You have to give Rebecca Bross credit: she doesn't make excuses.
After giving her worst performance in years -- perhaps ever -- during women's preliminaries at the 2011 U.S. Championships, Bross owned up to her mistakes and said only that she was hoping for the best in the women's final Saturday night.
Bross, who won the U.S. Championship last August with a determined, gutsy performance, had ankle surgery in November following the World Championships. She has been cleared to train on her ankle for a good deal of time, she said, and the old injury has not been causing her pain.
So what accounts for the uncharacteristic errors? Bross herself didn't seem to know. Here are some quotes from a conversation with her following the meet:
On her night in general:
"My beam routine wasn't the greatest beam routine."
On whether her mistakes have upset her:
"Yeah, a little bit. I mean, some things happen. There's nothing I can do about it, they just happen."
On the status of her ankle:
"It's pretty much fully recovered."
On how many numbers she's been doing in the gym:
"Yeah, we have been doing a lot of numbers. I've been doing the same things everyone else has to do."
On how long she has been back doing full training and pounding on her ankle:
"It's been awhile now." (She laughed a little ruefully as she said it)
On what she learned from Thursday night's performance:
"You can't dwell on the past. You can't change what happened and you have to move on and fix what happened and make things better...I'm not at all happy about the falls, but it's something that happened and I hope that Saturday I can come back and fix them."
On whether her preparations for this meet were the same as for last year's U.S. Championships:
"Yeah, um, pretty much, I guess."
The Gymnastics Examiner will be in St. Paul, Minn. this week for the 2011 U.S. Championships. Please check here for quick hits, results, plenty of photos and impressions from podium training and media day. Follow it all on Facebook or Twitter, or click the "Subscribe" button above to receive the latest gymnastics news and results via e-mail.
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