Gymnastics can be a cruel sport, and no one knows this more than the University of Utah's Sandy Woolsey. For years, they told her she was too, well, fat to be a gymnast. They wanted long and skinny; they got short and wide. They wanted Uma Thurman; they got Rosie O'Donnell.
The trouble was, Woolsey kept proving them wrong; she was one of the world's top gymnasts, even if she didn't look the part.It wasn't enough. They cut her from the national team, and Woolsey, spurned by her one true love, quit the sport for a season, wounded and starving.
That was three years ago - a lifetime for a gymnast - and on Saturday night Woolsey found the world of gymnastics a kinder place. No one was telling her she had to look like Cher. Nobody was tattling on her if she sipped a Diet Coke. And she was proving her place among the sport's best.
Competing in the NCAA championships, Woolsey delivered a 9.95 to tie for first place in the uneven bars, thus claiming a share of her first national championship and proving to herself (and possibly to others) that she could meet the sport on her own terms.
"I got over a big obstacle tonight," she said.
She knows there are other obstacles ahead, but that is for another day. Woolsey still doesn't fit the mold of a gymnast, but then she never did. At 5 feet, she weighs fully 130 pounds, but for now she owes her body that much.
She began gymnastics at 6 and at 14 she left her home in Colorado to study the sport full time in Arizona. If that was a sacrifice, she never knew it. She would do anything to satisfy her love for gymnastics. Anything. Compact and powerful, she made the national team at 16, and by then her coaches were watching her weight and weigh-ins were part of her daily routine.
"A gymnast peaks at 16 or 17, but they want you to continue to look like you're 12," she says. "But even when I was 12, I wasn't skinny. I'm not that body type."
Not that she didn't try. She had toast for breakfast, maybe a sandwich for lunch and, if she ate again at all, fruit for dinner. It wasn't enough. She worked out eight hours a day. It was like trying to race a car in the Indianapolis 500 on fumes. It became a vicious circle. If she surrendered to hunger and ate even an apple, she felt failure and guilty, so she immediately ran a couple of miles. Then she couldn't understand why she lacked energy in the gym and, figuring she was just out of shape, trained all the harder. If she went to bed without the gnawing of hunger in her gut, she felt more guilt.
Not surprisingly, Woolsey suffered a variety of injuries over the years due to overwork and undereating - torn hamstrings, a fractured hip, a cracked sternum and so on. She weighed 100 pounds at 16, but, next to her younger, 80-pound teammates, she looked like a linebacker. The pressure continued. Eating is psychological, she was told, you don't need it. Once, somebody reported to her coach that she had sneaked a Diet Coke. "I knew it wasn't true," he told her. "I knew you were too dedicated for that."
Woolsey's self esteem nosedived. She wore baggy clothes to hide her figure. She hated to see herself on TV. Oh, look how big I am.
Not that it seemed to matter. In the 1989 World Championships, she placed eighth in the all-around and seventh in the bars. In 1991, she finished second in the all-around at the U.S. championships, thus earning a spot on that year's World Championships team.
Or so she thought. "The coaches actually voted to see who was on the team," she said. "I was voted off. They said I was too big to be on the team."
That was the breaking point. A few months later, Woolsey quit the sport to heal her wounds, both physical (a hip injury) and mental. She couldn't take any more. Her body took revenge. She continued to eat modestly, but her body clutched every calorie. Her weight soared to more than 130 pounds.
A year later she was ready to try again. She came to Utah. Coach Greg Marsden easily could have turned his back on an overweight, injury-prone gymnast, but he didn't. Woolsey's problems have continued. A sophomore, she has rarely been able to compete in the floor and vault competitions this season because of chronic shin splints, which are the result, she believes, of her extra weight. The weight is a handicap in other ways, as well. You try doing a double back flip at the end of a floor routine while carrying an extra 30 pounds.
But it is a testament to Woolsey's tenacity and sheer strength that she was able to claim a national title on Saturday anyway.
"I knew if gymnastics could be good once, it could be good again," she said. "This is the second chance I needed."
Gymnastics is fun again, but perhaps the real test lies ahead. "Love turned into obsession," she says. "Now I have to turn it into love again." But can she do that and still raise the level of her performance? With the extra weight, routines that once were easy are now difficult, and for the first time fatigue is a factor. She believes she must lose weight.
She will be smarter this time, she says. She will eat healthier and more often so that her body doesn't suffer a famine reaction and glom onto calories. She will shed weight gradually, at her own pace. She will find her best weight, whatever that may be. And no matter what happens, she hopes always to like what she sees in the mirror and in herself.
"I'm a fighter," she says.
Not to mention a champion.