HARTFORD, Conn. — Jonathan Horton wasn’t feeling it when he walked into the gym. When he botched a simple handstand on the parallel bars to open the night, he knew it wasn’t just his imagination.
From that mistake — one he termed a “disaster” — Horton found his footing and wound up where he expected Friday night: on top of the podium, a national champion for the second consecutive year.
After his slow start, Horton finished strong on rings and vault to finish with 181.65 points and hold off a surprisingly strong challenge from Danell Leyva to win the U.S. gymnastics championships by 2.3 points.
“I was thinking, ‘If this doesn’t get better soon, it’s going to be rough,’ ” Horton said. “But I survived. Sometimes survival is the best thing. But I’ve got to figure out how to not let this happen. There are meets where this is unacceptable.”
Horton came into the night with a one-point lead, but quickly fell behind after a wobble during a remarkably easy skill — basically, a handstand — on the parallel bars.
“I didn’t fall, but in my mind, it was a little bit of a disaster,” he said.
Leyva, meanwhile, opened by landing his vault cleanly.
And so, the competition was on.
Horton started cleaning things up by the time he reached his third event, the floor exercise, and took the lead after scoring a 16.2 on a ramrod-straight rings routine. He closed the night with a near-perfect vault landing and, even before his score (a 16.05) came up, he pointed both fingers toward the sky and saluted the crowd.
He knew he had his title and the $10,000 prize that goes with it.
The evening ended up as the semi-runaway many people expected, but this was one where the scoreboard didn’t tell the whole story.
“I’m extremely happy for him,” Leyva said. “We’re both team players. Coming into the meet, he told me to put some pressure on him, and afterward he told me I definitely did that.”
Indeed, he did.
The second-place finish continued a steady climb for Leyva, a 18-year-old from Miami whose dad and coach, Yin Alvarez, is every bit as entertaining as his son — twisting, turning, gyrating with every move Leyva does up on the equipment.
Coach and son should be a fixture on this team for a while.
Today, Leyva will likely be named to the American team of five heading to world championships in October.
Horton will lead that team, and he figures to find better competition among the Chinese and Japanese than he does at home.
