It was a small broadcasting moment, one you understandably may have missed, but it highlighted why Laurie Hernandez has been one of the broadcasting stars of the Paris Games. During NBC and Peacock’s live coverage of the women’s gymnastics team final at the Paris Olympics last Tuesday — the United States took gold thanks to vaults from Simone Biles and Jade Carey and a Michael Jordan-like closing routine by Biles on the floor exercise — Hernandez offered the many laypersons in the audience a lesson on how to become a smarter gymnastics viewer.
“You can always tell if a gymnast is nervous by the way her ankles shake while she is either walking or on her tippy toes,” Hernandez said.
It was fascinating insight and the kind of details Hernandez has provided throughout NBC’s live gymnastics coverage. Her ability to communicate 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 medal on the balance beam) has made for an exceptional viewing experience.
She and Rich Lerner, the Golf Channel anchor serving as a play-by-play voice for the live gymnastics coverage, figured out the chemistry part right from the jump. (NBC has a more well-known gymnastics crew handling what we see on the prime-time rebroadcast consisting of play-by-play broadcaster Terry Gannon, analysts Samantha Peszek, Tim Daggett and reporter Zora Stephenson.)
“Because she competed so recently, Laurie speaks as a contemporary of the gymnasts,” said Molly Solomon, the executive producer and president for NBC Olympics, in an email. “With her emotion so authentic and at times so raw, as she experiences the pressure now from a broadcaster’s perspective, viewers find her voice and her empathy for the tension of the moment refreshing.”
Hernandez continued her fine work on Saturday for the women’s vault competition. Following a vault from An Chang-ok of North Korea, Hernandez offered the following for viewers.
“If a gymnast looks like a letter L towards the end of it, that’s going to be a huge deduction,” she explained. “You want to look like a pencil or a straight line. Also, if the chest is parallel to the floor rather than being parallel or facing the vault table, then that’s another deduction.”
That’s excellent stuff. The Athletic connected with Hernandez in Paris over the weekend to discuss her broadcasting work.
It’s a significant challenge to translate the world of gymnastics to a mass audience. What’s your approach to explaining a sport that you know and love to people who don’t necessarily follow it every week?
There’s not necessarily a specific approach to it. I think the biggest thing is trying to bridge the gap between the massive gymnastics fans who know the code of points (the rulebook that defines the scoring system) honestly way better than I do versus those who are at home and know nothing about the sport but want to understand why someone might score so high or low.
My mom was always such a great parent in the sense that she knew nothing about gymnastics. I would try to explain things to her and it was in one ear and out the other because she was just so proud of me. I feel like maybe that explains some of it. I was always excitedly trying to explain to her what I was doing in a way that she could understand, knowing that she knew nothing. I wanted to spread that joy and share this experience with her.
Can you give us a sense of what are you specifically looking at when working on air as a gymnastics analyst?
Let’s go down the order for gymnastics. We’ll start with vault. For vault, we’re looking at height and distance. Simone Biles and (Brazil’s) Rebeca Andrade are the two that come to mind in terms of the best, and in terms of past Olympics, McKayla Maroney is someone whose name I hope is remembered forever.
She had the height and capability and a daring nature to try new things. So when we’re looking at height, it’s how high can they go? Are their arms straight on the table? You’re running full speed at a stationary object. It’s like if you throw a pencil at the wall and you’re able to hit it with the eraser side, 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 kind of straight arms and open shoulder position we see on the table, the higher they’ll go. That’s why Simone is able to do what she can do is because she hits the table at such an angle that I wouldn’t even dare to try. Vault is about height and distance and landing deductions.
For the uneven bars, we are looking at handstands. That’s where gymnasts tend to get deducted the most. Toes have to be all the way up to the ceiling. We’re also looking for any release moves where a gymnast lets go and catches the bar. It could be the same bar, could be a different bar, they could turn mid-air. Then a fun thing is just checking to see if the bar bends when they swing beneath it. Some of the best bar workers, not only in the United States, but in the world, will actually use the equipment to their advantage. They’ll kind of relax their bodies underneath the bar and allow their full weight to just tug at it. It allows them to have toss skills even higher. It helps them do less work. That’s definitely a fun thing to look for.
