It’s six months after the 2008 Olympics, and Shawn Johnson, who won a gold and three silver medals in gymnastics last summer in Beijing, is waiting on a lazy weekday morning for her dance partner, Mark Ballas, to show up at the Sunset Boulevard studio where they’ve been practicing for weeks now for “Dancing with the Stars.”

Mark is a few moments behind. No big deal. Shawn has pictures on her Mac laptop to show off — the places she has been and the people she has met since the Games. She dishes about the frozen strawberry yogurt she had the night before. She says L.A. is “my favorite city, ever,” all the hustle and bustle and the scent of possibility, like the orange blossoms, in the air.

“I’ve waited so long … just to have fun,” Shawn says, adding she is definitely “just having fun.”

Six months in the life of a professional athlete can be a long time. Six months in the life of a first-rate teen-age gymnast — that’s a virtual eternity, long enough to become much more young woman and lot less little girl, long enough to see considerably more of the world beyond the rigor and discipline of the bars, beam, vault and floor.

It may well be that, at 17, Shawn Johnson is done with world-class gymnastics. It’s not that she couldn’t do it any longer. But what she hasn’t decided is whether she should.

“There are two different ways to look at it,” said her mom, Teri, who has moved out to L.A. with her daughter for as long as Shawn is on “Stars,” which gets underway Monday night on ABC.

“She’s healthy. Why risk her health?

“Or: She’s healthy. She could do it again.
 
“I think circumstances will tell her what she is supposed to do next. And that hasn’t happened yet.”

If Shawn does well on “Stars,” she’d be out in L.A. until May. No way that would allow time to prepare for the 2009 world championships, in October in London. So this year is already probably gone.

If at some point Shawn opted to get back into the gym, she would be doing so with the realization that she’d be 20 by the 2012 Summer Games in London, in a sport in which 20-year-olds are typically old ladies. (With exceptions, such as Shawn’s 2008 Games teammate, Alicia Sacramone.)

She’d be pushing herself for two or three years, and to do what?

Go to the Olympics? Did that. Win a gold medal? Did that. Win the world-championship all-around gold? Did that, in 2007. Make herself into the sort of personality with appeal that transcends the sport?

Totally did that already.

Since the Games ended, Shawn has been on a gymnastics tour; spoken at the Democratic National Convention; learned to snowboard; made appearances at Super Bowl parties. And more.

She is taking high school classes online.

She has not been back with any regularity in the West Des Moines, Iowa, gym with coaches Liang Chow and Liwen Zhuang, where she spent so much of the past 10 years.

“Everything I have been able to do is a reward for everything I worked so hard for,” she says. “And it expands the idea of ‘Shawn Johnson, gymnast.’ I’m able to expand those titles and grow as a person.”

Now, for instance, she is learning how to dance in three-inch heels — and, maybe even more importantly, how to project the sorts of emotions that translate on-screen, big and little.

Might the future see her as “Shawn Johnson, television and film personality?”

“I don’t know yet,” she says, adding, “I hope this show will bring a lot of opportunities.”

Shawn’s not asking me for advice but here it is, anyway: Go have fun.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 9th, 2009 at 3:24 pm and is filed under alanabrahamson. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.