Though Wieber’s leg has bothered her since trials in June, she has not undergone an MRI exam. John Geddert, Wieber’s coach, said that will happen once she’s home, where she is expected to be placed in a walking boot for six weeks. Missing the Olympics, Geddert said, simply wasn’t an option.
“It would have taken wild horses to drag her out of here,” Geddert said. “She’s not going to not compete. So I didn’t want to dwell on it; she didn’t want to dwell on it.”
Raisman, for her part, didn’t appear to get off to a triumphant start Tuesday. Competing last on the balance beam after several top contenders had wobbled wildly and toppled, Raisman held her nerves and form to deliver what appeared to be a medal-worthy routine. Judges scored it 14.966 points, which placed it fourth behind Romanian veteran Catalina Ponor, who was credited with bronze.
Raisman’s coach, Mihai Brestyan, promptly appealed the mark.
The score of a gymnastics routine is composed of two elements: one for its difficulty, another for its execution. Only the difficulty score can be appealed, and Brestyan argued that Raisman hadn’t been given full credit for one of the skills in her routine.
After a second panel of judges reviewed Raisman’s performance frame-by-frame on video and raised her score to 15.066, the exact mark Ponor was granted. But Raisman was granted bronze in a tiebreak by virtue of her higher execution marks.
Buoyed by the outcome, Raisman threw herself into her floor routine with unbridled confidence. She left judges no room to quibble over her placement, earning the highest marks for both difficulty (6.500) and execution (9.100).
Ponor took silver (15.200). And Russia’s Aliya Mustafina claimed bronze (14.900).
In the men’s horizontal bar final, Americans Danell Leyva and Jonathan Horton finished fifth and sixth, respectively, with scores of 15.833 and 15.466.
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