From ”train wreck“ to leader of the pack

By Linda Robertson - McClatchy Newspapers

Shawn Johnson's mother enrolled her in gymnastics class out of fear more than anything else. At least at the gym there were mats, foam pads and coaches to catch the little daredevil.

Back home, Johnson had climbed out of her crib before she could walk. As a toddler, she liked to stack toys or furniture and jump off. At the park, Johnson's favorite thing was running pell-mell down a steep set of concrete steps.

”She was a train wreck waiting to happen,“ said Teri Johnson, Shawn's mother.

Now Johnson's favorite thing is sprinting down a runway, launching off a springboard, pushing off a vault and flipping two and a half times through the air before sticking a perfect landing.

The sight of Johnson's acrobatic Yurchenko vault could become one of the highlight images of the Beijing Games, which begin Friday. So could the sight of Johnson standing atop the medal podium, her gold medal, white teeth and blond ponytail glinting in the camera lights.

Not only is Johnson from ”America's heartland“ — West Des Moines, Iowa — where June's floods damaged the gym where she trains, but she's the All-American girl who stayed in public school so she could go to the prom and attend classes with her friends rather than take the home school route chosen by most elite gymnasts so they can spend more hours in the gym.

Johnson's coach has a heartwarming story, too. Liang Chow, a former Chinese gymnast, came to the U.S. to pursue his ”American dream“ of opening his own gym. Now Johnson is taking him back to his home country, where she and the U.S. team plan to beat the Chinese for the gold medal.

Get ready for lots of Shawn Johnson. She is poised to ascend to the cereal-box throne previously occupied by Carly Patterson and Mary Lou Retton. She could become the most dominant all-around champion since Nadia Comaneci. And she could lead the U.S. to its first team gold since a lame Kerri Strug vaulted the Magnificent Seven to the top in 1996.

Johnson, 16, won the 2007 world individual title as the U.S. edged the Chinese. She has a rare combination of power on vault, personality on floor exercise, fluidity on balance beam and daring on uneven bars. At 4-8, 90 pounds, she's more bounce than ballet.

”Shawn's style is "Ready, set, go!'“ said former world champ Kim Zmeskal-Burdette, now a coach. ”I remember the first time I saw her and saying, "My God, this kid is crazy.' She'd run down the middle of the floor and do a double full or hop onto the beam.“

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Johnson exudes a sense of fun.

”She enjoys being confident,“ Zmeskal said. ”Her path is very similar to mine. She wants to be the one everyone is putting the pressure on.“

Bela Karolyi, the former coach, often gets asked to compare gymnasts, such as Retton and Comaneci, but he says he never could — until he saw Johnson.

”With little Shawn, it frightens me because if you look at a photo of Kim from 10 years ago, you couldn't tell the difference between them,“ Karolyi said at his Texas ranch, where the U.S. team was training. ”I saw Kimbo growing up in the gym — the passion, the head movement — and now I see Shawn and it's incredible. Carbon copies.“

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If Johnson is challenged by anyone in Beijing, it could be teammate Nastia Liukin, a nine-time world medalist.

Liukin, 18, a native of Moscow who lives in Parker, Texas, is the daughter of two gymnasts. Her father and coach, Valeri, won two golds for the Soviet Union at the 1988 Olympics, and her mother, Anna, was a 1987 rhythmic gymnastics world champ.

The styles of Johnson and Liukin contrast sharply. Johnson is a power gymnast while Liukin, seven inches taller, is all about precision. On uneven bars — her best event — Liukin's body line is reminiscent of former champion Svetlana Khorkina. The start value of her routine is 7.7, highest in the world.

”Nastia is amazing on bars; even as coaches it's hard not to stop and watch when she's making a turn,“ Zmeskal-Burdette said. ”Nastia is very consistent, always working, working, working on the detail of this fingertip or that toe.“

Johnson and Liukin are also good friends, even though they're often competing against each other for No. 1.

”We're better as a team because of that bond,“ Liukin said. ”Inside the gym, it's competition. But outside the gym, it's Shawn showing me a picture of her prom dress or we're talking about books or music.“

Johnson's parents — Teri is a school system accounting clerk, Doug is a contractor — have tried to keep the sophomore's life as normal as possible despite the demands of the sport and her growing fame. She may own a ”Beijing red“ Range Rover (she can barely see over the steering wheel), but her mother still drives a 2003 Suzuki and makes Johnson clean her room.

Teri Johnson originally chose Chow's gym because it was closest to home, but she found she liked his and his wife Liwen Zhuang's attitude toward gymnastics, emphasizing enjoyment over medals and health over training volume.

”I never promised Shawn that she would be a world champion,“ said Chow, who grew up in a Chinese sports school and was on the world bronze-winning team in 1989 before accepting a scholarship to study English and help coach at the University of Iowa. ”She has stayed a sweetheart. Four years ago when she won her first national title, my wife was coaching her on beam but couldn't go to the meet. So when she was on the podium, Shawn took the medal off and said, "Chow, this is for Li.'“

Said Johnson: ”Chow and his wife have given up a lot to get me where I am. They're like my second parents. Chow hasn't been to China in 13 years, and I hope to have the honor of taking him back to where he was a celebrity athlete and showing people how great a coach he is.“

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During downtime, Johnson likes to compose short stories and poems. She wrote a poem called ”Katherine“ about disappointment, another one called ”Little Leaf“ about prejudice and another called ”Champion“ about doubt and belief. Her mother saw the poem on Shawn's website and, not realizing Shawn had written it, had an artist inscribe some of lines onto a headboard, which she gave to Shawn as a gift.

”She told me she'd found it on the Internet, but she finally confessed and said, "Oh, Mom, I wrote that,'“ Teri Johnson said. ”The poem was about some of her insecurities. There's a lot more to her than people see in public, and that comes out in her writing.“

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Another person in whom Johnson confides is Sanya Richards, the 400-meter runner from Pembroke Pines and Austin, Texas, who is also expected to win gold in Beijing. The two met while shooting a Coca-Cola commercial.

”She's like a big sister, a mentor,“ Johnson said. ”She watches out for me and sends me e-mails all the time.“

Johnson used to get homesick and have nightmares when she traveled to meets. The pressure to perform bothered her. But over the past year she has learned to embrace huge expectations.

”I've learned how to calm down and control the emotions when there's so much going on around me,“ she said. ”It's going to be a roller coaster. But I love a crowd. People bring out the best in me.“