Olympic Memories

My favorite sport to watch during the summer Olympics is gymnastics. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to watch much this year so I get my updates online. One thing about gymnastics, though... watching the sport always takes me back to a time when I was in the 5th grade. I was staying over at my friend, Christy's, and there was a movie that came out called "American Anthem" starring Mitch Gaylord. I think we watched that movie 5 times in the span of time that I stayed with her (in between sneaking out to ride double on her horse and getting bucked off!). We thought he was so hot... guess he was for the mid-80's! I look back at it all now and just laugh. Anyway, at the time, I liked the movie for the gymnastics. I think about it now and think, critically, that it really wasn't a great film. I will always remember it fondly, though. I also knew then that Mitch was a "real" gymnast but didn't know that he won gold at the Olympics and also didn't know that he a couple of high bar moves named after him.

Below are two videos: one showcases one of his moves and the other is the movie trailer. There was another video on youtube that I liked but it was 10 minutes long. If you're interested, you should go there and do a youtube search on Mitch Gaylord. It highlights the Olympics for that long ago year of 1984. I was 9... I would've been 10 going on 11 when the movie came out.

THE GAYLORD II


AMERICAN ANTHEM