It was a small moment for the network, one you understandably missed, but it underscored why Laurie Hernandez has been one of the stars of the Paris Olympics broadcaster. During NBC and Peacock’s live broadcast of the women’s gymnastics team final at the Paris Olympics on Tuesday — the United States won gold thanks to vaults from Simone Biles and Jade Carey and a Michael Jordan-esque closing routine from Biles on the floor exercise — Hernandez gave the many laypeople in the audience a lesson in how to be a smarter gymnastics watcher.
“You can always tell if a gymnast is nervous by the way her ankles shake when she walks or stands on her toes,” Hernandez said.
It was fascinating the insight and detail that Hernandez provided during NBC’s live coverage of gymnastics. Her ability to evangelize the sport to a broad audience, combined with genuine enthusiasm for the success of her former teammates (she and Biles won gold in the team competition at the 2016 Rio Olympics; Hernandez won an individual silver on the balance beam) made for exceptional viewing.
She and Rich Lerner, the Golf Channel host who serves as the play-by-play voice for live coverage of gymnastics, I knew from the beginning how chemistry worked. (NBC has a more well-known gymnastics team that does the primetime broadcasts, consisting of play-by-play reporter Terry Gannon, analysts Samantha Peszek, Tim Daggett and reporter Zora Stephenson.)
“Because she’s competed so recently, Laurie speaks as a contemporary of the gymnasts,” Molly Solomon, executive producer and president of NBC Olympics, said in an email. “With her emotion so authentic and sometimes so raw, as she now experiences the pressure from an announcer’s perspective, viewers will find her voice and her empathy for the tension of the moment refreshing.”
Hernandez continued her good work on Saturday for the women’s vault competition. After a jump from North Korea’s An Chang-ok, Hernandez offered the following for viewers.
“If a gymnast looks like the letter L at the end, that’s a huge deduction,” she explained. “You want to look like a pencil or a straight line. And if the chest is parallel to the floor instead of parallel or pointed at the vaulting table, that’s also a deduction.”
That’s excellent material. The Athletics Last weekend I caught up with Hernandez in Paris to discuss her work as an announcer.
It is a big challenge to bring the world of gymnastics to a large audience. What is your approach to explain a sport that you know and love to people who do not necessarily follow the sport every week?
There is not necessarily a specific approach. I think the most important thing is to bridge the gap between the huge gymnastics fans who honestly know the code of points (the rule book that defines the scoring system) much better than I do, and those who are at home and know nothing about the sport but want to understand why someone scores so high or low.
My mom was always such a great parent in the sense that she didn’t know anything about gymnastics. I would try to explain things to her and it would go in one ear and out the other because she was just so proud of me. I think that might explain some of it. I would always try to explain to her enthusiastically what I was doing in a way that she could understand, knowing that she didn’t know anything. I wanted to spread that joy and share that experience with her.
Can you give us an idea of what specifically you look for when working as a gymnastics analyst?
Let’s go through the order of gymnastics. We’ll start with vault. For vault, we’ll look at height and distance. Simone Biles and (Brazilian) Rebeca Andrade are the two that come to mind when it comes to the best, and when it comes to past Olympics, McKayla Maroney is someone whose name I hope will be remembered forever.
She had the height and the ability and a daring nature to try new things. So in terms of height, how high can they go? Are their arms straight on the table? You run full speed towards a stationary object. It’s like if you throw a pencil at the wall and you can hit it with the eraser, it’s going to bounce. But if you throw cooked spaghetti at the wall, it’s just going to sink and kind of melt into the floor. So the tighter the gymnast is and the more straight arms and open shoulder position we see on the table, the higher they’re going to go. That’s why Simone can do what she can do, because she’s hitting the table at an angle that I wouldn’t even dare try. Vault is about height and distance and landing deductions.
For the uneven bars, we look at handstands. That’s where gymnasts get pulled off the most. Their toes have to be all the way up to the ceiling. We also look at release moves where a gymnast lets go of the bar and catches it. It could be the same bar, a different bar, they could be spinning in the air. Then it’s fun to see if the bar bends as they swing under it. Some of the best bartenders, not only in the United States but in the world, actually use the equipment to their advantage. They relax their body under the bar and let their full weight pull on it. It allows them to improve their throwing even more. It helps them do less work. That’s definitely something fun to watch.
