Chapter 4C - The Olympian: Alexandra Orlando - by Anne Shier (a.k.a. "Annie")

(Based on the book “Breaking Through My Limits:  An Olympian Uncovered”,

copyright 2012, by Alexandra Orlando)

As related by Ms. Orlando (from early-to-mid 2006):

We celebrated all night long, and it’s a memory that I can still see so vividly.  Team Canada ate dinner at this beautiful restaurant outside on the water, with music and wine flowing all evening.  We all over-indulged.  We could finally relax.  I was going to the Olympics; Canada was going to the Olympics.  All I wanted to do was jump up and down on my bed and scream at the top of my lungs, but I didn’t get to celebrate too long.  The very next day I was in meetings with our national team advisor and my coach, making plans for Beijing.  So now the goal was to make the final and finish in the top ten.  The plans were all set in motion, and felt like they were going ahead without me.  I was stuck in Greece, and I wanted to stay there.  I had never imagined what it would actually be like if I qualified: what would that mean?  What was going to happen?  It all suddenly caught up to me so quickly about the responsibility I had as North America’s only Olympian in my sport, and it brought with it so much more pressure into my life.

I wish I could look back on that year and say it was the best year of my life.  I wish I could say that I had the fairytale Olympic experience.  But, I can’t.  Deep down I know that things in your life happen for a reason no matter how discourag-ing or dark.  For a long time I couldn’t believe how unfair things had turned out for me.  Within a few short weeks, my life turned upside down again.  One thing I have learned through all of this is that the unexpected and the unfair can happen at any time.  When you don’t want things to change, that’s when they do.  You have to learn to adapt and pick yourself up as fast as you can.  There’s sometimes nothing you can do about it but accept it and move on.  Figure out a new game plan, a way of making something out of it you never thought possible.  If I’ve learned anything at all from my life in sport it’s that things don’t happen the way you want them to.  You don’t get everything you want, and just because you worked hard doesn’t mean someone else isn’t better.  Life can be brutally harsh, but it’s how you deal with it that matters.  It’s how you deal with it that makes you the type of person you are.

When we all got back from Greece and the dust had settled, my coach gave me some pretty big news.  She was moving to Spain.  This was something that had been in the works for a while, a position that she couldn’t turn down.  In Canada, there is no national team coach position, no salary.  She was surviving and supporting herself on what her gymnasts paid her.  Money was always a problem, and coaching was never as glamorous as I’d always thought it was.  My parents needed a whole extra salary just to cover my costs, including how we were going to fund my coach to travel with me, and who was going to pay for what.  The little funding that we received from the Federal Government barely covered a plane ticket per month.  I would get a cheque for $1,500 every month, which would not even cover the cost of two competitive gym suits.  I had about four to six a year, not to mention the plane tickets to Europe for myself, my coach, and my judge.  This amounted to a career that could cost up to $60,000 a year.  That $1,500 was looking pretty small then.  I would rely on grants and charities to help my family out, so I understood why my coach had to go.  I understood, but I couldn’t help but feel lost.

She was treated like a queen over in Spain, given an apartment near the beach, a car, and an incredible facility to train the girls.  As much as I didn’t want things to change and to see her go, she had to.  I was only going to be around until the Olympics, and she had her whole life to think of afterwards.  She is, without a doubt, one of the greatest coaches in the world, so it looked like I was to pack my bags and head to Spain.  Training in Toronto by myself or with other coaches was not working.  I wasn’t pushing myself, and a new coach would never want to change your style or your routines, especially a gymnast at my level, because they wouldn’t want to interfere.  So I just coasted along until I got to Spain to stay with my coach, but it put my development back more than we ever figured it would. 

I think everyone was telling themselves that this new arrangement would work for me, that everything would be fine.  But, it wouldn’t be.  She couldn’t be at every competition with me because of her new job and the responsibilities that came with it.  I ended up being passed around from coach to coach, and it was awkward and uncomfortable for me.  And then the worst happened.  I was nowhere near the shape I was in a few short months ago when I qualified for the Olympics.  I was slower, not as sharp, off my game.  I needed to focus and get back to that discipline, find that drive and edge, and she was the only one that could bring it out in me.

In February, I was at my first competition of the season in Portugal, with five months until the Olympic Opening Ceremonies.  I was finishing up my last event when I went to launch myself into a turning jump with my body arched backwards.  I slipped on the takeoff, but my body was already starting to go through the motions without the air height, and I landed on my ankle, cracking it.  I fell to the floor and I couldn’t move.  I was paralyzed, and the pain was unbearable.  I lay there in the middle of the floor in front of hundreds of people, and the reaction of the dead silent crowd summoned a paramedic.  I tried to get up, but couldn’t stand.  My ankle bone was lifeless, and I thought I had broken it.  The fear that washed over me then was unbearable.  In a few seconds, I may have just given up the last seventeen years of my life.  They rushed me to the hospital with our national team advisor, but not my coach.  She wasn’t there.  I was so scared and alone but didn’t want to show it.

The hospital was filled with the moans of people in pain and a smell that I will never be able to express in words.  People with blood all over them sat beside me in trauma.  I had to get out of there.  I wrapped up my ankle by myself and got on the first flight home to Toronto, straight to the best sports doctor we knew in the city.  I had to fly back completely by myself carrying all my bags on my broken ankle.  I was one of the worst experiences of my life: no one to help me, no crutches, and every limp filled with pain, making me sick to my stomach.

Dragging my bags behind me every inch took enough strength to move a mountain.  I didn’t think I was going to make it, and I was so lucky that I was squeezed in to see this doctor back home as he was doing me a favour, and I owe him my life.  I have never been so scared than I was in those few months. 

I had to be able to compete in Beijing, that wasn’t an option.  I was going to the Olympics.  I had come so far, I wasn’t going to sit by and watch someone else take my spot again.  The hardest part was keeping positive, but that was a struggle I fought every day, some days coming out victorious, and some breaking my heart.

As the doctor examined my ankle for the first time, he pressed into my torn ligaments and my whole body broke out into a sweat, with my face going beet red.  He pressed in repeatedly to find out how many I had torn, and how badly I had torn them, and my body reacted to his touch, fighting my gag reflex.  He then let go and told me I had torn three ligaments and needed to be in treatment every day.  I would do anything, I said, just fix me.  He smiled and promised me he would.

(to be continued in Part D)

copyright 2014, Anne Shier.  All rights reserved.