The US women’s gymnastics team faced a fair amount of controversy and challenges heading into the World Gymnastics Championships this week in Tokyo, Japan. USA Gymnastics continued to eschew their own National Championships as a means to select a world team, including having a currently training gymnast (Nastia Lukin) picking gymnasts for the team. Several of their gymnasts fell to injury, and one of their best uneven bar workers wasn’t used because she doesn’t fit into the Marta Karolyi ideal due to her college background and age.
The team overcame all of that negative buzz surrounding them, and won the team gold medal at the world championships on Tuesday. And now that the extremely young team has reached that pinnacle of their sport, they have one thing on their mind: meeting teen heartthrob Justin Bieber. Team all-arounder Jordyn Wieber tweeted post medal ceremony:
“Now that we are world champions… can we meet Justin Bieber yet? #welldeserved …. Who has connections!?!?”
Well, when the team you put on the mat is all under the age of 19, of course Bieber is going to be a motivator. No word if Bieber will cross country lines (Bieber is Canadian, and the Canadian girls finished 11th as a team) and grant Wieber her wish.
But for the time being, Wieber has bigger fish to fry. She competes along with Boston based gymnast Aly Raisman for the all-around title on Thursday morning.