GREELEY, Colo.—What’s wrong with this kid?
First, he doesn’t sit in his room all day and play video games. He likes to read.
Second, he’s not overweight. Thin. Ten years old with muscles.
Several times a week, Binyamin Salzano, 10, gets up early, puts on the workout clothes, chalks up his hands and starts working on the high bar.
With his dad.
His father, Yosef Salzano, still has his old high bar from 1968, when he was just getting started in gymnastics as a kid in Brooklyn.
“We started using old mattresses that we found,” Yosef said. “I really liked it then, and started working more. I was eventually able to train with International Gymnastics Camp under Bruno Klaus.” Klaus is well-known in the gymnastics world for coaching many champions.
Yosef competed at the college level until 1989, with his last meet at the Air Force Academy.
And now, besides coaching others, he’s teaching his son.
They work on the high bar, still rings, parallel bars, a pommel horse and vaulting board. Binyamin does them all.
Last year, in the week before his first-ever competition, Binyamin broke his arm on some parallel bars. It didn’t stop him. Wearing his cast, he competed in the vaulting competition.
“The doctor didn’t say I couldn’t vault,” Binyamin said.
So he ran the path, jumped on the vaulting board and completed his jump, raising his arms like he’s supposed to, except one arm couldn’t be straightened because of the cast. He medaled.
Binyamin and his brother and sister are home-schooled, using Colorado Virtual Academy. Their mother, Cynthia Salzano, grew up in Eaton; her parents owned Carlson’s Dairy. She competed in gymnastics in high school.
Binyamin’s parents met at the University of Northern Colorado and moved to this area 18 years ago. Yosef is a physics teacher and uses the science to teach his son about jumps and spins and turns on the apparatus.
For 10-year-old Binyamin, gymnastics is only part of his life.
“My favorite part of school is art,” he said. “I like drawing and painting … but I’m not too good at painting yet.”
And he likes to read. “Maybe he likes reading a little too much,” his mom said. “I have to stop him at 10 or 11 at night, or he’d just keep reading and not sleep.”
Because there are no gymnastics areas in Greeley, and no high school gymnastics in the entire state, Binyamin has to participate through clubs. He’ll practice this winter in Fort Collins and compete across the country.
Last year, his first year of competition, he missed qualifying for regionals by one point.
So, several days a week, at 7 a.m., Binyamin and his dad are out there in the yard in west Greeley, working on the high bar, learning about physics, about life above the ground.
Then there will be school at home and art and reading.
Not too much time left for video games.
