A Conversation with NBC Sports Analyst and US Olympic Gymnast Jonathan Horton

Known as one of the steadying forces within the U.S. gymnastics community, Jonathan Horton has collected seven gold medals at the U.S. National Championships, three gold medals at the World Cup, and he brought home a silver and bronze medal from Beijing after his first of two appearances in the Summer Olympics.

In this conversation, Horton talks about how childhood hyperactivity set him on a path to the Olympics, how his time at the University of Oklahoma shaped his personal faith in God, and what he hopes to accomplish in London this summer:

Chad Bonham: From reading your story, it sounds like your parents, instead of putting you on medication, got you involved with gymnastics.

Jonathan Horton: It’s absolutely true. I tell people all the time that if Ritalin had been a popular thing when I was young, my parents would have definitely put me on that. But I had way too much energy. I was out of control. So they put me in a sport that they thought was the most active. Gymnastics was perfect for me.

Bonham: At what point did you begin chasing your Olympic dream?

Horton: It didn’t really hit me until 1996. I was watching the Games in Atlanta on TV. That’s when I first thought to myself, “Wow, this is what I want to do.” That became my number one goal at that point. I was 11 years old. After that, I started training much harder, but it wasn’t until 2004, when I qualified for my first Olympics Trials that I knew this was a possibility. I finished 12th that year and that pushed me to work hard the next four years to make the next team and in 2008 I made it.”

Bonham: What principles have helped you get to this point?

Horton: Gymnastics is such a complex sport. It’s one of the best character building sports in the world. One of the big ones I’ve had to work on my whole life is how to manage my frustration. Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve been extremely competitive and I like to win. It doesn’t matter if it’s a video game or if I’m playing basketball outside with my buddies. I want to win. As a gymnast, the sport is so hard. You don’t learn things right away. It’s not one of those sports where you can jump up on the high bar and learn a new skill in one try. It takes a lot of patience. It takes a lot of time and perseverance. I used to get so frustrated when I couldn’t learn something. It sounds funny now that I think about it because it doesn’t happen anymore, but I used to throw fits when I was 12, 13 years old. I would cry when I couldn’t do something. I had to learn how to overcome that and be more patient and take my time. Now, I’m a much more disciplined person. I know how to be patient and I know how to take my time learning things.

Bonham: What did you bring home from your experience at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing?

Horton: It’s not every day that you get to look at yourself in the mirror and think, “Wow, I have been blessed enough to finally accomplish one of my big dreams.” It was something I’d worked for my whole life. I remember stepping off the plane and seeing all the banners with the Olympic rings. I was just so thankful—more so than for the results. I was thankful to be a part of it and to represent my country in the pinnacle event of my sport. The Olympic medals were awesome. I’ll never forget competing with the team. But just being a part of it, I’ll cherish that forever.

Bonham: Tell me about your faith journey.

Horton: I grew up in a Baptist church here in Houston. I always had God in my life. I always believed in God and had faith in God, but it wasn’t until I got to college that I took my own faith to another level. As a kid, you do it because your parents make you do it. It’s just part of your weekly routine. But it wasn’t until I was challenged with the things outside of my family, you know, the worldly temptations, when my faith really grew. I had to turn to Him. As my training got more difficult and as I was trying to balance school and what my friends wanted me to do with gymnastics, I had to turn to God. My faith grew tremendously. Now that I’m married, my wife and I can work together and push each other in our growth with the Lord. My gymnastics has gotten better. My faith has gotten stronger. God is number one in my life and He’s the reason that I have the success that I’ve had.

Bonham: What was the spiritual catalyst for your growth in college?

Horton: It was a couple of my teammates. My best man from my wedding is one of my best friends in the world. His name is Jacob Messina. We were freshman together. We lived together all the way through college. We shared the same beliefs. Our faith was really strong. We challenged each other. A lot of our friends would go to the bars and party. It was tempting. We’re human beings. Every now and then we’d fall short, but we would challenge each other. We’d remind each other that this wasn’t what God wanted us to do. Before knew it, probably about the end of my sophomore year, we decided to start a Bible study. We invited a bunch of guys from our gymnastics team. There was a lot of accountability for each other. Once we got more people involved, it just helped us grow. We had six or seven guys that would come over to the house. Jacob played the drums. Another one of my friends played guitar and we would worship. My faith became so much stronger once I was on my own.

Bonham: Are you hopeful that God will use you to be a witness wherever else this path might take you?

