Postcards: Horton Motivated

Sooners in Denmark
Jonathan Horton, the reigning Tyson American Cup and NCAA all-around champion, is about to take another bold step up the competition ladder in men's gymnastics.

Horton is one of the six men who comprise a U.S. team that will be on display Oct. 17-21 at the 2006 World Championships in Aarhus, Denmark. It's the biggest stage yet for the 20-year-old Horton, and a solid performance could make the University of Oklahoma gymnast one to watch as projections intensify leading to the 2008 Olympics.

He'll be joined by a familiar face, as OU head coach Mark Williams was appointed to lead Team USA. Williams, a four-time NCAA Coach of the Year, also helped guide former OU assistant coach Guard Young to a silver medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

Horton and Williams will keep Sooner fans back home informed on their trip to Europe in this feature exclusively on SoonerSports.com.

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Entry No. 4 | Posted Wednesday, October 18 by Jonathan Horton
We have been in Denmark now for 13 days and I won't lie, I'm definitely ready to come home even though Denmark is a great country and I really enjoy everything about it. Every day the team and I walk around and find new places to eat and relax. The weather has been really nice most of the days and when we aren't training we try to spend as much time walking around as we can.

I haven't really bought much since I've been here. I've been into just about every type of store you can think of but I havn't really found any cool things to bring home with me. I'm hoping I find an interesting souvenir shop before I leave.

My experience has been fun and all, but the gymnastics part of the whole trip ended a little too early for me. Unfortunately the team had some mistakes the first day of competition and we didn't qualify for the team finals. It was definitely a major letdown because I know we are good enough to be one of the top teams here.

Although the competition was rough and we didn't make the second day, we learned a lot from the competition and it was an amazing thing to be a part of. I have really enjoyed getting a chance to see what the competition is like all over the world and this has really motivated the USA team to get home and train harder than ever. Our team isn't real experienced but I know that going through what we did this past week will definitely help us improve more than anything and we can hopefully make a big statement at the next Worlds.

Last night it was pretty exciting to watch China take the World title and I couldn't stop thinking about how bad I wanted to compete out there on the floor. I don't think I've ever been more motivated in my life, and thinking about this competition will always remind me that there is a lot of work for me to get done every day in the gym.

I'm pretty excited about coming home and seeing all of my Sooner family. I miss everyone a lot, especially my girlfriend Haley and the fellas on the team. I really appreciate all of the support everyone from home has given me. Everyone has been writing me e-mails and sending me Facebook messages and it's awesome to know people are checking in on how we are doing. I also want to say thanks to Cleveland Elementary for sending me all of the cards and wishing me luck. The kids' teachers are amazing and I'm looking forward to seeing my kids in Ms. Honeycutt's class on Friday.

Mark and I will be home on Sunday, but until then we will be training a few more days and enjoying what's left of our time in Denmark. That's all for now. See everyone soon.

- Jonathan Horton

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Entry No. 3 | Posted Monday, October 16 by Mark Williams
The men's team preliminary competition finished Sunday night with the ninth session of the 2006 World Championships in Aarhus, Denmark. The USA team completed its qualification session on Saturday morning just after 11 a.m. We finished third in our grouping behind Russia and Korea. For the remainder the qualification session, all we could do was watch and wait while the other 53 countries finished their sessions.

Here is a quick recap of how team USA performed. We started strong on the floor exercise with a great performance by everyone including Jonathan Horton who led the team with a 15.425 (Jon would finish 12th overall on this event). From floor, the team competed well through four events. There were small breaks on pommel horse and rings, but the team's energy and effort was tremendous. On the parallel bars and the horizontal bar, the team had a couple of mistakes that affected the outcome of the team's totals. Two missed routines had to count for the team on the final two rotations. By the end of the competition these results placed the USA team 13th overall and only 1.10 points shy of qualifying for the top eight grouping in the team finals. Though this placement was a disappointment from our expectations, the guys gained valuable experience competing on the world stage. Since all of our Olympians from the 2004 Games have retired, we came to this competition with an entirely new team that had no seasoned veterans from previous Olympic or World Championship teams. I believe this young team will be stronger in the future and learn a lot from this competitive situation.

The USA women's team competed Monday in an afternoon qualifying session. They won their session and currently lead the overall standing. Tuesday will be the men's team finals, Thursday is the Men's all-around finals and Friday and Saturday are the individual event finals. The men's team still has two competitors in the all-around final and one in event finals, so the USA's men's team is not done yet.

It's been a very educational experience to watch the other teams compete throughout the qualification sessions. I'm sure there will be aspects of this competition that I will take back with me to Oklahoma and impart upon my own team. China and Japan are clearly the favorites to win in the team finals Tuesday night. Russia, Romania and Germany will probably battle it out for the last medal. It should be a great event to watch.

That's all for now from Denmark.

-Mark Williams

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Entry No. 2 | Posted Wednesday, October 11 by Mark Williams
Today is day seven in Aarhus, Denmark for the USA delegation at the 2006 Gymnastics World Championships.

Jonathan Horton and I have enjoyed the sights and sounds of Danish life for a week now and we are getting used to the daily rhythm of the early morning training sessions, meals with our teammates and the final preparations for the competition. As the head coach for the USA Men's Team, it has been my job to oversee the training of the athletes, coordinate the efforts of the coaching staff and organize our schedule of workouts prior to the preliminary round of competition on October 14th.

