Pain, pure pain

• Brydon Davidson, Grade 5
• Short Story
• 2005

Pain, pure Pain By Brydon Davidson


I can’t believe they’ve chosen me! I’m on the plane to Perth, to go to the Gymnastics World Championships. My name is Phillipe Rizzo, and I do gym. I’ve been doing gym for ages, and for the last seven years I’ve been trying to get into the championships – and it’s finally happened! Now I’m in the Hotel Hallalulyah where I’m staying for tomorrow and the day after that. Although it’s only seven thirty pm, I really should go to bed, because competition starts at 6am!

I’m walking into the stadium. It’s jam-packed full of people. Wow – how lucky am I? To be here, in this stadium!
Ah. Here’s the first apparatus – the pommel horse, with its leather body and two wooden handles. Good! My score is 9.7 out of 10.
Now it’s the parallel bars, suspended three or for feet in the air by four poles. My routine here is a swing, back-up rise, then the pivot where I’ll go up into a handstand and then change direction, and then I’ll do a double back Sault for my dismount. Yes! A 9.8 for that routine!
Now I’m heading for the high bar. There it is, three metres up, held by cables and poles. This one is my best apparatus; my routine on high bar is two swings a back-up rise to giant where I go all the way around the bar, then a double back Sault dismount. And stone the crows, I got a 10.00!now for the rings, the good ol two wooden circles suspended in air by some wire. My routine goes muscle up, L-sit, handstand, three giants and a back Sault dismount. Yay! A 9.7. We next move to the floor. I will not tell you this routine for it is too long.
Then to the vault. But my score is a 9.6. I have always wondered why it looks just like a pommel horse without the handles. My vault’s a sukahara, which is a round-off back Sault. Which gets me a 9.6.

I’ve won the first day! But there’s also tomorrow.

“Rise and shine!” comes the manager’s voice. I groggily get up, and put on my stuff for gym. As I arrive to the stadium I have a bad feeling I should have stayed in bed. As I march from apparatus to apparatus, I still get continually good scores. I’m on my last apparatus, the vault. I have calculated that I need a 9.5 to win. But what’s this? They’re changing it for a pommel horse? As I get up to vault I have that bad feeling in my stomach again. As I do my sukahara my leg hits the pommel handle. I land on the ground with pure pain in my leg. It is broken! I have lost.
I can’t believe it’s happened to me. At the presentation I don’t win but get an award for trying. Oh well, there’s always next year.