I could watch that gif all day. It\’s magical.

anyone else remember Al\’s racist attempt at a sob-story about Simone\’s childhood and adoption during P&Gs this past summer? essentially it just heavily overplayed the fact that her birth mother had issues with alcohol and drug abuse and she was adopted by her grandparents who COULD NEVER, EVER be considered her parents at all oh no heaven forbid and this story basically reinforced -or at least tried to-almost every modern stereotype about black people and when it boils down to it the whole moral of the story is that it\’s an outright miracle that someone like Simone(a woman who is NOT white and spent a lot of her early childhood in foster care) can grow up to live in a stable and loving home with parents who also are NOT white, not to mention become one of the best gymnasts in all of history ever. So one would believe that Al, a well beyond middle-aged man with some kind of experience with people and the public, would just stop himself there, right? Nope. He just dumped a whole can of fuel onto the absolute dumpster fire that is already pretty much his entire being. Obviously, because people in the world have common sense and actual morality, did not just let his shitty little anecdote slide so good ol\’ Al naturally received some backlash on Twitter for it, as was well deserved. People were correcting him that Simone\’s grandparents are just her parents and Al continued to argue until his grave that no, they are just her grandparents and no matter what anyone or any actual, real information says, Simone\’s parents can never even be called just her parents and it is such a hanus and outrageous thing to do so which, naturally, left another massive dent into the giant car wreck that is already Al Trautwig. I think at this point one of Simone\’s dogs would be a better commentator than him.

I was at American Cup, so I thought I’d share a bit of my experience to go along with your discussions. The venue was definitely much too large for a post-Olympic year. There were a fair amount of people there, but I don’t think they could have come close to filling it. They also ended up closing off all of the upper level seats (where my ticket was) and moving everyone down closer to the floor. This was great for me since I had bought a cheaper ticket and ended up with amazing seats, but it must have been very annoying for people who paid full price. The prices were also INSANE. I think the venue and price combo really turned people away. (And on a side note, I couldn’t believe Steve Penny was there!! I didn’t seem him present anything or speak publicly like he normally would, though.) I’ve been to a number of American Cups recently, and this one also seemed super disorganized. At the end they had some of the routines going at the same time, which was distracting and unnecessary with such a small field.

I also saw a lot of talk online about Riley’s BB fall, and I was interested to hear your take! I agree that it actually didn’t look quite as bad as it could have been. Right after it happened I told my husband she was lucky she fell on her back instead of her head since she could have easily landed differently. Also, I know some people criticized Maggie’s reaction online, but she had been standing more in the middle of the beam and farther from the podium during the routine, but she moved very, very quickly right to the edge of the podium during the fall. So fast that I didn’t even see her moving, but there she was! I thought she reacted well and did a good job of assessing her gymnast’s reaction before doing anything more. They did leave the venue for quite some time afterward as well, so hopefully Riley received the medical attention she needed.