Golden Girl
July 31, 2008
Long before the opening ceremonies begin, Shawn Johnson has already been dubbed the It Girl of the Beijing Games. National champ, world champ, and all-around superstar, this 16-year-old West Des Moines, Iowa native is awash in endorsement deals and interview requests.
“It’s great,” Johnson says of the pre-Olympic media firestorm. “I love being able to answer questions. I remember being the girl who always had questions. I love the attention.”
Yep, Shawn Johnson is already a star. She has her own couture leotard line with signature “SJ” initials in rhinestones along the arm—“she claims not [to care], but I think she gives it more thought than she would let on,” mom Teri says of Shawn’s sartorial choices—contracts with big-time Olympic sponsors like Coca-Cola and McDonalds, and a series of tear-jerking NBC promotional spots designed to draw in even more fans during the Games.
“I don’t think it will sink in, not for a while,” Johnson says, laughing off all the attention. “Not until I’m back home from Beijing. Maybe not even then. … It’s all kind of a blur, but it feels great. I can’t wait for it to really hit home.”
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Johnson’s coach, Liang Chow, originally from China, has been named the 2008 U.S. Olympic team’s head coach and he, and just about everybody else, expect to see this “new Mary Lou” with gold around her neck next month in Beijing—probably more than once. An enormous expectation that, somehow, Johnson doesn’t find the least bit daunting.
“I’ve learned through experience how to stay calm in a pressure situation and compete to the best that I can and not let the pressure get to me,” she says, shrugging off the immense challenge that is winning Olympic gold. “My biggest thing is that I’m afraid to let myself down. I work so hard in practice that I want to go out there and show everybody what I’ve been doing. You don’t want that feeling that, ‘I could have done better.’ Every athlete has that fear, but you can’t think about that. You can’t let that get to you or that will happen. I think about the positive, stay calm and go for it.”
So, despite all the hype, all the pressure, Johnson somehow remains above the fray. (Johnson does admit to getting nervous—“I always am,” she laughs—but says she just hides it well.) Always smiling, never bragging—at least not about herself; she has, in multiple interviews, called the U.S. women “unbeatable” as a team—Johnson just goes with the flow. A little embarrassed by all the attention—for instance, the first time she saw her life-size cardboard cut-out promoting Coke at a local grocery store she ran and hid—Johnson stubbornly clings to the idea that she’s just a normal teenager from Iowa, who happens to do gymnastics.
“She does just the same stuff that everybody else does,” Teri insists. “Go to a movie. Go out to dinner. Go to the mall. She texts. A lot. She doesn’t do a lot late, that might be how she’s not ‘normal,’ just because she’s very sleep-needy. So, the things she does are earlier in the evening than a lot of kids. … She’s so not perfect. Her room isn’t as clean as I’d like, and she’s not that great about picking up her clothes, stuff like that.
“She did go to prom. That was a big thing. That was very cool for her to do,” Teri says, before adding with a laugh, “but then [the prom pictures] end up on NBC. Yeah, that’s normal.”
Clearly, that vision of normalcy gets harder to cling to every time Johnson sees herself on TV, a billboard or the cover of a national magazine; hardly run-of-the-mill stuff for most high school sophomores. (So far, Johnson has stayed in public school, thanks to a few time concessions Valley High has been willing to make, but with a three-month touring schedule following the Games, it could be hard to do her junior year normally come fall.)
Still, even a world champion can be shy. One day last year, Johnson emailed her mom a poem, called “Champion,” saying simply, “What do you think?” Teri was so enamored of the heart-rending and inspiring 33-line verse that she had a custom headboard made for Shawn’s room with the poem embossed on fabric.
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When she surprised her daughter with the present as she returned home from a gymnastics trip, Shawn got tears in her eyes and asked, “Did you know I wrote that?”
“I was in shock, actually,” Teri recalls. “I thought it was just something she found on the Internet and liked. I had no idea. She can still surprise me.”
The poem, now on Johnson’s website (http://www.shawnjohnson.net/), is perhaps a less guarded look at the world champion than she displays in interviews, including such sentiments as: “You fear the loss and pain of defeat, but still are able to stand on two feet … the heart’s desire and all the support, but when the pressure builds and tears you apart … how are you able to still carry a smile?”
It’s clear that, despite all the success she’s had so far, it’s never far from Johnson’s mind that the medal she wants most—Olympic gold—is still out there, and so close now she can feel it.
“I mean, making the team, honestly, doesn’t mean too much,” Johnson said shortly after Trials. “You can always be replaced. There are always alternates ready to take your spot. You always have to keep in top shape. It’s great to have the title [of Olympian], but it makes you want to work even harder to hold on to it; to stay true to it.”
Staying true to her talent, and her Midwest values, mean a lot to both Johnson and her parents, Teri and Doug. Shawn, their only child, came after ten years of marriage—Teri jokes they were, “waiting until they were sure they were ready”—and is clearly the light of their lives. But Teri is also careful to maintain only a mother-daughter relationship with her ultra-talented offspring, staying far away from the gymnastics and business side of Shawn’s life.