Aarhus is a beautiful city along the sea that has a student population of over 40,000. (In short, it's a university town, kind of like Norman.) The city is very green with parks, gardens and bike paths everywhere you go. There is a constant flow of bicycle traffic throughout town and many people out walking too. Penn State head coach Randy Jepson, my assistant coach for this World Championships, and I have been out running every other day and discover new places of interest on each of our runs.

The last several days the team has focused on getting ready for the one and only practice day we'd have in the competition hall before the competition. Up until yesterday, all the teams have had workouts in satellite facilities such at Ingerslev Hall in preparation for “podium training” when all the teams are allowed on the competition equipment. Our first day getting to the training hall took us 45 minutes by bus. We quickly learned that it was easier to just walk there, which only took 15 minutes. Since only one training gym has been available during the first few days, it has not been uncommon to have 16-18 different countries working out at one time. Though there are several pieces of each of the six apparatus used in men's gymnastics, it has been more crowded than any other world championships that I've attended. The upside to this has been the ability to see the best athletes in the world doing gymnastics just a few feet away.

The competition order for preliminaries is determined by a random draw and the U.S. drew the short stick, so to speak, landing in the first of nine competitive sessions with a 9:00 a.m. start time. Podium training takes place the same time as competition, meaning the team was up yesterday at 4:30 a.m. and working out by 7:00 a.m.! It's not a great position to be in, but we've made the best of it by waking up early every morning and having breakfast together as a team. Adjusting to the early time is made easier by how well this team gets along, and the fact that we can always make each other laugh. A couple of days ago I laughed until I cried over Stanford coach Thom Glielmi's “Napoleon Dynamite” impressions.

Podium training started with a very dark ride over to the arena at 6:15 a.m. yesterday. Once we figured out where the warm-up and competition gyms were located, we quickly started to break-in the brand new equipment. Since we were one of the first teams to arrive, chalk needed to be worked into the high bar and parallel bars on both the competition equipment and the equipment in the practice gym. After the coaches got this done, the athletes had a little over an hour to warm-up for the practice time in the competition hall. At 9:00 a.m. the U.S., Russia, Korea, Mexico and two other countries entered the hall to begin their official practice time on the event podium. Our two-hour session went well for team USA except for a slight glitch with the lights, which weren't fully on during our first event, floor exercise. Because of that, when we finished on high bar, our team was allowed another eight minutes working on the floor with the lights fully up. All the teams had this short time to go back to their first event.

For the next couple of days we will train in two different facilities while we prepare for team preliminaries on Saturday. Our goal in prelims is to compete well enough to secure a position in the team finals, which will be made up of the top eight teams from the two days of preliminary competition. This may be difficult since there are gymnasts from 59 countries in Denmark. I expect top teams like Japan and China will easily make it to the finals. Other teams that should be strong are: Romania, Russia, France, Brazil, Korea, Ukraine, Belarus and Canada. I expect that we'll be among that top group as well. The top 24 countries from preliminaries here advance to next year's World Championships, with the top 12 teams from that meet moving on to the 2008 Olympic Games; so a strong performance is essential.

It has been an exciting trip so far with much more to come. That's it for now. So long from Denmark.

- Mark Williams

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Entry No. 1 | Posted Tuesday, October 10 by Jonathan Horton
Being in Denmark has been an eye-opener so far. The trip here actually wasn't too bad. We rode on a big 747 jet and it wasn't even half full. I got my own row of seats so I laid down and slept for the whole nine-hour flight which was really nice.

We flew into Copenhagen, Denmark, and drove for five hours to Aarhus, which is a small town on the east side of Denmark, and I have to say this is a beautiful country. It is very green here and a very well-kept country all over.

When we arrived, the whole team had some pretty bad jet lag and we were all really tired. We went to practice the next morning after a solid night of rest but for the first couple days here everyone was kind of sluggish.

After getting used to the eight-hour time change, things really started getting fun. Our workouts have been pretty intense and it is really cool to be here representing the United States with all of the other countries around us. I think there are over 80 countries here so the training facilities can get pretty jam-packed sometimes, but we make our training days efficient and quick.

We have had a little time to walk around the town of Aarhus, and the town is really nice. The people here are polite, and surprisingly the majority of them have a pretty good knowledge of English so it isn't real hard to communicate. Yesterday we went to the mall, and we walk to the local market to buy food just about every day. Everything is pretty much in walking distance, but we ride the buses to the training halls everyday.

After a week of training and getting used to everything around us, we had our first day of being in the actual competition arena which we call "podium day." My routines have been going well so far and today I continued to feel good about what I was doing. I had a little trouble getting used to the vaulting table in the arena but nothing that a few more days of training won't help.

The rest of the team looks great, and I think the U.S. team can do really well because we have a great group of guys that get along well and each person has a lot to offer to this team. Our team has set a goal for this trip. We have tried to step away from the idea that we want to win (which is of course always in the back of our minds) and we have developed a mindset that we want to perform.

All gymnastics is is a big performance and if each of us steps up to the plate and performs to the best of our abilities, stay calm and be confident, we don't have to worry about anything else except sit back and let our scores do the job.

I'm confident with my gymnastics right now and I know the other six guys are too. We are really excited about competing Saturday, and I am looking forward to experiencing my first World Championships.

- Jonathan Horton

University of Oklahoma Athletics

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