Interview with Rita Wieber

A week before Trials, Jordyn Wieber's church held a lovely fundraiser to help raise money to send her family to Trials and London. It was so nice to see how her town really supports her journey to the Olympics. I happened to be near DeWitt, her hometown where it was held, so I just had to go! Jordyn was there to sign autographs and meet fans. I also met Rita Wieber, Jordyn's mom, and she was kind enough to let me interview her about the whole process! 

At these major competitions, do you get to see Jordyn before and after she competes?

I’ll just be like every other spectator, like, I’ll see her down on the floor and I won’t get to touch her, hug her; we might talk on the phone a couple times.  It’s so intense.

At what point will you be able to see her?

Not until she comes home.

I read Shawn Johnson’s book, she talks about that a lot.

Yeah. In Tokyo, when she won the all around at Worlds, we were flying out that night, and I hadn’t seen her and I was like, I just wish I could give her a hug! So I just got to see her for a second after, so I could be like, ‘So proud of you, good bye, love you!’ and then we left.

That’s so sad though, not to be able to see her.

I know. It’s horrible, but she’d probably rather have it that way anyway. She just wants to be in her gymnastics world.

Do you think they like it that way?

I think so. I mean the reason they do it is so that they can focus, and their whole focus is just gymnastics. It’s not the mom; some moms could probably put psycho things in their head or freak them out or put pressure on them. I mean I think I just bug Jordyn by breathing--she’s a teenager.  And you know, she’s rooming with Aly Raisman who’s like her best best friend in the world.

What’s been the process from Nationals until now?

Well, her coach handles her whole training process and I have no idea what that involves. All I know is that school’s done, so she basically would train twice a day and it was nice that she could come home in between and just get to chill rather than having to do homework or go to school, so that’s good. But in terms of what her training has been, I don’t know, John’s got some whole big plan, I don’t know how it works. I’ve always had kind of a rule where I don’t ask Jordyn any specifics about what she's doing in the gym, because for one thing I wouln’t even understand it, and another thing, it doesn’t matter because I don’t have a say in all that. But she’s just been trying to balance out hanging out by the pool a little bit, having some friends over and trying to stay not completely in a tunnel, but keeping a relaxed balance. That’s what she’s been doing, and I’m glad we’ve made it through this point. Tomorrow she leaves.

Do you have any plans as a family tonight before she leaves?

Yeah, we’re going to go out to dinner. Which is huge, because we have four kids, and one of them lives out of town, and she’s home. We hardly ever get to go out to dinner all of us together. I know it sounds weird, but Jordyn practices every night. Jordyn loves sushi, so we’re going to go out for sushi. We’ll have a little send off.

Driving through the town I saw all of the posters in the windows, it was so nice.

I know! The story behind that is that Mitt Romney came to town on Tuesday for a little stop and they wanted to be sure that Mitt Romney knew that Jordyn lived here in DeWitt. Because you know DeWitt’s really small! And then Mitt did mention, “Well, I don’t know who this Jordyn Wieber is, but I sure wish her the best,” or something like that. I wasn’t there but someone recorded it for me and I heard it.

Here are some of the posters I was talking about: (click to enlarge)

I'd also like to mention that Rita Wieber has a book out, called Gym Mom: The Twists and Turns of your Daughter's Gymnastics Career. The website for the book, where you can find all the information and order your copy, is here. I'll put up my own review of it after I read it!