The Classical

Dave Ross knew he’d seen something special, but toned down his reaction, not wanting to look like “an ass” on national TV. It was the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing and one of his athletes, Jason Burnett, had just finished his final routine in men’s trampoline. After a dismal compulsory routine, Burnett had edged his way into the final, where his performance was nearly flawless, a marriage of artistry and near-robotic technique.

“When I saw his routine,” says Ross, “before he even landed and stuck and people were cheering, what went through my mind clear as day—sorry for the expletive—was, ‘Holy shit, Jason has just won the Olympics. Nobody can do a better routine than that.’”

Ross reckons that after the competition, some three hundred people approached him and all but two of them said the same thing: that Burnett’s routine was best. A couple months after Beijing, at a World Cup event, Burnett was approached by a Russian coach. The man was Vitaly Dubko, then in his early seventies, a veteran of the sport’s community. Eight years earlier, Dubko had coached the first men’s and women’s Olympic trampoline champions in Sydney. He knew what a champion looked like. To this day, Burnett remembers the coach’s simple message to him, delivered in clipped English: “You are number one Olympian.”

But after Burnett’s routine, six athletes remained. Five went up, and each scored lower than Burnett. The final competitor was Lu Chunlong, a Chinese teenager weighing less than 130 pounds, who’d already won multiple World Cup events. As expected, his routine excelled in height and execution, though it wasn’t flawless, nor had Lu competed a routine as difficult as Burnett’s. “I was thinking it was going to be pretty close,” says Burnett, and he was right. When the scores came in, Lu had beaten him by three-tenths of a point.

It was a debatable call, but Ross and Burnett have come to terms with it. “In a judged sport,” says Ross, “when you leave it up to the judges, you have to be happy with what you get.” Burnett is happy he beat one of the Chinese athletes. These days, that’s all anyone can really hope for. Ross is happy too. Any podium finish exceeds his modest expectations.

“My Olympic goal was actually to turn on the TV sometime before I’m dead and see trampoline in the Olympics,” he says. “I never expected it to happen while I was still coaching.”

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