WHEN TWO-TIME DEFENDING U.S. champion
Jonathan Horton finally closed to within 0.10
of the lead in the finals of the 2011 Visa
Championships in St. Paul, Minn., 19-year-
old Danell Leyva was put to the ultimate test:
flip or flop. He had led the competition at the
Xcel Energy Center since the preliminaries,
and had yet to come off the apparatus as
Horton had. And he wasn't about to throw
away all the hours at Universal Gymnastics in
Miami that had finally put him in this rare position.
With Horton suddenly breathing down his
neck on the scoresheet, Leyva sprinted down
the vault runway and landed his new Kasa-matsu- 11⁄2, but he took a big, awkward step
forward. Was he finally feeling the pressure?
In the same rotation, Horton nailed his parallel bars routine to keep pace with Leyva,
who only gained 0.10 in the rotation. After a
fall from pommel horse on day one, Horton,
25, had been playing catch-up with his friendly rival ever since. But on this Friday evening,
Horton had returned to form.
Ironically, he had opened the finals on pommels as first man up. He hit this time, and
after a strong rings set (despite a minor shoulder injury), he showed his new vault too—the
Dragulescu he had trained since college—and
landed it well for a 16.70.
In the penultimate rotation, the two battlers
marched to one of their best events—Horton
to high bar, Leyva to parallel bars—which is
where a knockdown occurred. Horton opened
with a clean Cassina, one of the most difficult
releases being done, and it was perfect in the
air. But one hand caught while the other over-
reached, and Horton peeled off. He quelled
his anger and finished the routine, but you
could almost see smoke shooting from his ears
as he marched off the podium. “That was the
first Cassina I missed all week,” he said. “And
it was perfect. It was exactly where I wanted to
put it, and I just couldn't hold on.”
Horton’s fall also bothered Leyva, whose
stepfather/coach had to mentally slap him
back to the moment at hand. “I saw him wor-
rying about Jonathan,” Yin Alvarez said after-
ward. “He wanted him to hit all six events.
And I said, ‘Dani, worry about yourself right
now.’”
Leyva calmly approached the event that he
has come to own and performed what Alvarez
would call his best routine ever on parallel
bars. He mounted with a difficult peach-
Diamidov that may be unmatched in the world
right now. He later swung a giant-Diamidov-
11⁄ 4 with an aggression gained only through
countless repetitions in the gym. Everything
was perfect, all the handstands vertical. When
he planted his double pike with just a step, his
body language exuded the satisfaction of star-
ing down the situation and coming a little clos-
er to his first U.S. senior title. “I don't think he
was nervous,” Alvarez said. “Dani likes the big
In the last rotation of the finals, Danell
Leyva hit his difficult routine on high bar
to secure his first U.S. senior title.
Afterward, he celebrated with his stepfather and coach, Yin Alvarez.