Horton: That’s always been my prayer. I pray every night that God takes the platform that He’s given me and uses me, speaks through me—not only through my words but through my actions as an athlete. I just pray for opportunities and I know He’ll speak to me and show me those opportunities where I’ll be able to show my faith. I go to Dr. Ed Young’s church down here in Houston and he preached about when it’s right to hide your faith and when it's right to show your faith. He told us that when you feel like hiding it, you need to show it, and when you feel like you’re being prideful and you want to show it, hide it. That really hit me hard. It would be really easy when you’re on live TV and the whole world is watching you to want to hide your faith. You want to avoid the persecution that the world is going to give you for it. But it’s in that moment when I really need to show it. That’s when I need to use my platform as a gymnast to show what the Lord has done for me.

Check out Chad Bonham’s book Glory of the Games featuring Olympic athletes such as Shannon Miller, Dave Johnson, Josh Davis, Tamika Catchings, Ruth Riley, Michael Chang, and Tobin Heath.


Photos courtesy of USA Olympic Team/NBC Sports.

A Conversation with U.S. Olympic Freestyle Wrestling Coach and Former Olympic Champion Brandon Slay

At the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, Brandon Slay reached the pinnacle of his sport with a golden performance. But it was just a year earlier when the freestyle wrestler had to come to grips with a harsh reality—he was a phony Christian. So when that medal was placed around his neck, Slay was better prepared to handle the glory that was coming his way and life’s ups and downs that were certain to follow.

Now the Assistant National Freestyle Coach and National Freestyle Resident Coach for USA wrestling, Slay is working with the next generation of Americans. In this conversation, he talks about his humble beginnings in the sport, how he became a Christian, and how his wrestling career has brought him closer to God:

Chad Bonham: Tell me about your interesting introduction to wrestling and your early struggles with the sport.

Brandon Slay: I was born and raised in Amarillo, Texas. My dad was a wrestler at the University of Alabama. He started taking me to the YMCA when I was six years old. That’s when I started wrestling competitively. That first year, I went 0 for 20. I got pinned almost every single time and I cried every single time. My second year, I had seven wins and 15 losses. My third year, I finally broke even. At the end of my third year and going into my fourth year, that’s when I started tasting success and getting my hand raised on a more frequent basis. That’s when I started to fall in love with the sport.

Bonham: How did you become a Christian?

Slay: My mom and dad got a divorce when I was three. I had to move in with my grandmother when I was five until I was about 13. My grandmother was a Baptist Sunday School teacher. We went to church Wednesday nights, Sunday mornings and Sunday nights. She got me enrolled into a Christian school. I went to a Christian school from kindergarten through sixth grade. I had that Christian upbringing from church to school to being at home with my grandmother.

In high school, I got addicted to myself and to success on the football field and on the wrestling mat. Sports became my god. I believed in God. I believed that Jesus died on the cross, but I didn’t have that genuine relationship with the Savior. I wrestled at Penn in Philadelphia. I was living a rebellious lifestyle. I wasn’t taking a stand for God. He wasn’t the most important thing in my life. Success was. Being a world champion was.

I finished second at the NCAA tournament twice and then moved to Colorado Springs to train for national team. God used that time to work on my heart. I went from living in West Philadelphia and a busy lifestyle to Colorado. That really slowed my life down. When I opened my blinds of my window every morning, I was facing Pike’s Peak. That’s where God wooed my heart. I knew in my heart that God created that. When you start thinking about Creation, you start thinking about how you’re living compared to God’s truth. It was about 1999 when I realized that I was a phony. I wasn’t living what I said I believed.

Before I had my Matthew 10:39 moment, my all-in surrender, it took me doing some soul searching. I researched other religions. If I was going to go down that path of seeking after God, I wanted to know what other religions believed. After doing that for a few months, that’s when God impressed upon my heart that Christianity was the only religion that had a Savior. All I’d been trying to do was save myself. But we needed someone to die for our sin and our rebellion. We needed someone to pay for that wage of sin. At that point, it didn’t just make heart sense. It made logical sense to me. It was more than just believing what my grandmother believed.

Bonham: What is a significant spiritual lesson that God has taught you throughout your career?

Slay: A local pastor in Colorado Springs sat down with me one morning and asked me, “What do you think your purpose is?” This was before I had surrendered my life to Christ. I told him, “My purpose is to work out, lift weights, wrestle hard, go win a gold medal, retire from wrestling, get married and have some kids, work until I’m 60, retire from work, go fishing with my buddies and then I’ll go die.

