 American Music Awards, it seemed I'd come home to grapple with an aging body. I was 19 and finally hitting puberty.
What happened to me was common among athletes who have pushed their bodies to the limit in low-weight-oriented sports: It became harder to keep in the shape that I had to be in to get a good score. I also battled chronic injuries from years when I had failed to let injuries heal and had restricted my eating during crucial bone development.
The reduction in my regimen from 1 1/2 hours of ballet plus seven hours of gymnastics to only about five or six hours a day, six days a week, affected my weight. Part of my trek included yo-yo dieting. I starved myself and ran in weight-reducing "sauna" suits before competitions; then binged and purged after returning home, aggravating my "touchy" stomach.
But at one point, the weight did not come off anymore. because my metabolism had leveled off. I began to hate myself and the sport for making me diet to be the perfect-looking gymnast. And my athletic achievements started to suffer.
1990 was a turning point in my life.
While at a meet in Moscow trying to qualify the United States into the World Cup competition for the first time, I received a telegram from my family that said: "Your sister is seriously ill. Under the circumstances you may want to return home. Love, Dad."
In the next 36 hours, I competed; placed 17th, earning points toward World Cup qualification for the United States and established my highest world-ranking where all countries participated; and flew home to Chicago.
My sister, Janet, had lymphoma and Legionnaires' disease, a severe form of pneumonia. Medicine ended the pneumonia, and Janet went on chemotherapy. She was in remission by October but relapsed 10 days later. Only a bone marrow transplant could save her.
My family moved to Seattle from Chicago. My brother, Jeff, donated his bone marrow at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. The rest of us, eight others, concentrated on giving psychological help and donated platelets or blood.
Janet spent 37 days inside a Laminar air flow room. Four days after her transplant, Janet unwrapped her Christmas presents through inside-out plastic arms.
But In March 1991, doctors said that Janet had relapsed and had only one to four weeks to live. We packed our bags and returned home to Illinois.
But my sister had the last word: "I'm not ready to check out yet," she said.
My sister never gave up. Janet is back at work and is in "spontaneous" remission.
Her perseverance taught me not to take my health for granted. Once I was devastated to drop my equipment in competition. But I got a new perspective after seeing bone-marrow transplant patients endure near-fatal doses of chemo, full-body radiation and drugs such as morphine, cocaine and heroin.
By 1992 I started working with physicians and my sports psychologist to speed up my metabolism and lower my body fat while eating healthy to get myself on my second Olympic Team. But although I was one of the top three gymnasts in the United States for seven years, I was a long-shot to make the 1992 Team because pneumonia, knee surgery and a severely sprained ankle kept me out of Olympic-caliber training from January to May.
My gymnastics career ended at the Olympic Trials in Baltimore, June 7, 1992. I placed fourth.
I rallied on my last day, after only five weeks of serious training. The standing crowd applauded my best-ever performance as my family cried.
But while I was healthy, psyched and more mentally prepared for the Games than ever, the judges chose two younger, less-experienced athletes to go to Barcelona - one placed last at the end of the first day at the Olympics because of competition jitters.
Post-competition adjustment hasn't been easy.
In journalism I must start at the bottom of the ladder and work my way up as I did at age 7. But I would not trade my athletic endeavors or the international touring.
After traveling to Fidel Castro's Cuba and behind the Iron Curtain at the end of the Cold War, I no longer take freedom and the fight to maintain it as a privilege. In Hiroshima in 1990, I performed just hours after a wreath-laying ceremony at the Atomic Bomb Memorial and watched as Japanese citizens with 45-year-old facial scars, applauded.
I embark now on a new road. But, full steam ahead.