For beam, it is minimal wobbles. If their ankles while they are on their tippy toes are shaking back and forth, that is a telltale sign for me. I could always gauge how nervous I was by the shakiness of my ankles. When you only have four inches to work with, you don’t have room. So obviously no falls or wobbles on beam. Then breathing is a big one. Some of the best beam workers will exhale when they land because that center of gravity will sink them into the equipment. A lot of times when people get nervous, they hold their breath. It may bring your center of gravity up towards 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. Landing deductions is the biggest thing but if you see a gymnast out there who’s having an absolute blast, the odds of her getting an artistry deduction, which I call ghost deductions, places where you might not realize there’s a deduction, is small. Artistry is a big place where the judges tend to grab and pull. When you look at a team like Brazil, they’re such a joy to watch.
“For the floor … if you see a gymnast out there who’s having an absolute blast, the odds of her getting an artistry deduction,” Laurie Hernandez says. (Jean Catuffe / Getty Images)
Where have you and Rich Lerner been located inside Bercy Arena during the competition?
We are on the complete opposite side of where the vault is. There is an entire section of the arena that’s just purely media and networks from different countries. We have a really good view of all four events. The (other NBC broadcasters) are near us but we don’t really get to interact with them since we’re calling it live. There are times where they’re also calling it live but then for prime time, there’s a lot of either recaps or reshoots or whatever that might be.
You received a lot of social media attention for your very natural reaction to seeing Seth Rogen in the crowd. What’s your reaction when something you say on 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 kindhearted. My goal is always to have an optimistic outlook because I recognize how hard this sport can be. But I’m also chronically online. I’m 24. I’m in college. I’m unfortunately on TikTok until my eyes get droopy. I’m trying to work on that.
But sometimes those natural instincts on air are just my natural instincts. Sometimes I feel a little embarrassed by it, but people seem to really 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 NYU majoring in drama but a unique one in that you have a lot of television experience at the very young age of 24. (For example: Hernandez was champion from Season 23 of Dancing with the Stars.) How are you looking at gymnastics broadcasting long-term?
To be honest, I’m so in awe of even just being here. The imposter syndrome has kicked in tenfold in the sense of not having as much experience as those around me. Yet I am commentating about something that I find so important and near and dear to my heart. I would love to do more commentary work in the world of gymnastics because I love it so much.
My parents (knew) since I was a little kid that I wanted to do entertainment. I always loved acting in comedy and imitating people and putting on funny voices. I found so much joy in that and in getting them to laugh. I loved fiction as a kid and still love it to this day. I do a little bit of screenwriting and novel writing. So I’d definitely love to do some on camera acting work for film and TV. I’ve also always loved the world of animation whether it’s through motion capture for video games, or if it’s voice acting for animation. That that would be a dream.
I wonder if you could offer me a perspective as an Olympic gold medalist on why Simone Biles is the best of all time?
If you asked an Olympic gymnast why Simone is the best, we could give you all kinds of things. We could say she’s the most powerful gymnast. We could say it’s because she’s daring. We could name a list under the sun. But the fact of the matter is she’s not only physically aware of herself, but mentally present as she flips. She’s making split-second decisions in the air.
Every gymnast is striving for perfection. That’s the goal. That’s the dream. But no one’s ever perfect. For every single turn, there is usually something going wrong, and that’s what we plan for. But when she’s out there and she’s doing something like a triple-double on floor, that’s three twists and two backflips. If she takes off a certain way, she can be, “OK, I’m not rotating enough, I’m going to need to pull this way or rotate 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 just knows what answer in a split-second. She thinks it — and it’s done. I’m in awe of her quick thinking, and I’ll forever be in awe of it.
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(Top photo of Laurie Hernandez in 2019: Jordan Strauss / Invision / AP)