Charlie Riedel/Associated Press
MyKayla Skinner, a gymnast on the United States national team, fought to finish her workout.
Time after time last Thursday, she tried to focus on her vault, but none of her flips, twists or landings ended up just right. All she wanted to do was go home and weep under her bedcovers. She wiped away tears.
Her coaches, she later said, thought she had cried because of her poor practice. But Skinner, an alternate for the 2016 Olympics training for the Tokyo Games, knew it was something more.
“It hit me that I only had five more months to push hard toward the Olympics and now that finish line is so far away,” Skinner said Sunday in a telephone interview, regarding the postponement of the Games until next year.