It was a move beyond human limitations—no, something more than that. She could almost keep going up into the sky.
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The first time Risa Tsukiori happened upon a gymnastics competition was the 2040 summer Olympics. She had only just turned eight and was still obsessed with kids’ anime, so she was entirely put out by the fact that her father had monopolized the TV to watch the Olympics all summer. But all complaining would do was make her mercurial father angry, so she held her tongue and watched the boring Olympics broadcast every day.
She really couldn’t understand what was so interesting about the soccer, judo, or track and field that got her father so excited, but her eyes were glued to the screen the moment she appeared.
Women’s gymnastics. A slender gymnast in a white leotard stood in front of the vault, a competitor from Romania still in her teens.
Her father was apparently less interested in this sport. He got up to go to the washroom, and since her mother was out doing the shopping, Risa was alone in the living room. Both sides of the TV fell silent as the girl raised her right hand slowly. She picked her moment with a curious flourish and started fluidly down the blue runway.
She held her torso perfectly straight as she rapidly accelerated, her arms barely swinging. She stepped hard on the springboard (Risa learned later that this was what it was called), thrust both of her hands onto the vault, and leapt.
In that moment, Risa saw snowy wings spreading from the gymnast’s back.
The gymnast quickly wrapped her arms around her knees and started to rotate in a forward motion. Once. Again. And again. And then one more time.
Her feet plunged into the mat as she landed, and without taking a single step from that spot, she threw her head back, stood up tall, and flung her hands up high into the air. The venue erupted in a thunder of cheering and applause.
Her mouth hanging open, Risa watched the slow-motion replay, enthralled.
She was the only one of the girls who could jump over the six-layered vaulting box in gym class, a secret source of pride. But the gymnast in the white leotard leapt so many times higher than Risa, high enough that it seemed like she could touch the sky, all the while spinning so fast that the eye had trouble following her even in slow motion. And then she executed a perfect landing. Risa couldn’t believe a human being could move like that.
The commentator’s voice was hoarse with excitement as she described this technique as a “triple front flip.” But the gymnast did that one rotation at the start, so in practical terms, it was a quadruple flip. The triple flip was called a “Produnova,” but a quadruple flip had no name. This Romanian gymnast was the first to unveil it and to succeed at performing it on a global stage. Later on, the quadruple flip would be given her name.
But no gymnast succeeded in performing this quadruple flip again, not even at the 2044 Olympics or at the other big meets, and not even by the gymnast who gave it its name. She broke her right ankle in the leap that had so entranced Risa and retired from competition a few months later.
The name of the gymnast and the technique was “Racoviţă.” This was the technique that led to Risa becoming a gymnast, the technique that, on this day when she was still a young child, she vowed she would perform herself someday.