Katelyn Ohashi, a senior at UCLA, tumbled and danced her way to a perfect score in the floor exercise at the Collegiate Challenge in Anaheim, Calif.
The score wasn’t the story. Ohashi was rewarded with 10.0 by gymnastics judges 11 times in her college career, nine of them in floor exercise. While it was a difficult routine, Ohashi never looked stressed. She smiled throughout the entire 90-second routine. Combine that with music and crowd reaction, you have a viral video.
If you’re a YouTube aficionado, you probably have seen it. The video has been seen more than 44 million times.
“Just fantastic,” Senator Kamala Harris of California wrote. “The ground is no place for a champion,” the civil rights activist Jesse Jackson said.
Ohashi will make her professional debut, and likely her gymnastics swan song, Wednesday, Aug. 21, as a gymnastics participant in the inaugural Aurora Games at Times Union Center.
A one-time elite gymnast who won the 2013 American Cup over future Olympian Simone Biles, Ohashi became internationally famous, thanks to a medium that didn’t exist when Nadia Comeneci posted the first perfect score 43 years ago. YouTube wasn’t founded until 2005.
“It’s been different,” Ohashi said, “seeing how many celebrities had posted about it — I would never have expected it. It’s all exciting things that are happening. It was a big surprise.”
Ohashi, who received her UCLA degree last month in gender studies, seems to be in a good place with gymnastics. It hasn’t always been that way.
She has written and spoken about the pain, stress and expectations she endured as a teenager while trying to fulfill Olympic dreams. At 16, she was forced to take a year off because of a back injury, and it was during her time away that she rediscovered her passion for the sport.
“I felt brainwashed,” she wrote in a recent blog post. “Everyone else’s normal was becoming my reality and I was heading towards a physical and mental burnout.”
At that point, Ohashi retreated from her Olympics track and focused on a college career. She helped the Bruins to the 2018 NCAA championship and earned All-American honors 10 times.
“I definitely love the sport,” she said in a phone interview. “Everything that was seen in the video is how I feel about gymnastics. I don’t regret anything.
“I would say if there’s something, it’s realizing that (the way she was trained) is not the only way. Other than that, I’m happy with where I am at and where the sport has taken me. I couldn’t be more grateful to the people around me than I do now.”
Let’s face it, gymnastics isn’t in a great place now.
It is, and mostly has been, a sport where the peak performers are in their teens. The sex abuse scandal of Larry Nassar, the former team physician for USA gymnastics, has darkened the sport, at least stateside. Nassar is serving a 175-year prison sentence after his conviction of abusing 156 female gymnasts.
The sport has a lot of ground to repair before next year’s Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
“The peak age has always been this young,” Ohashi said. “There’s not much changing that. I can only hope that it will all be sorted out by the next Olympics.”
Routines like what Ohashi did on the floor exercise help us remember why we watch.
She said she hasn’t been to the gym much since the end of her college career, but she will get her routines together in time for the Aurora Games.
“I’m used to prepping for meets, so I’ll do the same approach,” she said. “I’m going to work out when I can and stay in shape and get back to my skills … to be able to complete my routine.”
After that, Ohashi said she probably will leave the mats and pursue a broadcasting career.
“I have other areas that I would like to blossom in,” Ohashi said. “This (Aurora Games) competition is like my final goodbye to the sport. Of course, I do summer camps and I’ll make appearances, but coaching is definitely not in my future.”
