I High-Fived Gold Medal Winning Olympic Gymnasts!

My mom purchased tickets to see the Olympic Gymnastics Exhibition as soon as the tickets became available for a local venue. She was able to get 4th row seats (which she assumed meant 4th row up from the floor), but when we arrived at the venue, we discovered that our seats were actually located ON the floor, right next to several of the apparatuses (apparati? ;) Not sure of the plural form of apparatus! We were very excited to get such a close-up view of the routines from gold-medal winning gymnasts as we were literally just feet from the performers. Our seats were closest to two balance beams where we got to see routines performed by Shannon Miller (who won lots of gold medals in previous Olympic games), Shawn Johnson (gold medalist on beam this year), and Nastia Liukin (all-around gold medalist this year). The whole event had lots of special lighting effects along with live music; Due to a computer malfunction, it began about a half hour late. Apparently the computer that ran the whole lights/effects program repeatedly crashed just before the show, but they did manage to get it up and running! At the end of the show, a lot of the gymnasts ran along the stage high-five-ing audience members who were seated on the floor, and Mom and I both got to high-five Shawn Johnson and Nastia Liukin. They'll probably be the only Olympic gold medal winners we'll ever get the opportunity to "meet"!

Shawn Johnson

Nastia LiukinNastia and Shawn at the end of the showMen's bronze medal-winning team

The Hamm brothers did not get to compete this year due to injury, but performed in the show

Shannon Miller during warm-ups

Jordan Pruitt sang live several times right next to our seats. I'm sure there are some teeny-boppers out there that would have been thrilled to sit where we were. I hadn't heard much of her music before, but Mom and I both really enjoyed it. She has a song out now that is on the soundtrack of the movie High School Musical 3.