Vitaly Scherbo
Gymnastics
The six gold medals Vitaly Scherbo won in Barcelona didn’t mean much as he sat at his critically ill wife’s bedside last winter.
Doctors gave Irina Scherbo a 1-percent chance of survival after her car skidded into a telephone pole and was ripped in half. Scherbo all but forgot his training, even though the Olympics were seven months away and the Belarussian was favored to win back-to-back all-around titles.
He considered quitting until February, when Irina recovered from extensive internal injuries and urged her husband to go back to the gym.
“Come on, Vitaly,” she said. “You are maybe the strongest gymnast mentally in the world, and you just spent four years working for another Olympics. It was very hard, and you must not stop right at the end.”
So Scherbo will be back one last time when the men’s team competition starts today, and he’s as strong as ever. Even with his time off, he won a gold medal in the floor exercise at the world championships individual event finals in April. He added a silver on the parallel bars and bronze on the high bar.
That made him history’s most decorated gymnast, with six Olympic and 23 world championship medals.
“Atlanta will be it for me. I want to retire while I’m still kicking butt, not when my butt is getting kicked,” said Scherbo, 24. “I’ve already accomplished what I wanted to accomplish.”
Another all-around title would be nice, though. Scherbo finished second to Li Xiaoshuang at the world championships, and was second again at the European championships in May, this time to teammate Ivan Ivankov.
Ivankov will miss the Games after tearing his right Achilles tendon, leaving Li as Scherbo’s main competition.
In Barcelona, Scherbo led the Unified Team to gold and then dominated the individual competition. His six gold medals was a gymnastics record for a single Olympics.
After Atlanta, Scherbo plans to return to, Woodward, Pa., where he, Irina and their 2-year-old daughter live. “I think it’s time for me to get away from competitive gymnastics,” he said, “do some exhibitions around the world and make some money.”