Keswick calls it a career

Tuesday, July 9, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

One of the most difficult maneuvers a gymnast must perform comes after a fall. With the eyes of everyone glaring down, he must forget about his breakdown, quickly remount the apparatus and finish his routine.

Scott Keswick went through such a process. Sure, he has had to do it during competition, just like any other dedicated gymnast. But Keswick's struggle to continue didn't relate to any one routine or piece of equipment. It involved his entire career.

Battling back from an injury that should have ended his career, the 1992 Olympic team member recently failed in his bid to qualify for the Atlanta Games by failing to finish among the top seven U.S. gymnasts at the Olympic Trials in Boston.

It was the dismount of his career.

"Going to Atlanta would have been the fairy-tale ending," said the 26-year-old Keswick, a graduate of Las Vegas High. "It would have been the perfect way to end my career. For that not to happen, it was very hard to deal with, but at the same time everything was so hard on me mentally and physically. I was so tired at the end.

"In a way, it's a relief that everything is finally said and done and decided. It wasn't the result I was looking for, but I was searching for a way to close my career."

Keswick's career appeared over last year. Competing at the Pan American Games in Seattle, Keswick lost his grip on the horizontal bar and crashed to the mat in a heap. He suffered serious back injuries. He underwent surgery to have a herniated disc removed and his spinal column fused. Screws and pins are still there today.

Despite the long odds of coming back, Keswick couldn't go out that way.

"When I first got injured, I didn't want that to be the way I finished my career," he said. "It was very important not to finish that way, and I very easily could have.

"I came back from a devastating injury that put me out of commission completely. I was incapacitated from living a normal life, never mind being in a gym. To come back from that and almost make an Olympic team was quite an achievement, but at the same time it was the first time I never attained my goal."

It is the reality of being beatable that Keswick still is dealing with.

"Even for non-athletes, there's always disappointment like that, but for someone who trains his whole life for a sport, and to come up short that way, it's not easy to accept," he said. "I really believe in my heart I did everything I could to make that Olympic team.

"It was a tough task and it just proved too tough for me. For the first time in my life I came up against something a little too big for me. But that's what life's all about, isn't it?"

Life is different now. Instead of polishing his routines for Atlanta, Keswick is doing other things. He doesn't want to see the Olympics in person.

"It's not something I'm overly excited to do," he said. "It would be better if I stayed away, but at the same time I'll be watching it and rooting for our guys. We're going to have a good team on the floor."

Keswick, who calls China the favorite, will instead be in the midst of a six-week national tour, promoting the sport he loves.

"I'm very grateful for my career and I would like this sport to continue to grow," Keswick said. "If I can play a small part in that, I want to do it while I can."

Before too long, however, he must settle down.

"I'm starting my life over, I guess," said Keswick, who plans on using his math degree to enter the corporate world, if professional gymnastics doesn't pan out. "It's the new phase of my life."

He will move to Northern California with Michelle, his wife of two years. He met her at UCLA, where the two competed, and she has been a major comfort ever since.

"She's been absolutely incredible," he said. "Everything I went through, she went through. She sacrificed just as much as I did going through the surgery, the recovery and even the comeback. She went through it with me, supporting me. She was proud of me no matter what. What more could you ask for?"

Maybe a second shot at gold?

"I never did this sport for the glory," Keswick said.

"When I did this sport as a kid I did it for the fun, and because I wanted to be the best. I have a feeling in five years, when I look back at my comeback, it'll be more impressive to me than it is now."