Last night I stayed up until the ungodly hour of 11:00 and watched Shawn Johnson win the mirror ball on Dancing with the Stars. I was so excited for my chica. She kept saying her gymnastics training was an impediment, but I still don’t believe it. She had the advantage of knowing how to move her body. Yes, gymnastics moves are different, but she has experience with making her body do just what she asks of it. Plus she has the flexibility (ironically she was always disliked by some in the gymnastics community because of her lack of flexibility) and the gymnastics skills. Gymnastics helped her in a lot of ways.
Not that she didn’t work hard, improve, and totally deserve to win. Gilles was great, too, and Melissa was very god, but I think Shawn really proved herself in the freestyle. As far as I’m concerned, that separates the girls from the men–or whatever, lol. She proved she had what it takes. She kicked butt.
She was very cute when she won. Of course, she inherently unable to be anything but cute. She and Mark really did believe that Gilles would win. She closed her eyes to steal herself for his name to be announced as winner, and both she and Mark covered their faces with their hands when they won–a sign of surprise and disbelief. Oh, and props to Gilles. He was amazingly gracious to Shawn and I think he was really sincere about loving the experience and being happy for Shawn. Most times when people say that, they seem to feel the exact opposite, but I do Gilles was honest.
I also saw Shawn on the morning talk shows this morning. I’m hoping the experience of winning something again might give Shawn the motivation to go back to gymnastics. Everyone has slowly been coming to the conclusion that she’s done with gymnastics, but I got a good vibe from her. She said she’d go back to the gym. She’s been saying that for a while, but she’s also said she’ll wait to see “if her heart is in it”. She said that again, but it seemed tacked on. Before, it was a way out so she could keep people hanging; now it seemed more like a possibility but not an inevitability that she would be done with gymnastics. I really want her to continue on. She could do so much more, she still has a lot of years in her. And, frankly, she gets a lot of disrespect as a one-hit wonder (which isn’t fair). I’d love to see her prove ‘em wrong.
Anyway, here are Shawn’s last two dances, one from Monday, one from last night’s finale.
