TAKING THE STAGE
New Jersey teenager Hernandez ready to break out with engaging personality, bigmoves
Laurie Hernandez, this is your moment.
The Olympics is about to be introduced to a Jersey girl who seems to have tumbled down from the gymnastics gods with sparkly makeup and a charm kit.
A teenager barely on the radar a year ago has leapt, vaulted and backflipped into the hearts of American fans because of a showstopping floor exercise performed to a Latin beat.
Hernandez, 16, has landed in the spotlight, although Simone Biles won her third consecutive all-around World Champion- ships title in the fall. The Rio Games that open Friday were supposed to feature 2012 Olympic stars Gabby Douglas, Aly Raisman and Biles.
But the summer blockbuster could be Hernandez, who this week announced that she is turning professional and not taking the scholarship the University of Florida had offered.
The Old Bridge, New Jersey, gymnast seems created for the social media age that has turned Olympians into reality
TV characters even as they perform astonishing feats.
“She’s so mentally tough, and that’s something you really can’t teach and she has it,” said Raisman, who at 22 is the team’s senior member.
But Hernandez’s chessmaster focus doesn’t stop a bubbly teenage magnetism from spilling out at, well, almost any time. When asked why she did so well on the balance beam last month at the U.S. Olympic trials in San Jose, Hernandez offered:
“It is kinda like having a chicken tuna salad for dinner. The salad, so it’s really healthy, but the Caesar dressing is not. But when you mix the two together, it’s OK, it is not a bad lunch.”
The fast-talking teen can be forgiven for skipping breakfast in her metaphoric response. She was operating on little sleep a few days after qualifying for her first Olympics.
Hernandez and the favored American women start Sunday with team qualification at Rio Olympic Arena. Hernandez also has a chance to be one of the two U.S. gymnasts to compete in the individual all-around, although she is the secondyoungest member of the entire American delegation.
Coach Maggie Haney tries to control her gymnast’s emotions so judges and fans see a polished athlete make the improbable look simple.
“The less I tell Laurie the better,” Haney said. “I don’t tell her what’s riding on it, how important it is. That stuff doesn’t work for her.”
Her family learned early that the kid just loved an audience. Wanda and Anthony Hernandez enrolled their daughter in dance and ballet when she was 3. But the active girl described it as boring — “way below my attention span,” Hernandez said. “I was there for the sugar cookies at the end of the workout.”
The seeds of a stardom could be found in her first recital. The family recalled how the girls began crying when the curtain opened up, except for Hernandez, who started to perform on cue.
“It kind of makes sense now,” the gymnast said.
Hernandez gravitated to recreational gymnastics coached by Haney’s sister. Haney saw the talent at age 9 but had no idea they were heading to potential Olympic fame out of MG Elite in Monmouth, New Jersey.
“She would always do in the gym what I say 100 times with a smile on her face,” Haney said.
The smile has not worn off for the first Latina gymnast since Annia Hatch in 2004 to make the U.S. team. Hernandez, whose grandparents came from Puerto Rico, loves performing as if she were in a tutu ready for that ballet recital.
“It’s pretty cool to be able to swing off wooden railings and do all these flips and throw and catch your own body weight, or focus for a minute and 30 seconds on a 4-inch piece of wood while there is a crowd chanting,” she said.
But where Hernandez has an advantage is with her thundering floor routine that she describes as a mashup of past iterations.
“I think it is a hit,” Hernandez said.
For those just getting to know the gymnast, it hasn’t been one hit after the other. She missed the 2014 season after an errant vault left her with a dislocated kneecap, torn patella ligament and bruised MCL.
Then her Olympic road got cloudy when Hernandez missed six weeks with a knee strain this year. But she returned fully recovered, leading Haney to dispense one final piece of encouragement:
“Listen,” the coach told Hernandez, “it’s now.” Contact Elliott Almond at 408-920-5865. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/ elliottalmond.