In gymnastics, there are two kinds of landings, ones you can spot, and ones that are blind.

When doing a backflip, a gymnast can spot the ground before they land.

They can see exactly where they want to go.

But flipping forward results in a blind landing, because a gymnast can't see the ground.

They just have to trust.

Trust their training, trust their muscle memory, trust that if they leap at a certain

height, twist at a certain moment, they'll land on their feet.

When the landings blind, you can't see where you're going.

You can't see where you'll end up.

I've been thinking about this concept, a blind landing a lot lately, because it feels like

the perfect metaphor for what happened with women's gymnastics at the 2000 Olympics.

In the one moment, the one competition when having that trust was a really, really bad

idea.

My name is Ari Saperstein, and I am not a gymnast.

I'm a journalist, and I've actually never, ever covered gymnastics, never reported on it.

A few years ago, all I knew about it was, you know, the perfect 10, and Simone Biles,

and yeah, basically just that.

But one day, while researching story, I started reading about gymnastics at the 2000 Olympics,

and learned that, for lack of a better word, it was kind of a mess.

The first gymnastics, to be exact, at these games, was just mired in controversies.

About things like band substances, and falsified ages, those stories, they've gotten a lot

of attention over the years, and in the process, they overshadowed this other story, a story

...