For the beam, it’s minimal wobble. If their ankles are shaking back and forth when they’re on their toes, that’s a sign to me. I could always tell how nervous I was by the vibrations in my ankles. When you only have an inch and a half to work with, you don’t have any room. So obviously no falling or wobbling on the beam. Then breathing is a big one. Some of the best beam workers exhale when they land because that center of gravity sinks them into the equipment. A lot of times people hold their breath when they get nervous. Your center of gravity may be moving toward your neck, but what you want is the opposite. You want to feel grounded. So an exhale will do that.
Then for the floor, it’s just watching for a lot of fun. Getting deductions is the most important thing, but if you see a gymnast who’s having a great time, there’s a small chance that she’ll get an artistry deduction, what I call ghost deductions, places where you might not realize there’s a deduction. Artistry is a big area where the judges tend to grab and pull. When you watch a team like Brazil, they’re such a joy to watch.
“For the floor… if you see a gymnast who is having a great time, chances are she’s going to get an artistic deduction,” says Laurie Hernandez. (Jean Catuffe/Getty Images)
Where were you and Rich Lerner during the match at the Bercy Arena?
We’re all the way across from where the vault is. There’s a whole section of the arena that’s just media and networks from different countries. We have a really good view of all four events. The (other NBC networks) are close by, but we can’t really interact with them because we’re broadcasting it live. There are times when they’re broadcasting it live, but for primetime, there’s a lot of recaps or reshoots or whatever that is.
You got a lot of attention on social media because of your very natural reaction to Seeing Seth Rogen in the crowdWhat is your reaction when something you say during a broadcast becomes a moment on social media?
It’s hours of live commentary, so thank God I said something that was at least funny or nice. My goal is always to have an optimistic outlook because I realize how hard this sport can be. But I’m also chronically online. I’m 24. I’m in college. I’m on TikTok until my eyes droop, unfortunately. I’m trying to work on that.
But sometimes those natural instincts on the radio are just my natural instincts. Sometimes I’m a little embarrassed about it, but people really seem to enjoy it. At the end of the day, I want it to feel like I’m talking to a friend.
You are currently a student at New York University majoring in drama. You are unique in that at 24 years old, you already have a lot of experience in television. (For example, Hernandez was the champion on season 23 of Dancing with the Stars.) What are your long-term views on gymnastics?
To be honest, I am so impressed with the fact that I am here. The imposter syndrome has increased tenfold in the sense that I do not have as much experience as the people around me. Yet I am commentating on something that I find so important and that is close to my heart. I would like to do more commentary work in the world of gymnastics because I love it so much.
My parents (knew) ever since I was a little kid that I wanted to do entertainment. I always loved acting in comedy and imitating people and doing funny voices. I just loved that and making them laugh. I loved fiction as a kid and I still love it. I write a little bit of screenplays and novels. So I would definitely love to do some on-camera acting for film and TV. I’ve also always loved the world of animation, whether it’s motion capture for video games or voice acting for animation. That would be a dream.
As an Olympic gold medalist, can you tell me why Simone Biles is the greatest of all time?
If you were to ask an Olympic gymnast why Simone is the best, we could tell you all sorts of things. We could say she is the most powerful gymnast. We could say it is because she is daring. We could make a whole list. But the fact is that she is not only physically aware of herself, but she is also mentally present when she is doing somersaults. She makes split-second decisions in the air.
Every gymnast strives for perfection. That’s the goal. That’s the dream. But nobody is ever perfect. Every turn, there’s usually something that goes wrong, and we plan for that. But when she’s out there and she does something like a triple-double on the floor, that’s three twists and two backflips. If she takes off in a certain way, she can say, “Okay, I’m not twisting enough, I need to pull this way or I need to twist that way and up.”
It’s like having a multiple choice question with a thousand different answers, and because she’s trained so hard, she knows the answer in a split second. She thinks it — and it’s done. I’m impressed by her quick thinking, and I’ll always be impressed by it.
GO DEEPER
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(Top photo of Laurie Hernandez in 2019: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
