Alex Ko Read Free Page A

the bell to ring so I could rush home.
    Both my parents believed that schooling was the number one priority in life. My great-grandma always told me that my education was the one thing no one could ever take from me. So when I had problems in public school, my parents tried everything they could think of: first homeschooling, then back to public school, then to private school, then back to homeschooling. . . . I bounced around a bit during those first few years.
    Even while I was in kindergarten, my parents were desperate to find something to keep my mind off my school troubles, so right when I started school, they took me to a gymnastics class. For once, all the adults in the room were telling me to get up and run around. Maybe because I wasn’t the only boy, I loved it from the very first day. We were free to run, and move, and jump. It was like all that energy I had to force down in school could finally come rushing out. And I was a pretty quick study. We’ve even got a video of me doing a front handspring in one of my Chinese pop “shows” when I was just six years old.
    Soon I was going to gymnastics three or four times a week, and Sasha was in every class with me. My mom would pick us up from school and bring us home from the gym. Sasha’s mom, Marina, made my dance costumes. My little brother, Matt, even joined the team, and soon we were competing together. Our two families became really close. Some days, we’d hang out at Sasha’s place so late playing video games that I would have to call home and spend the night. If you added it all up, we probably spent months of our lives at each other’s houses.
    One day, after watching me in a competition, Marina asked if I’d like to train with her husband, Dmitri, who was then working at the University of Iowa as a coach with the men’s gymnastics team.
    “Alex has real potential,” Marina told my mom.
    I was really excited to train with Dmitri, because the university had one of the best college teams in the country. But it wasn’t until later that Sasha told me the whole truth: before he’d come to Iowa, his dad had been an Olympic gymnast in Russia. In 1996, he won a Gold Medal at the Summer Olympics in Atlanta! Dmitri was so humble, he never bragged about his achievements at all. But I was honored that he wanted to train me.
    By the time I was eight, I was going to gymnastics every day, and sometimes weekends too. We shared the gym with students from the Hawkeye gymnastics team. Sometimes they gave us tips, mostly on the small things that make a huge difference in your score in competition, like remembering to point your toes. I promised myself that one day I’d be just as good as any of them.
    At home, Matt and I festooned our shared bedroom with plaques and trophies from gymnastics. The back of our door was strung with dozens of ribbons. We might not have been as good as those college gymnasts, but when I closed my eyes at night, I could see myself wearing the Hawkeye uniform someday.
    But what I really wanted was to be as good as Dmitri. I could just imagine myself standing on that Olympic platform wearing red, white, and blue, and listening to the loudspeaker announce my name while the national anthem played.
    And if it hadn’t been for one little incident, I think I might have made it. . . .

Chapter 2
Missteps
    I wiped the sweat from my brow and stared at the parallel bars (or p-bars, as we called them). Even though the gym was about a thousand degrees, I was wearing long pants. Normally, we worked out in shorts, but for certain pieces of equipment, like p-bars, we wore pants to protect ourselves.
    “Come on, Alex,” said Coach. “Again! I’ll spot you.”
    Coach had a thick, aggressive European accent, so pretty much everything he said sounded stern. Then again, pretty much everything he said was stern. Some students disliked him for it, but I appreciated how much he pushed us. I hate it when adults assume I can’t take something seriously