Donnell Whittenburg closes in on stardom, one vault at a time
By Dave Sheinin
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| Donnell Whittenburg of Baltimore will try to nail down a spot on the five-man Olympic team at next weekend’s men’s gymnastics trials in St. Louis. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post) |
Brown, a single mother of three, was desperate to find the boy an outlet, so one day she scraped together some money and drove him out to the suburbs north of town. He was 7 years old. And on the third day of the beginners’ gymnastics class, someone tapped her on the shoulder: A woman said the coach of the elite boys’ team wanted to talk to her. He had seen Donnell. He wanted to coach him.
That’s how it all started — how Donnell Whittenburg found his way to the sport that would eventually become his calling, and that, some 14 years later, would bring him to the cusp of stardom — closing in on a berth on the U.S. Olympic men’s gymnastics team, with plenty of people saying his extreme power and daring vaults make him a legitimate medal threat at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/donnell-whittenburg-closes-in-on-stardom-one-vault-at-a-time/2016/06/17/fb5a0f1a-2811-11e6-b989-4e5479715b54_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_no-name%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
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