2012 Women’s Olympic Gymnastics: Jordyn Wieber Gets Her Gold In Team Competition

American gymnast Jordyn Wieber was crushed when she didn’t qualify for the Women’s All-Around competition for the 2012 Summer Olympics, due to the rule allowing only two competitors from each country to move on. Weiber wound up finishing fourth in the individual all-around with a score of 60.032, behind two of her American counterparts.

Wieber missed on one of her goals in the individual all-around, but that disappointment was quickly washed away with the sound of “The Star Spangled Banner” and the feeling of a gold medal being placed around her neck.

“The feeling was incredible,” Wieber said. “To have this gold medal around your neck, it’s really an indescribable feeling. It just shows how much of a team we are.”

The United States team was able to pull ahead of Russia early in the competition. A big reason for the lead was due to the outstanding vault by vault specialist McKayla Maroney, scoring a 16.233.

It had been 16 years since the women’s team had won Olympic gold in the team event, but thanks to Maroney’s amazing vault the Americans went on to dominate the competition. Wieber drilled her own vault, scoring a 15.933.

“I said to her, ‘redemption is a heck of a motivator,’ and today was redemption,” Wieber’s long-time coach John Geddert said.

Wieber’s strong vault started off a four-rotation exercise that helped propel the Americans to a gold medal, including picking up a 14.666 on the bars, the event that was part of Wieber’s downfall in the individual competition that left her in tears. After the uneven bars Wieber picked up a 15 in the floor routine as the United States cruised right along.

The “Fab Five” as they’ve been called, went on to crush Russian with a total score of 183.596, five points more than Russia’s score of 178.530 and take home the gold medal.

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