Horton Preparing For His Shot

Aug. 11, 2008

By Dave Reed
Special to ESPN.com

BEIJING - If Jonathan Horton were to win a gold medal at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, it would not come as a surprise to anyone who knows him. He has been preparing for this chance nearly all of his life.

Long before he became excited about the sport after watching the United States' women's gymnastics team claim the gold medal at the Atlanta Games in 1996, Horton demonstrated his ability to rise to the occasion under some unusual circumstances.

When he was just 3 years old, his mother, Margo, found him hanging from the garage door after he rode it to the top and she unknowingly become her son's first spotter. Less than a year later, he scaled a pole at a Houston-area Target store all the way from the floor to the ceiling. Another favorite activity was doing back flips on his parents' bed.

Those events might have been the first indication that high bars and rings would play a significant role in young Jonathan's future. In the years to come, gymnastics would provide the perfect outlet for his athleticism, showmanship and daredevil personality.

Horton enrolled at the Cypress Academy of Gymnastics in Houston at age 11 and trained under Tom Meadows, who was a member of the University of Oklahoma's third national championship team in 1991. One of the assistant coaches for that team was current Sooners coach Mark Williams.

It didn't take long for Horton to establish himself as one of the top up-and-coming gymnasts at the junior level. His first national meet was the 1999 Men's Junior Olympic Championships, and three years later at the 2002 Junior Olympics, he finished first in the all-around and second in the floor exercise, still rings, vault and parallel bars.

Those kinds of results made Horton a hot commodity on the collegiate recruiting trail, and he was pursued by recent national champions like Penn State and Ohio State, along with Iowa and Michigan. But all it took was one trip to Norman in 2004 for Horton to quickly realize that Oklahoma was where he needed to go.

"When I came here on my recruiting trip, I fell in love with Oklahoma," Horton said. "It was an incredible atmosphere and, being from Texas, it was close to home. After my recruiting trip was over, it was a really easy decision for me. "Being with Tom for so long, I had an idea what coach Williams was going to be like. He was exactly what I was used to. I was very comfortable with his style of coaching and the way he said I would play a role on the team."

It didn't hurt that the Sooners had won two of the last three national championships.

To read the rest of the article, please visit: http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/news/story?id=3509458

University of Oklahoma Athletics

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