He didn’t argue with me. He just walked off and encouraged me to chew on that. I was so mad. That couldn’t be my purpose. There had to be something greater than that. At the same time, God was stirring my heart. Now I understand that my purpose is to know the Savior and to make Him known. In doing so, you can wrestle. You can get married. You can have kids. You can work until retirement. You can go fishing with your buddies. But that’s all about underneath the purpose of knowing the Savior and making Him known.

Bonham: What’s your message for the athletes you train or any other athletes out there trying to fulfill their dreams?

Slay: Reaching your Mt. Everest doesn’t fulfill you. Not reaching it doesn’t destroy you. You may that think that becoming the state champion or the NCAA champion or the Olympic champion is some sort of euphoric moment that’s going to be with you for the rest of the life. But it doesn’t fulfill you. It’s just a thing. It’s just an accomplishment. It’s just a climb to the top. Yes, you can enjoy the view and it’s really pretty when you get up there, but eventually you have to come back down. You can’t stay at the top of Mt. Everest for more than 30 minutes. You’ll end up dying due to oxygen depravation. Eventually you have to humble yourself and you have to come back down. You’ll die up there. Spiritually, you will die.

That’s what happens to a lot of young adults. They buy into the lie that they will be fulfilled by accomplishments. All you have to do is ask anyone who has been to the top and they’ll tell you that it doesn’t fulfill you.

But you still go for it with everything you have. You use he gifts that God has blessed you with to the best of your ability. He’s given you these gifts to glorify Him and to honor Him. You go for it with everything you have. It’s totally okay to go for the gold. But you’re doing it with the understanding that you’re doing it to try to fulfill yourself. You’re doing it to glorify God. If you get there, it’s going to be awesome and you’ll be thankful for it. But if you fall short, you’re still better because of it.

The Holy Spirit through God’s Word and others revealed to me that having that attitude frees you up. I was putting all my eggs in one basket. Winning the gold medal wasn’t my everything. So when I went up on that mat, I was able to give my best and let God take care of the rest.

Pick up Chad's book Glory of the Games, featuring inspiring stories from 17 Olympic athletes (past and present) such as Shannon Miller, Tobin Heath, Laura Wilkinson, Josh Davis, Michael Chang, and Kevin Durant, by clicking HERE.

Photo courtesy of US Olympic Team.

A Conversation with U.S. Olympic Diver David Boudia

David Boudia (pronounced boh-DIE-uh) qualified for his first international diving competition at the age of 15 and hasn’t looked back since. But at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Boudia failed to win a medal in both the individual and synchro events leaving the platform specialist feeling unfulfilled and empty.

Two years later, as a sophomore at Purdue, Boudia “hit the wall” and found new meaning thanks to the evangelistic efforts of his diving coach Adam Soldati. And even though he won that elusive gold medal at the 2012 Summer Games in London, it’s something completely different that’s driving Boudia's passion for the sport.

In this conversation, Boudia talks about falling in love with the Olympics at a young age, his life changing experience at Purdue and how a newfound eternal perspective has radically transformed his approach to competition:

Bonham: You got your start in gymnastics. Is that typical for most divers?

Boudia: It’s very typical. When I was seven, I had a goal to make it to the Olympic Games. I played a lot of different sports and tried a lot of different things and I thought I’d go in gymnastics. That’s what I put a lot of my focus on. I did soccer and cross country and baseball. I was kind of the average American jock but I lost passion in gymnastics and I found diving, which was the next best thing to feed my adrenaline.

Bonham: What initially drew you to diving?

Boudia: After quitting gymnastics in 2000, I was looking for that next thing where I could defy gravity. I was looking for something that had the flipping and the twisting and allowed me to be acrobatic. A friend introduced me to the sport and I took my first lesson and fell in love with it from there.

Bonham: Who were your inspirations as a diver?

Boudia: There wasn’t specifically a person I looked up to. It was more about the Olympics in general. When I was seven, I was watching with my family and just thought how cool that would be to represent your country. The Olympics is about bringing the world together and learning how to go through struggles. That’s what inspired me before my career and that’s been my inspiration ever since I was striving towards the 2008 Games.

Bonham: So was your first memory of the Olympics the 1996 Games in Atlanta?

