RIO DE JANEIRO _ When Nicole Ahsinger was 3, her father took her to a gymnastics center in Poway, Calif., and let her jump around on the trampolines. Michelle Ahsinger was a former gymnast _ a former injured gymnast _ and preferred that her daughter move in a different athletic direction. Daddy took her anyway.
They arrived home and little Nicole burst through the door, explained where they had been and blurted: "Mom, I want to be like those girls on TV. I want to go to the Olympics."
Busted, Daddy.
"My dad got in trouble," Ahsinger said. "But my mom let me stick it out, just because I really did love it so much."
You know how this ends: Ahsinger winds up in the Olympics.
The San Diego native competed at the Rio Games on Friday in trampoline gymnastics, which involves performing bouncy routines that are scored for degree of difficulty, execution and time of flight. Ahsinger scored 95.455 points for her two routines in the qualification round and finished 15th out of 16.
There's a but. She just turned 18 in May, the youngest trampoline competitor in Rio.
"It wasn't exactly what I wanted, of course," said Ahsinger, who attended Scripps Ranch High for two years before moving to Lafayette, La., to train under national coach Dmitri Poliaroush. "I would have loved to (make the eight-woman) final but I knew that probably wasn't a possibility. But I competed against girls who were five-time Olympians.
"It's just incredible to be sitting next to them and know them personally and be able to watch them do what they do best."
Rosie MacLennan, who was Canada's flag bearer here and only gold medalist from 2012, repeated as champion. Britain's Bryony Page was second and China's Li Dan third.
This isn't artistic gymnastics, where the U.S. women have has established a level of astonishing dominance, winning the team gold here by a huge margin and going gold-silver in the individual all-around. Americans have never finished higher than sixth in women's trampoline since its addition to the Olympic program in 2000.
"I don't know if it's too young of a sport in our country or if we're coached differently," Ahsinger said. "I can tell you we don't jump as high, and I don't think we focus enough on that. I think I did almost the same routine I did at nationals, and my score was not even comparable with the international judges. It's just a whole different caliber.
"They're so much better than I am. I know what I have to look like, I know what I have to be to get to their level. But it's going to take some time."
That's something she has. The United States had only one spot in the 16-women event, and Charlotte Drury _ the first American woman to win a World Cup event _ was favored to get it. But she broke her foot in practice in June, just days before the national championships, and Ahsinger suddenly was off to Rio instead.
A crazy childhood dream ... realized.
"I was so nervous for my compulsory (routine)," Ahsinger said. "Afterward, I stopped and I wanted to look around because that's what a lot of people say, that they forget to remember that they're really here. So I tried to take it all in. I couldn't even describe it. It was amazing."