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“I’m just her biggest fan,” Teri laughs demurely. “I can not believe it. I mean, [the Olympics,] that’s huge, you know?”
At this point, it seems that everyone in Iowa knows Shawn Johnson and, as the Games draw ever closer, Teri and Doug struggle to keep Shawn, and themselves, grounded.
“A local dealership donated a car,” Teri explains. “It’s an LR2. A Land Rover. It’s ‘Beijing Red.’ A very nice little car. I’m jealous. I have a little [2003] Suzuki.”
But Teri is quick to add that the Land Rover belongs to Shawn, not her, and though her daughter would be happy to let her take it for a spin, Teri wouldn’t dare. “It doesn’t feel right,” she sighs. “You know, it’s not mine. I can just see someone, standing there, saying, ‘Look at the mom driving.’ It doesn’t feel right. When she goes into a restaurant they’re like, ‘You don’t need to [pay,]’ And, you know, that just doesn’t feel right.
“I tell you,” Teri continues, “somebody does something every day that makes her feel really special. I think it means a lot to our state. People are just stepping up every day to make her feel special.”
Teri and Doug are getting used to saying no, declining offers they feel aren’t in their daughter’s best interest and putting the kibosh on using any of Shawn’s fame to their own advantage. “I tell you, we have so many generous people, wanting to help, and unless it’s necessary or it’s needed, I would feel greedy taking advantage, or even accepting, some of these generosities, just because,” Teri says. “I mean, like, the private jet that flew her [and Chow to Trials because of the Iowa flooding]. They offered to take us [all] back. No. I mean, why? That seems wasteful. It’s not necessary.
“People just really want to give,” Teri adds. “I think that’s wonderful, but I don’t think you should take unless you need to.”
Johnson, who never wanted to do NCAA gymnastics, turned pro almost as soon as she turned Elite. A recent ESPN article estimated that she’s already earned close to a million dollars, even before the Games begin. That’s major cash, but Johnson insists that she doesn’t do the sport for the money, or the fame. She does it because gymnastics is a part of her. A passion.
“What keeps me going?,” she muses. “My love for the sport; my goals and my dreams. … To me, winning isn’t everything. I want to personally win over myself, beat my last performance, set the bar higher. I want to see how great I can become, regardless of the scores, the placements. I just want to know that I’ve become the best I can be and reach my highest level.”
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And after Beijing? Well, Johnson has said she does plan to attend college—“She can’t wait for college,” Teri says. “She loves school. I think she’ll dig college”—but her next steps in the sport are unclear.
“I don’t know where the road is going to take me,” Johnson says. “What I’m going to fall in love with next, or if I’ll still be competing at 20. You never know what to expect. Whatever it is, I want to definitely find something that definitely makes me happy like this. I think that, whatever I do, I want to put just as much dedication into it as I do gymnastics. I think that’s going to be my lifestyle my whole life.”
“I think it will just turn into something else,” Teri agrees. “I think it’s just her personality. She will really just do whatever makes her happy, whatever that might be.”
Not that Johnson ever plans on being too far from the sport she adores. “I don’t know what I want to do, [but] I want to stay in the sport, one way or another, no matter what,” she insists. “I’ll always be a part of gymnastics. It’s just kind of inscribed in me, but I don’t know what path I’ll take.”
And how about when Johnson’s time in the limelight comes to an end? Well, Teri thinks she’ll be OK with that, too. “I don’t think she’s full of herself,” Shawn’s mom says, “so I really think she’ll be OK with that. I hope so, anyway.”
But, for now, Johnson is focused solely on Beijing. The future, for her, is August 10, the day women’s team competition begins in China.
“To me, now, it’s one day at a time,” she says of her preparation. “I want to approach every [workout] as if it’s the last one and kind of prepare one step at a time, until it’s time to actually compete.
“I talk to myself a lot,” Johnson adds, describing her pre-meet routine. “Keep myself inside my own head and not let anything get to me—any sounds or distractions outside. I just keep myself in my own little box, my own little world. … I always try to take a moment and think about what I’ve done, where I’m going, what
I’m working for. But I am that person that kind of just likes to go for it.
“I get that just from my training, my coaches,” Johnson concludes. “It’s been all them. They have taught me how to do it. I don’t know what they do, but it seems to work. I’ve put in thousands of routines—as many numbers as possible—and that gives me confidence to go out and do it one more time.”
Easy for Johnson to say, but that “one more time” is the one that really counts. That date with Olympic destiny she’s been waiting for her whole life.
As Johnson herself says in that poem she wrote and anonymously sent her mom: “It’s what runs in your veins, and it’s the key to your heart. And it’s only the beginning, only the start. It holds a future that could never be told. One that can shine with the brightest of gold. The sky is its limits. … As no one could ever predict how high, one could travel with the hard work put in to truly become a champion.” 
First Two Photos Courtesy Cheryl Shade
Last Three Photos by Grace Chiu
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