Boudia: Yeah, that was the first Olympics that I could grasp and my family was huge Olympics fanatics. Both played into that.

Bonham: When you went to Beijing, did the experience live up to the hype?

Boudia: Don’t get me wrong. It was unbelievable to be in Beijing. But when it was all said and done, I looked back at it and had the experience of my life. It was surreal. But there was still that “wanting more” and I didn’t accomplish my goal. It was almost as if I saw Beijing as a failure even though it had been my lifelong dream to be at the Olympic Games.

Bonham: When did you start synchronized diving and what are some of the different strategies within your preparation and actual competition?

Boudia: When I started diving, that’s when it first came on to the Olympic scene. That was something that my age-group coach emphasized. It's just a matter of getting the mechanics and techniques the same. I count “one-two-three go” and that’s when it just synchs up. But when you’re first starting out, it can be very difficult because you need to have the same techniques. But after a while, it’s like you’re on automatic pilot.

Bonham: Do you enjoy one discipline over the other or is all just diving to you?

Boudia: I definitely enjoy both. They have two different mindsets. When you’re with a synchro partner, it’s a team. It’s about enjoying the competition and I get to share that with somebody else. We also get to grow from the competitions where we don’t do so well. Individual diving is more about learning what you’ve done wrong and what you’ve done right in those competitions. They both have their perks and they’re both great to experience when you’re in the moment.

Bonham: Is your attention ever divided during a competition?

Boudia: Ultimately when you have the perspective of why you’re competing and what you’re trying to pursue, the rest just falls into place. I don’t have to change my mindset. It’s still all for one purpose. It’s all about glorifying God. I approach the practices and the competitions the same. I’m at peace when I’m doing those things and it’s for God and His glory.

Bonham: When did you first start to understand who God was and what His purpose was for your life?

Boudia: I was not raised in a home that emphasized faith or emphasized a need for Christ. After 2008, I started my freshman year in college and coming off the Olympic high, I was starting this new journey by myself. I didn’t have my parents around and it was really a rebellious time in my life. It wasn’t until my sophomore year when I realized something was wrong. It was like I hit a wall and I was flat down on my face. I didn’t know what direction I was going. I started texting my coach (Adam Soldati) and he had me over the next night. I had a lot of questions about why I was here and what my purpose was. The Gospel really provided all of those answers and the fulfillment I needed. It’s definitely been a huge 180-degree change. It’s a hard walk, but I definitely don’t imagine it any other way.

Bonham: Did you know that Coach Soldati was a believer and is that what drew you to him during your struggle?

Boudia: I didn’t know what a believer was or what that even meant when I came to him. I just knew that Adam was someone I looked up to and I didn’t know why. He just provided me with a lot of wisdom. He was someone I could turn to and ask those tough questions. He was real approachable and loving. That’s why I felt like I could come to him during that time. 

Bonham: Was that a freeing moment for you and how did it impact your diving? 

Boudia: At first, I had a lot of fear of man. What would my friends think of me if I started talking about Jesus more? I really wanted to please Him but I also wanted the praise from my friends. It probably wasn’t until I really started to dive into God’s Word that I realized that this life is a speck of what eternity looks like. If I want to post something that God’s sharing with me on Twitter, then what is my fear of doing that revealing in my heart? Am I searching to please God or am I searching to please man? It probably was about a year and a half ago when I started gradually doing it but now my number one purpose in life is to please God and to love on others. I do that through social media. I do that in practice around my teammates. It stems from learning more about God’s attributes.

Bonham: Diving is one of those sports that people love to watch during the Olympics but sometimes forget about the rest of the time. How important is it for you to maximize the opportunity to not only share your sport with the masses but also shine a light for Christ?

Boudia: In 2008, diving was my god. It was a forced competition. I needed to do well there if I wanted to do well later in life. But now, I’m enjoying every moment, day by day because tomorrow’s not guaranteed. It’s more about what I’m doing to share my purpose but not forcing it on people. God is providing this platform so He can reveal Himself. Hopefully the sport will get more attention this year and hopefully God will get more attention out of the Olympics as well.

 

Pick up Chad's book Glory of the Games, featuring inspiring stories from 17 Olympic athletes (past and present) such as Shannon Miller, Tobin Heath, Laura Wilkinson, Josh Davis, Michael Chang, and Kevin Durant, by clicking HERE.

 

Check out David Boudia's brand new book with Tim Ellsworth by clicking HERE.

Photos courtesy of USA Diving.