Tuesday, August 26, 2008 2:07 PM ED


Unlucky doesn’t even begin to describe it.

Imagine Peyton Manning overextending his arm during warm-ups at the Super Bowl. Picture Tiger Woods having to pull out The Masters after tweaking something on the driving range twenty minutes before tee time on the final day.

Samantha Peszek is keenly familiar with what a poorly timed injury is like.

Just minutes before she was to perform at the biggest meet of her life � on the biggest stage in her sport � the McCordsville resident heard the worst possible sound at the worst possible moment.

It was the pop a muscle makes when it has had too much, in this case, her left ankle on her very last tumbling pass as she warmed up before the team preliminaries at the Olympic Games two weeks ago. It would turn out to be one pass too many.

As she described it Monday n her first day back at school and the first time she’s had a chance to mingle with friends and supporters back home since the Games n she stood up, rife with pain, and frantically looked at her coach Peter Zhao.

“It popped, it popped, it popped,” she said in angst.

“That’s all I could say,” Peszek recalled. “I was freaking out. I could barely stand.”

Despite a heavy tape job and a painkilling injection, U.S. coach Marta Karolyi decided to limit Peszek to one event: the uneven bars. “Are you sure you don’t want me to do vault?” Peszek asked her. “I can do it,” she assured her coach. “I can do it.”

Karolyi told her to focus solely on the uneven bars. But Peszek wasn’t at her best.

And just like that, Samantha Peszek’s Olympic Games were over.

But it was all smiles for the 16 year-old on Monday, as she received a hero’s welcome at DeVeau’s Gymnastics in Fishers, her home gym. A crowd lined the curb outside the gym with signs that read “WE LOVE SAM,” as they chanted the name of their favorite Olympian. She signed autographs, posed for pictures and answered questions from her young fans such as “Did you get to meet Michael Phelps?” (Yes) and “What was your favorite part about Beijing other than the competition?” (Shopping).

But her experience in Beijing�and the disappointment of not competing at full strength � is still not far from her mind.

“It was such a tough place for me,” she says. “At first, I just started crying. Of course, of course, perfect timing, right at the Olympics.”

Peszek’s injury was a crippling blow to the American squad, who along with the Chinese were favored for the team gold. Combined with the broken ankle that teammate Chelsie Memmell competed on and a few uncharacteristic falters by U.S. veteran Alicia Sacramone, the Americans took silver behind the host country.

Peszek feels she and her teammates never got the chance to show what they were capable of.

“Of course, I’ll always say �What if?’ It really gets to me because it’s a dream come true to compete in the Olympics and I don’t feel like I competed. To have your dreams crushed like that individually was really hard to deal with.”

But disappointment couldn’t be seen on Peszek’s face as her teammates carried on. She was there, her trademark smile across her face, supporting each one of them while serving as the squad’s No. 1 cheerleader.

“Everyone helped me calm down,” recalls Peszek, whose ankle still hasn’t fully recovered. “Then I started thinking � this is the team competition. This isn’t about me. My teammates needed me to be strong for them, and if I started crying out there and feeling sorry for myself that wouldn’t help the team in any way. I just tried to pull myself together and be the cheerleader. That’s really all I could do.”

So she did just that. It wasn’t the way she had imagined it �thousands and thousands of times in her head ever since she fell in love with the 1996 American gold-medal-winning squad as an energetic 4-year-old�but she rallied around her teammates. After each one of them exited the floor after their routines, Peszek was there for the first hug.

After all, it was the Olympic Games.

“Such a dream come true,” she says. “At the same time, we made it to the Olympics. I’m not looking at it like we lost the gold medal; I see it was we won the silver. It just took us a couple seconds for us to realize that.”

The Olympic experience was not lost on her, either. The first time she entered the Chinese Indoor Stadium, she turned to teammate and friend Memmell and said, “Look around. We’re all the way around the world, and still half the flags in the arena are from the U.S.”

And what about those Chinese gymnasts? Were they really the Olympic-mandated 16 years old?

“That’s the million-dollar question,” Peszek said with a huge smile. “To be honest, I don’t know if they’re 16. If they are, I’d love to know why one of them is missing their tooth.”

She was fully able to enjoy her time in Beijing. From an ice bath next to everyone’s favorite Olympian, Phelps, to a trip to see the Great Wall of China, her all-expenses paid voyage overseas was truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

“It was so cool, and we tried to make light of all the situations when we weren’t training,” she says, noting the girls made sure they chose their seats in the Olympic Village Food Court wisely, equating it to that of a high school cafeteria. “We were like �It’s crucial where we sit. OK, this is the cool senior side; this is the freshmen side.’ Our team did a really good job of keeping it light and making sure everyone had fun.”

She plans on getting back into her training routine when her ankle fully recovers, but isn’t sure yet whether she’s planning on making a run at the 2012 games in London.

Of anyone, Peszek knows the dedication and hard work it takes to make an Olympic team.

Her schedule, although she is booked for Oprah Winfrey’s show next weekend and a White House visit to meet the president sometime this fall, will clear up a little bit in the near future. She attended her first day of school Monday at Cathedral High School, where there was a morning pep rally in her honor. Like any 16-year-old who misses class, she has some catching up to do.

"So excited," she said of getting back to reality. "I can’t wait to just get back to a normal life and being able to hang out with my friends."

For Peszek, not exactly your typical teenager, her Olympic memories will stay with her the rest of her life.

“The most amazing part was standing up there as a team as they put the medal around your neck,” she added. “It was such an awesome feeling to represent your country and feel like you’ve done your job for your country � to show to the entire world that all the hard work you’ve done has paid off.”