A Little Money Goes a Long Way

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." Albert Einstein

It's Thursday in Highlands Ranch, Colorado. That means that our complimentary issue of Highlands Ranch Herald sits in the driveway until someone returns home to collect it. Always wrapped in a brightly-color plastic bag to protect it from the non-existent moisture that might appear anyway if we just hope hard enough.


Today's color was a rich green -- coincidentally, the color of money. Fitting, as it turned out....


The issue price of $.75 per copy may be hiding somewhere in our quarterly homeowner's association dues. But, we're not likely to ever find it. We never read it until Mark started a new business. Now, we at least scan it before throwing it into the charcoal-starter bin that will someday help produce succulent chicken filets or burgers on the grill.


I have only saved something from this weekly paper one time since we moved to the Ranch six years ago. Sometime in April, 2005, they finally found space for the picture of the five athletes at ThunderRidge High School who had signed National Letters of Intent in the library on February 2. There, in living black-and-white, sat our smiling daughter in her USC hoodie next to a hulking football player headed to Colorado State. He behaved like he had already received a few blows to the head, as he exhibited his complete lack of knowledge about most things, including anything related to women's soccer. He had been taunting her for weeks that she could only be getting money from USC because she was a legacy student. Trust me, her selection into USC's #1-ranked recruiting class of 2005 for NCAA Division I women's soccer had absolutely nothing to do with our USC diplomas. We don't exactly have a building named after us there....


Anyway, I was intrigued to see that the paper managed to squeeze a few inches on page 8A for Alexander Artemev, the most famous Sasha in print and broadcast media. At least, for this week. "Highlands Ranch gymnast helps the U.S. earn a bronze medal in Beijing" read the upper right Sports feature bullet under the front page masthead. They probably had to drop the latest news about Little League as they were headed to press, to make room for him. Somebody's mother is waiting somewhere in 80126 or 80129 with a pair of scissors, for a photo that will not run now until next week, at the least.


Minsk, Belarus-born Sasha hit the feature line-up on our local NBC-affiliate recap "The Olympic Zone" (catchy, huh?!) as soon as he was named second alternate to the team. He and his father drive all the way from Highlands Ranch to Wheat Ridge for him to train at 5280 Gymnastics. (CATCHY, huh?!) You just can't go wrong around here if you throw the "5280" into your company name. Even if you're really living at 6100.


Sasha arrived at the National Indoor Stadium two days before competition began, after Morgan Hamm pulled out because of his ankle injury. His father, Vladimir, raised him and trained him his entire life. Vladimir was Russia's all-around gymnastics world champion in 1984. His own Olympic dreams were shattered by the political posturing that resulted in Russia's boycott of the Los Angeles games. With this short notice, he could not make arrangements to travel to China to watch his boy transform to Money Player with the world as witness.


If you've been watching anything besides Phelps, you already know that "Sasha" -- the Russian "diminutive" form of Alexander -- whirled around the pommel horse like a human propeller in the last exercise for Team USA on Monday night's prime-time programming. He yielded a much-needed 15.350 score to move them into bronze-medal position. Don't ask me about the score. After trying to clean up their mess from Athens, FIG (Federation Internationale de Gymnastique) has given us different point scales for each apparatus. So, one man's 15.350 on the horse could be as significant as another guy's 16.50 on the vault. I just don't know.


But, Artemev was clearly anything but diminutive in that moment. He was getting bigger by the day anyway, having done much the same during team qualifying on no sleep and no notice. Of that accomplishment, he said, ".....I was kind of nervous about not having podium training, but I figured I've been doing these routines for a long time. What do I have to lose now, right? Just go big."


Just go Big. Go Big, or don't go at all. Go Big or go home. Be Big about it. Really Big Show.


To my mind, the Big Man in Beijing during the team final was really David Durante. He was the third team alternate. He was passed over for Artemev, because of Sasha's potential to help a team that was otherwise quite weak on pommel horse. If you saw the competition, you saw that for yourself. On the whole, the first two Americans on horse just about gave away the night.


Durante was staying with Sasha at Beijing Normal University before Morgan pulled out, in what must have felt like an isolation zone for team alternates with little-to-no hope of competing in this Olympics.


I will never forget the NBC shots of David in the stands, dressed in his "civilian" clothes. He had to stay prepared just like everyone else - do the training, eat the food, keep the regimen -- in case he got the call. He didn't get the call, but he was shown sobbing for joy like a baby after Sasha nailed his routine. He dutifully appeared with the team on The Today Show during their next broadcast, sitting modestly in the back row, on the end farthest from the hosts.


He was the Big Man without a bronze medal draped around his neck.


Now, THAT's money.