Ryn: Yes, there’s life after the Olympics
by Ryn Gargulinski on Aug. 22, 2008, under Opinion
Tammy Manville-Booth: Missed 1976 Games with wrist injury
We have to admit Olympic contenders are cool. Even if you are like me and refuse to watch any TV, including Olympic coverage, it’s only right to give these athletes credit for envisioning their dreams and reaching high to attain them.
They might be even more prestigious than rocket scientists (sorry, Phoenix Mars Lander mission people).
Even host country China went well out of its way to accommodate the Olympic folks, doing out-of-the-ordinary things like taking dog meat off its Beijing menus. That’s the American equivalent of no more cheeseburgers and fries.
Wow.
But we also must wonder what happens to these Olympic greats after their two weeks or so of fame. Do they crawl into a hole and die?
Some continue to do great things – like come to Tucson and open a dance studio.
Gymnast and dancer Tammy Manville did just that. Now 48, the highly acclaimed athlete was on the cusp of the 1976 Olympic games in Montreal, had twice tied with Nadia Comaneci in pre-Olympic competition and was ranked the top U.S. gymnast of 1975 at age 15.
Then she injured her wrist the day before competition began.
“Of course, I was devastated,” said Manville-Booth. “But as a kid, you move on so much easier.”
And move she did. Manville-Booth, now the proud mother of three, boogied onward with her love of dance.
Her art earned her several scholarships, took her to exotic locations, got her a gig on Italy’s biggest variety show and parts in American movies, such as doubling in dance scenes for Shelley Long in “Outrageous Fortune.”
She also got to be a Rockette, a dream of little girls, ambitious teens and drag queens everywhere.
Manville-Booth’s studio, Tucson Dance Academy at 4242 W. Ina Road, is open for preregistration Friday and Saturday and doing the grand opening thing Sept. 2.
“It just kind of fell in our lap,” Manville-Booth said about the opportunity for her and her husband. “I’m really glad and excited to do it. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do.”
Her mother, Wanda Manville, has been successfully running the Tempe Dance Academy for the past 50 years.
Another wow.
Gold medal-winning figure skater Dorothy Hamill, now 52, also kept on keeping on after her Olympic stint in 1976.
While she was fully qualified to open a hair salon – especially since her wedge cut was perhaps even more popular than that wishy-washy wispy Jennifer Aniston look – she moved in another direction.
Not all of it was pretty. She suffered two devastating divorces, bankruptcy trying to succeed in the Ice Capades and a custody battle for her daughter, the light of her life.
Instead of crawling away to die, however, Hamill wrote a book about it, “A Skating Life: My Story.”
Others, such as cyclist Gord Fraser, now 39, also have had steep slopes to scale after the Olympics, but that’s only because he rides his bike on Mount Lemmon.
Fraser, born in Canada and a 20-year resident of Tucson, continues to indulge in his bicycling greatness, coaching others at Carmichael Training Systems, 3384 N. Winstel Blvd.
“Being an athlete is an identity that is kind of all encompassing,” said the married father of two sons, ages 5 and 2. “It was a seamless transition to go from being a cyclist to a coach, easier than something like going from being a cyclist to a lawyer.”
Fraser thrice represented our northern neighbors, in the Olympics in 1996, 2000 and 2004, and is still fit, trim and much faster than one of my bicycling co-workers up and down the mountain.
“He kicks my butt,” the co-worker said.
Tonya Harding, 37, hit the bottom of the mountain in her 1994 fiasco, having Olympic competitor Nancy Kerrigan’s knee bashed in.
Harding didn’t budge much upward from there. We are not sure if she thought she was bettering herself by starring in Internet porn or becoming a fattish woman boxer, but it didn’t seem to work.
Well, maybe all but one Olympic contender is cool.
Ryn Gargulinski is a poet, artist and Tucson Citizen reporter who never wanted to be a rocket scientist but wouldn’t mind competing in the Olympics if it had dog sled racing. E-mail: rynski@tucsoncitizen.com
