Horton takes silver in high bar

[Jay C. Upchurch]

BEIJING, China — U.S. Olympian Jonathan Horton won the silver medal in the men’s high bar finals on Tuesday inside the National Indoor Stadium in Beijing, China at the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Horton had an overall score of 16.175, finishing just behind Kai Zou of China who won the gold medal with a score of 16.200. Fabian Hambuechen of Germany won the bronze medal with a score of15.875.

This is the second medal for the 22-year old Houston, Texas, native who won a bronze medal last week after he and the U.S. men's gymnastics team competed in the team finals finishing just behind, Japan, the silver medalist, and host country China, the gold medalist.

Horton is the 2008 U.S. all-around silver medalist and he finished fourth in the all-around at the 2007 World Championships, becoming just the fifth U.S. man to finish in the top four in the all-around at an Olympic Games or a World Championships.

Horton completed his outstanding collegiate career at the University of Oklahoma with 18 All-America honors and six individual national titles, while helping the Sooners win three NCAA National Championships during his four years in Norman.

Horton is the second gymnast in school history to be selected to the U.S. Olympic Team and first since two-time gold medalist Bart Con ner competed in the 1976, 1980, and 1984 Olympic Games.

Fans can watch Horton win the silver medal in the high bar event finals when the event is televised tonight at 7:00 p.m. (CT) on NBC. (KFOR News Channel 4, Cox Channel 3 in the Oklahoma City metro area).

OU SID Report

[ouflak]

Just think, if these Olympics were being held in the U.S., he would have won gold. ;)

[ouflak]

Ok, I've just seen Horton's performance, and frankly, he should have won easily. That was by far the most stunning and well executed of the performances.

[Paperclip]

Thanks for the spoiler alert. :mad:

[Sooner98]

Thanks for the spoiler alert. :mad:

+1

I was hoping to be surprised when I watched it tonight. So much for that.

[Salt City Sooner]

From the way this guy talks, Horton really outdid himself:


BEIJING -- Women's gymnastics gets most of the prime-time cameras, Wheaties boxes and ESPN commercials, but men's gymnastics is far more compelling.

It's not that I'm not impressed by what the women do. The moves they perform on the beam? To flip backward, head over tail, and land on a 4-inch beam? Ridiculous. And I'm not sure what shined brighter during Tuesday night's beam competition -- Shawn Johnson's gold-medal performance or her "I did it! I finally won it!" smile.


But when I watch the women, I always expect to see Sally Struthers coaching next to the Karolyis. The men, meanwhile, are actual adults and they not only look healthy, they look as if they just stepped off the page of a Jack Kirby comic book.


And the things they do? None of it seems possible without aid from Pixar or Industrial Light and Magic. Consider Jonathan Horton, who won the silver medal on the high bar Tuesday with a routine so staggering that it lacked only a utility belt or him shooting spider webs from his wrists. He whipped his body around the bar in exhilarating revolutions, held himself straight up with one hand, flung himself off the bar before grabbing it again on his way down and, in short, did everything but prevent Dr. Octopus from taking over the world.


"There's a reason it's my favorite event," Horton said. "I'm a little bit of a daredevil. Everyone thinks of me as kind of a crazy dude around here. It's a lot of excitement up there. When I'm up on the bar, I feel like I'm on a roller coaster. A lot of gymnastics is like that, but especially high bar -- it's so fast-paced, you just go and go and go. It's exciting and it's a lot of fun, but people don't realize how much work we put in to a fast-paced routine like that."


Trust me, Jonathan, I appreciate what must go into a performance like that. Although your official Olympic bio mentions that you're from Houston and competed for Oklahoma, it totally leaves out the part about getting bitten by a radioactive spider.


Horton won the silver Tuesday after assessing his opponents and spicing up his routine with more difficult moves to increase his start value to 16.9 (don't ask how the new scoring system works, we don't have all day).


"That was the first time I've done it," Horton said of the routine. "I've done half the routine in practice and stopped, then the other half of the routine, but never the full thing. I knew I could get through the whole routine, but it's so long and so much going on with it that, at practice, I'm too tired and I would fall on my face trying my dismount.


"The thing that was going through my mind was, if I don't gamble, I'm not going to medal. If I do gamble and fall, I'm not going to medal. But if I happen to stay on, I'm going to medal."

He did, completing an excellent night for the U.S. team as well as a very good Olympics. Johnson, who came into the Games as a gold-medal favorite, finally struck gold with her performance on the beam, with Nastia Liukin taking the silver. The U.S. team won 10 medals, with Johnson and Liukin bringing home its two golds (if they wore all their medals at once, they would tip over). Despite the absence of the Hamm brothers, it's the most medals by the United States at an Olympics held outside America.


After Johnson and the U.S. finished second to China in the team all-around, she finished second to Liukin in the individual all-around and second again on the floor exercise. But the 4-foot-9, 16-year-old who barely survived her own birth stood very tall indeed at the top of the podium Tuesday.


"I remember saying, 'Finally!' a lot," Johnson said. "I saw Nastia when the scores came up and she said, 'Finally!' To finish off on my last routine with the gold is just the perfect ending to this whole experience. I can't stop smiling, I'm so excited."

"I'm totally, fantastically happy because she needed that," women's team coordinator Marta Karolyi said. "She was a little frustrated by not winning the all-around. This has to make her feel very good about herself and for the future. We could see she was down a little bit, but the whole team and everyone around her tried to assure her that she did an excellent job, even if she didn't win that medal."


Johnson and Liukin, who won five medals to bring the family total to nine (her father/coach, Valeri Liukin, won four for the old Soviet Union), will go on to the fame and fortune that normally accompanies women's gymnastics champs.


And as for Horton? He has the silver from the high bar, a bronze from the team all-around and, well, you never know, someone might make "Gymkata 2."

http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/summer08/columns/story?columnist=caple_jim&id=3542459&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab3pos2

[tulsaoilerfan]

The Olympics are more fixed than pro 'rassling and the NBA

[sooner59]

True. We are getting screwed in the Olympics, but I am really proud to have a Sooner win multiple medals. I have much U.S. pride, but to actually have a Sooner medal is amazing.